[xubuntu-users] Is there a Linux Distro with MS Word Pre installed?

[Peter Flynn]

On 01/12/2017 08:07 PM, Will wrote:
> I would like to leave Windows forever but I need MS Word.  

I can understand this: Libre Office is fairly good as a wordprocessor,
but its support for the .docx XML file format is unutterably abysmal —
it completely reverses the naming of styles, substituting its own names
for the ones used in Word; although the original names are available in
the stylesheet, but this makes subsequent processes like XSLT much
harder to write and maintain. Most significantly it also lacks the style
name margin which is essential for professional publishers to edit Word
documents. Don't even consider Apache OpenOffice, as they have broken it
quite badly: the version I tested wouldn't even save Word file formats.
AbiWord, on the other hand, is actually very good, and doesn't mess with
the underlying XML quite as badly as OO/LO.

I would be VERY interested to know what you need Word for, if you don't
mind sharing this (in private email if you prefer).

> Does anyone know of an easy to install Linux distro with MS Word
> included? By included I mean when installed MS word is ready to use
> with no involved configuration.

Not as a default. Word is made by Microsoft to run in Windows (and Mac
OS X) and they do not make a Linux version.

However...there is a solution that works. I shelled out €50 for a copy
of CodeWeavers Crossover, which is an emulation environment originally
based on WINE, that lets you install Windows applications (including
Office) under Linux, and run them in a Linux window. You need a fast
machine and a lot of memory (8GB at least) but it does work, and the
emulation is about 98% IMHO, which is fine for my purposes. It means I
can open .docx and .xlsx files natively (I never use Powerpoint), and be
reasonably certain that my co-workers will never know.

You DO need a fully licensed copy of Office to install from: this is not
some kind of crack or cheat but a real software platform. It's also
available for Macs, so that Mac users don't need to suffer the terrible
things Microsoft did to Office for Mac.

///Peter