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I absolutely agree with CrossOver. I have tried it and found that its almost identical to PlayOnLinux, but costs money and doesn't support all versions of Wine.

You are on the right track with PlayOnLinux, but I wonder if anyone is able to get Office 2010 working in it?

Crossover uses very specific versions of Wine. They are the commercial entity behind Wine. Even the head dev works on Crossover. They are not the competitor. Like I said, they have wine versions that the open community does not have. But the code usually ends up merged into the main Wine build for the community. They dont need dev versions because they are the devs and using code that we dont usually get right off the bat.

I didnt realize that it needed an activation server. I was hoping that would work.

I do agree that wine/POL combo is very flexible. I bought CrossOver a while back. Ended up staying with POL, though.

But, then again, if CrossOver works. then maybe there is a specific version of wine that can handle the activation or even a patch that can be applied to a wine version to make it work.

I wonder if the activation server is one of Microsofts servers?

Back to the main problem:
I talked to our office-admin and this colleague said that under Windows there is a System-User called "Network Service". The "icacls"-statement mentioned in the ms-kb grants this user some rights.
I found out that icacls isn't implemented in wine but cacls which the colleague calls the antecessor of icacls. I tested cacls but it doesn't do anything. Even if I gave bogus parameter, it returned nothing.
My colleague said, these access-rights can be set in the registry, too. But he doesn't know where or how.

• Does wine support Windows access-rights?
• Does someone know how to grant them? Maybe with regedit?
• Do have different Office version have different activation methods?
  • What office version can be activated under wine?
    
  • Are there know successes in activation?

Yours
 Arne

Does wine support Windows access-rights?

No it doesn't.

Now I found the final answer hat winehq:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30033
The problem we are talking about is called MAK (MultipleActivationKey) method which doesn't work in wine.
I will get an account at winehq add a "me2" to tha bug. It looks a bit like a fault to save a unique feature to crossover. Don't like that.

Yours
Arne

Edited by dasarne

As expected, the bug wasn't fixed in Wine 1.6.

Yeah. Unfortuntately, its an MS problem, not a wine problem. Whats sad, is that sometimes you HAVE to use office. I literally have not had to use it (except for Outlook for works exchange server) for YEARS, as open-source solutions almost always fit the bill.

Me too! I used OpenOffice at home and then Libre Office.
I tried to get my work to use OpenOffice, but they were noticing discrepancies between XLS files when sharing.
I found that the XLS is not 100% compatible and recommend saving all XLS files as the native Libre Office file type.

This should fix the compatibility problems, but it will be hard to share outside the company with people who have Microsoft Office.

Yeah. Just another reason I dont use MS products if I can avoid it. lol

Ditto, it sucks for businesses who have been using it for years and already invested money in Office. They are kinda stuck with it like they are stuck with Windows.

Migrating would require way too much work for a company to worry about, so they rather keep spending money.

I will never use Microsoft Office at home. Ironically I use Google Docs more than Libre Office

Yeah. At this point, because of what I do for a living, I require no office programs at all, and usually just use TreePad for notes, and OWA for exchange/work email.

Migrating really wouldnt cost a dime in terms of hardware and software. Just need someone who knows what they are doing to convert them over, and at worse, use an older version of office, considering that 2010 is crap through wine.

Really, the main reason, is people are afraid of change. You show them a Gnome2 desktop, they ask where their applications are....... "Umm. Click Applications".... and they still cannot find it. Basically, its different so most of the general public will switch their "critical thinking" part of their brain down and play dumb.

My dad is almost 60, and I have him running Linux on multiple systems, including a custom built (by me. haha) linux XBMC box. He picked it up no problem, and he is no tech. haha.

If he can do it, there anyone can. Again, it just comes down to change, and people fear the word "free"... Thats why I just say "open-source" instead (yes. I am aware that not all OSS is FOSS).

Agreed, I'm going to slowly migrate my family over to Linux too.
My children are young, so it will be easy for them. Wife? That is another story...

I don't think people are too afraid to change because look at all of those Tablets and Phone out there. Everybody loves them!

To me they are little computers that do mostly what they were already doing on their laptops. If people are open to the new interfaces and apps on phones, Linux can't be such a handicap either

Well, ok I understand you don't like MS-office.
But: What does this has to do with this thread titled: "Unable to activate Office 2010 on POL" ?

We are explaining how there are other solutions than using Office 2010 in PlayOnLinux since it won't activate anyways.
Totally relevant.

It has a little to do with it, because 95% of what you can do in MS Office, you can do for free, without activation with open source software.

Changing wine version to 1.7.52 (x86) fixed it for me.

HowTo: PlayOnLinux -> click on "Microsoft Excel 2010" or another MS Office 2010 app -> Configure -> Set Wine version to 1.7.52 (x86/32bit)

I updated the Wine version used by the script, as requested; Does it work better?