Could Microsoft Office finally be heading to Linux?

And meanwhile, of course, the web version of Office will be office as available in Linux. Or is "will" the right word for the web version of Office?

It's funny. As long as I can remember people have been referring to the end of microsoft's reign by saying "it will only take ......" But it never happens, does it.

the only way Office will get to Linux is by web apps. if MS truely makes the web versions of Word, Excel and PP browser friendly (and I mean Firefox) it will catch on with the Linux people. whoever says OOo is a MS Office competitor is either using Office 97 or has VERY low expectations from a productivity suite.

I think Office will be on Linux via Firefox, but will *nix users use Office? I don't know about that. It is a Microsoft product.

@kadarzsolt probably closer to $20 is more like it, X 100,000? While we dont have 100,000 users, we do have just over 3000. Of that probably 2800 use TS servers with Office installed on them. We are seriously looking at setting up a Sharepoint 2010 server (when it ships) and hosting Office 2010 web on that server just for those users. They will get to Exchange 2010 via OWA only. This would allow us in late 2010 (Enterprise agreement renew time) to significantly reduce our cost for Office. Maybe purchase 3-400 cals instead of 3k.

Why do people always talk about MS sales declining? It's normal with any product that sales will eventually decline due to the fact that replacement sales will never reach the same levels as when a product first comes on the market. Not everyone has the budget or the need to constantly upgrade whatever product they own. How many people regularly replace their home appliances if the ones they have continue to do the job well? Well the computer has become a home appliance and most people have no need to change what is working well and does everything they need it to do. So it is only natural that sales will level off with the occasional rise and fall. When something new and revolutionary comes along, everyone will run out and buy it. Until then, things will continue to go along at a normal pace which is slower than initial adoption of any product. For now, the market is relatively saturated and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. At least that's the way I look at it.

First, I agree with Mark KB. One lousy quarter does not make a trend. Besides October 22 is coming relatively soon. I think we'll see a nice uptick upon Windows 7's launch. A poll of XP users so that close to 50 percent are looking to switch. I think that should make huge difference in their bottom line. Now to the topic at hand. If I was Microsoft and I wanted to accomplish severals goals; a) expanding interoperability across the PC universe b) increase my revenue stream c) turning Linux from a threat and into a source of revenue. Then I would port as many Microsoft products as possible to Linux. Here is why. Six year ago, I had a good friend of mine was just as frustrated as many people with the expensive cost of Microsoft Office. So when the first version of Sun's Star Office appeared several years ago, he snatched up and made it his primary office suite. Now in 2009, working for professional stock trading company, he uses Microsoft Office and has not complained since. Why? Just for the same reasons that people identify with the iPod or the iPhone or Windows. Its part of the daily lexicon. It is by far the best suite for office productivity out there. OpenOffice.org runs like a dog because of its interdependency on Java. Just recently I had to install OpenOffice.org to someone who couldn't afford Office. But she did tell me she would definitely buy Office because the performance was dreadful. On Macs, it is definitely in the top 5 most purchased software on that platform. It is the standard to which all other office suites strive it to be. I'm sure when Office 2010 arrives for the Mac with Outlook, it will be a very top seller versus the choice of just keeping Apple's Entourage. Both Mac users and Windows users agree that Entourage is garbage and any improvement would blow it away. Hence Outlook with Office 2010 for the Mac will blow the sales through the roof. However, the idea I have for Microsoft is assimilation by proxy. Think of it as a consumers choice takeover of the Linux platform. Buy a cheap version of Windows Media Player, and get full access to DVD, MP3, and other codecs legally. Make it real cheap so folks wouldn't mind snatching it up. Of course you port over Office and make a version of Outlook for it so you have access to Exchange servers. As you observe the landscape of Linux and see where their free products fall short, Microsoft delivers a solution. Keep the price low and gradually raise the price as demand increases. While its not "free", if you have a competent enough product, people will buy it. So you might end up with a Linux user, but they could have quite a bit of MIcrosoft products on there and a brand new revenue stream. Assimilation via proxy. A gentle takeover of the Linux desktop. That would be my strategy.

The only reason Mac users use Entourage is because of Exchange. Today that ended for any Mac user that is moving to Snow Leopard and their Exchange server is 2007 or 2010. Outlook in the next version of Office for Mac is to little to late IMHO. Linux users would not pay a dime for Office. OpenOffice is not great nor is it even close to Office 2007, but its as good as Office 2003 any day of the week, and that is probably good enough for any linux user. Also for email, Evolution works with Exchange and is a pretty good email/calendar/contact manager, especially since its free. Its just not going to happen on the Linux desktop unless Linux takes some serious market share.

Give me break Paul. Firstly Nokias business phones are E-series, not N-series which mean luxury consumer. Secondly Nokia has huge amount of E-series phones that run in Symbian and only 1 N-series phone that runs Maemo. So most likely Office comes for Symbian and more precisly S60 and S80 platform not even S40. I guess whole article is based on Internet rumors mostly be american "journalists" who has no clue how Nokia works.

Longer version... Paul has 3 points: 1) Microsoft will never port Office to desktop Linux. Agreed 2) Microsoft and Nokia are porting Office Mobile to Symbian. Office Mobile is, of course, not the same as Office 3) Nokia says they're not moving away from Symbian. And thus Nokia is lying and is secretly moving all their phones an new OS and, for no apparent reason they're going to choose Linux? So, three points. One that says directly it's not happening, another that confuses two products and a third that relies on assuming the dominent player in phones is lying and is secretly planning a massive change in strategy and then speculating on how they're lying.

Heading there, no. Available to, yes. They do have an avenue to start bringing their bits to Linux...it's Silverlight/Moonlight. We'll have to see what Microsoft does with the next two releases of Silverlight and what becomes of Moonlight going forward. Currently, ML lags behind SL releases. With the Nokia deal, maybe we'll see some sort of fundamental change to SL/ML coordination.

too bad, i guess thurott has been using so much windows that he has been having memory loss issues and useless superiority issues. I used to like the blogs etc long long time back, now it is looking more like a microsoft marketing machine. I use windows since i am forced to .. and moreover i dont hate mac. I love linux too. Saying that expose has been taken from windows 7 is totally DUMB, have you ever used ubuntu ?? Have you ever used any other linux distribution ?? HAve you heard of Compiz ? Have you heard of Beryl ?? Expose was long long long time there ... for as long as i have been using ... So please dont spread wrong information. To be windows 7 is dumb, i still use it but i dont spread mis-information about how to convert from one to another, leave that to people. I would say publish how to convert from windows 7 to Linux, since thats what is required if things have to be levelled , and stop selling microsoft !!! Its enough and it gets too boring and superficial, most of your reviews are just cut and paste of what you are doing. Installing windows 7 and screens, how much of nuclear science is that ?