Office (2K) options on Linux

[thp at cs.ucr.edu]

John Robson <john.robson.remove. at remove.ic.ac.uk> wrote:
: I am just starting to migrate towards Linux (RedHat 7.1 Burned and one
: trial install on another machine went well).

: However I do alot of work for other companies on Office
: (EspeciallyExcel) (generally 2K) and would like to be able to do so
: without rebooting.  AFAICT I have a few options.

: One is to have a dedicated windows box and use a program such as VNC or
: Exceed to view it (I don't like this Idea as it gets expensive)

: Another is to use WINE (Hence I post here).  Having been through a fair
: number of posts (both current and archived on google) I can not work out
: whether this is going to be easy.

: The final one is to use something like VMWare.  Again I have no Idea how
: easy this would be.

To get MS Office functionality under Linux, there are four options:

 1) Use Office work-alikes, e.g., StarOffice.  [Not currently acceptable 
    for collaborative document development.]
 
 2) Use a Windows emulator, namely WINE.  [Not ready to run Office in
    a production mode, and won't be any time soon.]

 3) Use a PC emulator, e.g., VMware or Win4Lin.  [Acceptable for most
    purposes.]

 4) Run Office on a remote Windows or Mac system, e.g., via VNC, Citrix, 
    Win2K TSE, etc.  [???]
  
It would be helpful if there were a FAQ and/or newsgroup that covered this 
general topic, since a lot of people face the same problem.

Tom Payne