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Self-hosting paradox: Windows for specifically MS word (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

39 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey Home-labbers/ self hosters.

This weekend my 10 year old processing machine finally bit the dust (RIP 🗿 💀 ; old system76 laptop, won't even post, not the topic of this thread but if you've got ideas, I'm all ears), and as part of figuring out what happened and coming to the realization its time for a new machine. And as part of getting/ pricing a new machine (not looking forward to the consequences of the RAM-pocalypse), I've been reviewing/ thinking about the "structure" of what we as a household currently use our self-hosted/ home-labbed system for.

Myself and my partner are researchers, and as such, we regularly collaborate/ work together on manuscripts, and the reality is, we rely on windows because we're also collaborating with other authors who also rely on MS word to write in. Now I'm a 100% FOSS advocate, but this is a sticking point my partner has had, and I agree with them, at least in practice that realistically, we need a windows machine laying around specifically for this one, particular use case.

Now my thinking here is to use proxmox to spin up a windows machine as a VM, something we can remote into. Is there any best practice for something like this? How would this work with licensing? I personally haven't installed windows on something since like windows 7, and I know they've enshittified beyond recognition.

I personally don't want windows on my machines. But realistically, I recognize its necessity for this one particular use case. Thoughts?

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[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If the only thing you need is not even the whole Office suite but just a Word processor (and not even any particular version) and since you'll be remoting to it for the graphical access, you don't need to spin up a whole Windows VM for that. You can just spin up something with Wine and install the Word component from Office 2013 on that (I'd say Office 2013 at most; you might be able to get away with Office 2007 but I wouldn't recommend it).

[–] mrnobody@reddthat.com 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Better yet, Libre Office. Fully compatible with MS formats plus ODF (which Microsoft now supports too btw)

[–] sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, and this is coming to someone who is fully sold on LibreOffice and hosts Collabera, the two word processors can open each other's documents, but cannot produce identical outputs for the same files.

For 99.99% of things switching between the two is going to be just fine, but every once in awhile that 0.01% will really bite you, especially if it is something important such as equations which I have seen first hand don't properly migrate to LibreOffice.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I can understand the point that Word is needed for producing some borked, glitched, eldritch formatting that 99% of people expect as correct because Office is that much widespread and has trained people to be Wrong on the Internet; and in that case yeah I would still recommend running a(n older version of!) Office just so that you can process (and test) that you are producing what is expected in the exchange.

It's curious actually. While LO compatibility has improved, I don't think anything close to an umbrella "Imitate Word [$VERSION] Glitches" option has ever been added or even considered for LO? How about the other Word imitators? Can eg.: WPS or Calligra replicate Microslop idosyncracies? Because if so, running those would be better than running Office on a remote.