SuSe Linux on AmigaONE & MS Office

[Vallerian]

Hi everyone !

Im new to this forum, so forgive me if this topic has been discussed before, of if this is a wrong place for asking.

My problem is this: I have a PC at home (AthlonXP, but its not really important) running Windows98, since I have a need for MS Office applications and also some other M$ programs (like MS Project). But, I came to an idea (probably impossible, but still - no harm asking) to buy AmigaONE motherboard, use the existing components I have (graphic card, hard disk, etc), and put SuSe Linux as main OS.

Now, there is still a problem of MS Office and other MS applications that I must have installed. So, is there any possibility to install MS Windows and other MS stuff on Linux ? I have heard of VMWare, could it be the solution to this mess ?

Thanks...

[KennyR]

Normally you could use a wrapper like Wine or such... but the problem is that the A1 is PPC, and so I doubt it will run x86 apps even under Linux.

[Vallerian]

yes, I know of wine, but it definitely will not work (I now for sure that it's hardware dependent). however, I have checked the vmware homepage and in theory it should work, but I would prefer knowing it for sure before spending a certain amount of EUR on A1 motherboard  :-D

[alx]

Welcome to the forums :-)

As Wilse says, Wine wouldn't work.  And I don't think VMWare would (doesn't it just "box" part of the processor's time as a virtual processor, so the virtualised processor would need to be the same architecture as the host CPU.

Bochs on the other hand is "just" an emulator - anyone had any luck with it?

---edit---

What do you want the A1 for?  The greatest feature is that it'll run OS4 when it's out - I'd hate to think that you would buy it just for Linux ;-)  BTW are you sure that native solutions like OpenOffice won't help you?

---edit----

That about VMWare was just my educated guesses - you seem to have researched it (I didn't).

[bloodline]

I suggest you run Wine on AROS...


Disclaimer--
when we finnish AROS and port Wine to it...
---  :-D

[jeffimix]

Welllll...

The AmigaOne motherboard may accept some stuff and not other parts, for starters, it's finicky with RAM and right now (I think it's N-Vidia isn't giving out the drivers??? someone help me out here) some graphics cards can't be supported.  The harddisk should be dandy. Since, however, the AmigaOne is a PPC mobo you can't run Microsoft programs on it without some very serious emulation (I think the best is called Boch's X86 emulator?) However you can use OpenOffice (possibly even StarOffice) on SuSe PPC  (I'm assuming they have a PPC version)  the most essential Microsoft programs usually have a Linux counterpart (Samba, Gimp, OpenOffice, Mozilla)

[Vallerian]

 BTW are you sure that native solutions like OpenOffice won't help you?


hmmm, let's say 99% sure. because I use MS Word and MS Excel at work (and when speaking of MS Excel, I need 100% compatibility - I use spreadsheets with macros and stuff). I also need MS Access, since we use it at work. And, I need MS Project installed too, for same reasons.

Other software (Corel, Photoshop, etc.) I could live without, however, the above mentioned _is_ the imperative.

[yoodoo]

Bochs runs far too slowly to be useful for major apps because it emulates the whole PC (video, sound etc) rather than just the processor.

Wine/VMware won't work because they don't emulate a x86, just provide compatible APIs or separated boxes for other OSs to run in.

OpenOfiice and KOffice both work fine on the A1 under Linux. The only bit of MSOffice you might miss is Access. You can convert the databases to run under MySQL etc, but there aren't any mature GUI frontends that will easily replicate any Access reports.

If you already have graphics cards/ram etc and the A1 to hand, then stick them in and see what works.  A few updates over the last 3-4 months have improved ram compatibility to a good level.

[bloodline]

Vallerian wrote:

 BTW are you sure that native solutions like OpenOffice won't help you?


hmmm, let's say 99% sure. because I use MS Word and MS Excel at work (and when speaking of MS Excel, I need 100% compatibility - I use spreadsheets with macros and stuff). I also need MS Access, since we use it at work. And, I need MS Project installed too, for same reasons.

Other software (Corel, Photoshop, etc.) I could live without, however, the above mentioned _is_ the imperative.

Keep your PC, and just run AROS when the hunger Pangs kick in...

AROS

[anarchic_teapot]

If you're going to use Linux, be it on an AOne or another machine, for wordprocessing and/or spreadsheeting, don't muck about with Windows emulation, get OpenOffice.org. It can read and write .doc, .xls files and make .pdf files.

If you're going to insist on MS apps, then you're locked into their specific architecture (x86 + Windows).

[Vallerian]

anarchic_teapot wrote:

If you're going to insist on MS apps, then you're locked into their specific architecture (x86 + Windows).

unfortunately, it's my office (notice the small "o")  :-D and my boss who keep on insisting on MS software... as I said, it's not Word and Excel, it's the Access and MS Project that trouble me...

anyway, maybe I'll go and by a whole new A1, or just upgrade my A1200 with a ppc card and mediator and stuff... seems much more easier  :-)

[Floid]

Since you already have a fast PC, you could easily download the Windows version of Openoffice.org (from, well, Openoffice.org), and see if the import/export is good enough to live with or not.  

Keep in mind that Sun has a pay version of StarOffice floating about that's much lighter (and potentially has had more MS-tracking work done on it) than the older free versions that OpenOffice itself is based on.  The bloated old codebase was released to the OpenOffice team, while their streamlined? version continued on as a commercial product.  Only thing is, *that* might not have a PowerPC port either.

Remember that a decent Office machine costs $300 or less these days; if you're going to declare it a necessary evil, don't let it keep you from doing what you like. With a broadband link, you could VNC from your AmigaOne into the machine at your office, too.  (That said, I'm not a big fan of VNC's methodology, but if you're just using it to run Office...)

There's a company out there with a better remote desktop solution that basically handles VNC-like operations over a compressed X11 protocol (and maybe had a 'bridge' for Windows' Remote Desktop Protocol?), which seems to suggest that, at least, window-dragging would remain fast and sharp, even if the images in each would be compressed (their screenshots looked pretty lossless)... unfortunately, I can't remember who they were.  Anyone else know what I'm talking about?

[Floid]

Ah, found it - I was thinking of NoMachine's NX product.

From their "introduction to 'NX' technology, just to explain why I think it sounds nifty...

NoMachine has developed exclusive X protocol compression techniques and an integrated set of proxy agents that make it possible to run complete remote desktop sessions, even at full screen, using narrowband Internet connections, at speeds as low as those offered by a 9600 band modem.

[...]

 NX accessibility and remote computing capabilities are not limited to Linux desktops and servers. NX encapsulates and translates into X protocol the Remote Desktop Protocol used by Microsoft Windows NT/2000 Terminal Server Edition and Citrix Metaframe, and Remote Frame Buffer, the protocol used by VNC, another Open Source remote computing facility, available numerous different operating systems.

Only question is whether they've got builds for PPC; they already support PSX2 and Zaurus, so some community-directed spam can't hurt.  (Looks like the thin/fat client roles play a good part in both Genesi and Eyetech's sales strategies.)

Edit:  Ah, here's a rather recursive screenshot showing it acting as a Windows RDP client (actually taken on Windows XP, that's a fullscreen NX session running on Windows, connected to a Linux box, that's running a windowed session connected to *another* Linux box, which is then running a session acting as an RDP client to another Windows box!  Looks like they're showing off the lack of quality degradation...) ...

In the meantime, of course, you could try rdesktop, which is Free and probably compiles on PowerPC.  Unfortunately, it's not really clear how maintained the project is, though people can take nice screenshots with it, too.  

None of the protocols are perfect, but given enough bandwidth, you'll probably get a clearer, less-artifacted session over RDP (with Windows) or X11 (with X programs) than you would using VNC.

[Johan Samuelsson]

hmmm.. there is actually a solution for you, if you want to run ms software on your a1.
run MacOS on your A1 through MOL (MacOnLinux).
And then run VirtualPC from MacOS. VirtualPC is a very good/fast windows emu for macos!
there is a screenshot out there somewhere showing
an amigaone running virtualpc.
dunno about the speed, but macosX feels quite nice
on my amigaone, it outperforms my friends real g3 mac! =)

[Tomas]

Whats wrong with open office or staroffice? It is m$ office compitable...

Welcome to the forum btw