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Comment by danmaz74 | Hacker News Reader

Would it be possible to run the Android version under Linux? I know that this will sound like anathema to many, but it could be an interesting development, considering that not being able to run Office is one of the main obstacles to Linux desktop adoption.

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It's doubtful without the source and/or running something like Ubuntu for Android.

While I respect the work put in, OpenOffice/LibreOffice are just unusable. I've tried since 2007 but I've had to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets instead.

I would pay a lot of money for a Linux Excel.

Have you tried LibreOffice recently? It had a major breakthrough some time ago (a year? can't remember) that improved loading times enormously and actually made it usable.

Loading times weren't the issue for me. The issue is that the interface is just not "friendly." It is not always consistent with its self and little thought is given to usability.

This used to be something I would be critical of the Thunderbird e-mail client for too, but that has come along massively in the last couple of years (so much so that I use that instead of Outlook, the quick filters are masterful). Ditto with GIMP (the Photoshop replacement), it has come forward leaps and bounds.

There is nothing technically wrong with LibreOffice. I just wish it could match Office 1995 in terms of its interface.

Personally I use LibreOffice and find it good in many use cases, but sometimes you just need Office - either for compatibility reasons, or because you need some special feature.

But I think the real question is - do you think most people who need a Word or Excel app for whatever reason will have this kind of problem?

Most people no - but, for example, a company of my group tried to go fully Linux, but constantly have problems with Word documents formatting. Having that option could help a lot this kind of choices.

Big monolithic desktop apps just are not and probably never will be a strength of FOSS development. When I do use FOSS for office productivity I prefer a program with a uniquely FOSS-y take on the problem sphere (like Lyx for word processing) over one that's trying to play catchup on propretary models.

Part of the problem is that it doesn't support all MS Office features which makes it frustrating when you're working with coworkers and clients using Office. A perfect example is smart graphs (which are non existant) and graphs look different (and bad) and then don't work on the mac version.

What makes it unusable for you? I've used OpenOffice and derivatives since 2006 on Windows, and haven't had any real problems.

What's the big problem? Someone needs to write an X backend for the android system and then you should be able to run most libraries (compiled for x86) in a chroot or something.

There was a Java port of X posted here a few days ago, as well as a port of X.org that I did a couple of years ago. Complete source is here (http://github.com/tmzt/androix) but building X can be somewhat tricky.

I have also posted an apk here (http://db.tt/UkFlvNAm) which has been tested on recent tablets (Galaxy Tab 2).

I have run Abiword on this in an ARM chroot, though on much slower hardware (a T-Mobile G2).

The common approach today is to run X and a VNC server inside the chroot, then VNC into it from the android userland.

> I would pay a lot of money for a Linux Excel.

What Excel functionality do you need?

Even if it's not, MSFT now has office web apps, so if all you need is google docs as .docx files, that shouldn't be the limiting factor.

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