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Ask HN: Thoughts – will Microsoft ever publish Excel for Linux?

12 points by tomrod ↗ HN
For almost all my use cases, the online version of Office is wonderful. Yes, there is advanced functionality in Word, in Powerpoint, etc. that aren't 100% compatible, but wow, what a fantastic accomplishment by the Microsoft team in making it available by browser.

It would be incredible if MS could publish Excel on Linux. What are the technical limitations preventing this?

12 comments

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ohiovr
Not being a power user of libreoffice calc I can't say what excel does that libreoffice can't. Office is kind of like the crown jewels of Microsoft. Well that is before azure came along I guess.
simonblack
Why would they bother? It would cost MSFT millions to do so, and Linux users wouldn't bother to use it.

I seem to remember about 30 years back MSFT produced something (Word? Excel? IE?) for Linux (or UNIX?). It died within six months or so.

ksherlock
Internet Explorer was briefly available for Solaris and HPUX. Word 3 was available for Xenix (text-based) and Word 5 was available for Xenix/SCO Unix (GUI).
simonblack
Internet Explorer was briefly available for Solaris

Yep, that's probably it. I was using Solaris round about that time.

shirro
I would buy a well ported full version (not an electron wrapped web version). Microsoft do have software available for Linux including their Edge browser. We used their Linux native MS Teams during lockdown which worked but sadly is electron based however it is the first modern official MS Office app for Linux. I don't use office suites but my kids use our linux computers for school work and they often bring home Microsoft Office files to work on at home. It would be worth paying just to have a seamless experience for them.

I have a licenced version of Windows and Office in a virtual machine so I have already bought Windows AND Office for Linux in a way since I never intend to use them standalone. If Office worked perfectly under wine/proton it would be awesome. It has been close at times with different versions. Unfortunately nobody here much likes the vm experience as I don't have a second video card for accelerated video and it isn't seamless so they generally use online Office that lacks features or struggle with LibreOffice which has a lot of bug and differences.

The idea that all linux users will not pay for software is wrong however it is a very small market as can be seen from the Steam hardware survey. Most Linux users would prefer their data in open formats but since I don't personally use office suites and my kids home work is ephemeral I simply don't care. I am happy to spend money on Steam where I own Microsoft produced games that are played exclusively on Linux.

tomrod
A steam-based Office distribution would be really cool.
theonemind
The Mac version probably wouldn't be a hard port, except for the GUI parts.
mikewarot
I'm surprised they haven't already done so. Doesn't Office 365 work on Linux?
thrower123
Decades of legacy code no one understands fully, and an appreciable fraction of the world economy running on Lovecraftian horrors of spreadsheets dependent on implementation details and bugs in Excel.
natalyarostova
I suspect the future is just a good browser excel, rather than a Linux custom excel.
smackeyacky
File handling, data imports and linking, complete rewrite of the gui. I would guess nobody thinks its a good idea.

Just porting all of the ODBC and COM/DCOM stuff would be a nightmare that even Microsoft is backing away from with the rise of Office365.

I think they would rather all those legacy input formats and data link tech died with windows but if they did decide to port it, you would end up with half of windows itself ported across to make it work and nobody is going to pay for that.

Office365 neatly bypasses all of it by not supporting all that old desktop style workflow and pushing OneDrive as your storage. My guess is even windows users will end up with web versions of office, since they already seem to treat the desktop stuff as a legacy setup.

gigel82
Excel online is also pretty good. Not full featured Excel, but works well enough.