Activating Office (2010) on linux?

Discussion in 'Microsoft Office' started by Chapshan, Oct 25, 2013.

  1. Chapshan

    Chapshan MDL Novice

    Oct 25, 2013
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    #1 Chapshan, Oct 25, 2013
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2013
    Hi there,

    It may be a dumb question but I couldn't find the answer for what I'm looking for in the internet (google).
    I recently installed Ubuntu on my laptop and was wondering if I could install Offince (2010 for start) onto it. I was happy to find that there is a great tool called wine, and its front end GUI - playonlinux. This tool makes it almost as simple as installing office on Windows machine. The problem is - it doesn't support any activation tool for Office. I even tried a pre-activated version, but this ended up as an un-activated (I'm guessing that a pre-activated version simply means that the activation tool is embedded on the installation process, and when playonlinux gets to this part of the installation, it probably skips it or something).

    I was wondering - is there a tool for activating office on linux OS? If not - what chances do I have to get one when asking (from developers maybe?) for such a tool?

    Thanks,
    Chapy​
     
  2. empireum

    empireum MDL Junior Member

    Oct 25, 2013
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    It's not possible to activate Office 2010 because it's Linux, not Windows.
     
  3. Chapshan

    Chapshan MDL Novice

    Oct 25, 2013
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    Right. This is linux, not Windows. I still don't understand what it has to do with it.
    Using the same logic, I could say that you can't *install* office on linux - because it's linux, not Windows. But facts shows that you can... Obviously it won't be straight-forward as doing it on windows, since the existing tools are windows based and you need to have windows kernel (and probably some other stuff) for it to run, but as I see it there are two possible ways to create such a tool for linux:
    1. Create a tool from scratch that doesn't relay on windows.
    2. Create a translate layer from windows to linux (just like in wine). Some sort of emulator for the existing tools.

    I admit I'm not an expert and maybe comparing the difficulty of installing office on linux to the difficulty of activating it on linux is not a good comparison, but I think it's worth trying and ask....
     
  4. CaptainKirk1966

    CaptainKirk1966 Former MDL Guru

    Oct 31, 2009
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    You could install Win7 Pro as guest OS in Virtual Box, as well as Office 2010, and activate both with MTK. Doing anything with wine always seems awkward to me.
     
  5. Chapshan

    Chapshan MDL Novice

    Oct 25, 2013
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    Yea, this was my first thought about how to solve this issue. But this had few downsides:
    1. When giving my family use the computer it could be a nightmare. They need simple things (and yes, linux is not simple to most people, but I think that they will manage with Ubuntu). Telling them that they need to run a program, then select the appropriate OS, run it, press a button to make it run in full screen and only then the could use office - believe me, I know them. It won't work. While I'm perfectly fine with it and can't find why one shouldn't be able of doing it, they just won't like it at all (I actually try something similar to that with them once - it turned out to be an awful idea). I was more into making shortcuts on the desktop and problem solved.
    2. I was actually started thinking about installing Ubuntu on a flash drive too and installing office on it. I currently have couple of 8GB flash-drives for this experiment of mine and I thought giving it a try before buying a flash-drive with sufficient space for running VMs on it.
    3. Well.... installing Windows just for running office, it looks too much to me. And doing it as a VM is even more of an overhead.
    4. The most important reason why not using the VM solution is that my laptop and VMs doesn't get along. My computer freezes about 70% of the times when running a VM on it. Don't rememer it happened to me with Windows on it, but I almost never used VMs on Windows with my laptop. I dug in the internet looking for a solution, but haven't found one yet.
     
  6. CaptainKirk1966

    CaptainKirk1966 Former MDL Guru

    Oct 31, 2009
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    If you want the most easy and reliable method, learn to use LibreOffice
     
  7. Chapshan

    Chapshan MDL Novice

    Oct 25, 2013
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    I came prepared :biggrin:
    Already tried that. This was the first thing I tried, but LibreOffice and MS office don't get along. When writing a document on one of them and opening it in the other one - it look a little bit messy. And when you have more than 90% of the people in the word using MS-office, it's hard to read their documents and you can't create one that you intent to pass to others... and I have a lot from both (reading other's documents and passing to others my documents).
     
  8. EFA11

    EFA11 Avatar Guru

    Oct 7, 2010
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    check your pm ;)
     
  9. Chapshan

    Chapshan MDL Novice

    Oct 25, 2013
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    EFA11 - you're the greatest. I'll give it a try and let you know if it helped...

    Thanks :)
     
  10. Chapshan

    Chapshan MDL Novice

    Oct 25, 2013
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    sebus - can you guide me on how to do it with crossover, as I couldn't find such an option myself?

    Thanks,
    Chapy​
     
  11. EFA11

    EFA11 Avatar Guru

    Oct 7, 2010
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    So how did that work out for you? I see the count dropped by 1 from 6 to 5. Seems promising :biggrin:
     
  12. sebus

    sebus MDL Guru

    Jul 23, 2008
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    No idea, do not use CO on Linux, I ue it only on Mac, and Mac has native Office, which does not require any b****t activation
     
  13. Chapshan

    Chapshan MDL Novice

    Oct 25, 2013
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    EFA11 - well, actually I haven't tried it yet (the counter - it wasn't me...). I was working on creating something that needs to be done prior the activation of Office.
    I'm sending you a PM with a question regarding that.
     
  14. EFA11

    EFA11 Avatar Guru

    Oct 7, 2010
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    oh ok :) I have replied
     
  15. Casaubon

    Casaubon MDL Novice

    Jul 30, 2009
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    I am also interested in running Office 2010 in Linux. Although WineHQ reports that Office 2010 is working well, for the time being I'm stuck with Office 2007 due to activation.

    There are also reports that KMS is working properly: hxxp://askubuntu.com/questions/277709/activate-office-2010-running-in-playonlinux-with-a-kms-server

    So it seems I am only missing a local KMS server (or maybe an internet one?) EFA11, care to send me a PM, as well? Thanks in advance.