Re: Also: MS Office For Linux (kernel)
Why not? They produce office for the other single-digit desktop platform as well. So porting to Ubuntu, Suse, RedHat, Mint, RedStar... should not be a technical problem.
No, I'm sure there's no technical problem at all. It'll be what Microsoft euphemistically refer to as "a political problem" - meaning monopolist strategy. That "other single-digit desktop platform" will never offer real competition. A tightly controlled walled garden running exclusively on outdated but overpriced novelty hardware from a single vendor. Hardly a realistic alternative to the cut-throat PC channel - for the myriad corporate minions - is it? Shiny gratification for a handful of bourgeois upper management types maybe but a mass-deployed tool for the plebs to type on? Hardly!
Office for Linux on the other hand... that's a totally different kettle of fish. Contemporary Linux systems run comfortably on whatever decade old commodity hardware happens to be lying around. For example, I just happen to be typing this on an old single core PentiumM laptop sporting 1.5GB RAM and the infamous Intel 855GM graphics abomination. It's running a very recently released (2013) derivative of Debian's forthcoming Wheezy (Crunchbang-Waldorf) which I've been fairly savagely torture-testing. The OS is running from an .ISO file (it's not even "installed" anywhere)!... on an 8GB USB stick!... There's no HDD fitted and no other storage.
Some handy system stats from Conky:
Uptime:______ 20d 14h 45m
Ram:________ 864MiB/1.2GB
Swap usage:__ 1.26GB/4GB
Disk usage:___ 493MiB/616MiB
CPU usage:___ 4%
The "swap" is a partition on the stick and the "disk" is the .ISO(USB)/fusion(RAM) filesystem in case you're wondering.
Clicking to close this Firefox window, I'm warned "You are about to close 174 tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?" I also have an Iceweasel window running. Only 86 open tabs in that though. I've also had three fairly large PDFs lying open for a week or two, along with a text editor with half a dozen tabs, four file browser windows, fifteen "mid res" (2288x1712) JPEGs from the missus, a handful of system tools and three terminal windows (all resting ATM) strewn across three virtual desktops. None too shabby an assortment of clutter I feel. System is as nippy and pleasant to operate as the moment I booted it. I've been expecting the kernel to run out of base RAM at some point - this is a pre-PAE pentium - but 20.5 days in I'm starting to think I'll crack before the it does. If you haven't noticed, I'm quite impressed - but not surprised. So...
Office for Linux? No. Methinks not. The moment Microsoft released it Linux would eat Microsoft's lunch. Office is the Windows lock-in - without that why wouldn't any firm immediately roll out craploads of cloned Debian, Cent OS or RedHat stations for the Office drones? The brass would have their shiny Macs, the drones would have solid, stable, almost timeless systems to work at and everyone but Microsoft would be laughing all the way to the bank. Slowly migrate those odd specialist apps for the technical types, beancounters and whatnot and what's Microsoft left? MS Office. If I was Balmer, that prospect would not be something I'd want to facilitate.