Nimble, Excel-Compatible Spreadsheets for *nix? 50
linguae writes "I'm running a FreeBSD desktop on a PC that has a 475MHz K6-2 processor with 64MB RAM. I use lightweight programs on my desktop such as Window Maker, AbiWord, and Firefox. I have been looking for a decent yet lightweight (and preferably Open Source) spreadsheet that is compatible with Excel, and also doesn't rely on dependencies such as GNOME or Java. I'm not an Excel power user, but sometimes I do have to share spreadsheets every now and then. I wonder if there is a spreadsheet equivalent of Abiword?"
nimble spreadsheet (Score:5, Informative)
It's really quite nice...
I'm not sure if it still has any gnome dependencies or not.
But really
abiWord:word::gnumeric:excel
Re:nimble spreadsheet (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux From Scratch lists depends on its site, as well as build instructions: Gnumeric-1.2.10 [linuxfromscratch.org]
It seems to depend on a bit of Gnome-ish things. But having some Gnome stuff isn't a bad idea, and you don't _NEED_ all of Gnome for it to work.
Actually, Gnumeric *is* much better (Score:3, Informative)
But Gnumeric is a very good choice. Here is a detailed write up of Gnumeric. The Computational Statistics & Data Analysis Statistical Software Newsletter has a report reviewing Gnumeric vs MS-Excel titled Fixing Statistical Errors in Spreadsheet Software: The Cases of Gnumeric and Excel [csdassn.org] (Warning for PDF) Regardless, of which spreadsheet you use, it's worth a read. Some excerpts:
Re:Actually, Gnumeric *is* much better (Score:4, Informative)
On the contrary, I'd say Excel is by far the best product Microsoft makes, and it keeps getting better. The statistical problems are a legitimate criticism (and Gnumeric should be commended for doing a better job with them) but they mostly involve a few decimal places of accuracy in edge cases that matter to a vanishingly small number of users. The Excel developers haven't been rolling around in piles of money instead of fixing those algorithms -- they've been doing things like making references update seamlessly when a cell is moved, something none of the free spreadsheets comes close to doing.
Re:Actually, Gnumeric *is* much better (Score:2)
Re:Actually, Gnumeric *is* much better (Score:2)
Re:nimble spreadsheet (Score:2, Interesting)
Is that clear enough? I hope you understand.
Hey, you can always use moodss, the module object
Re:nimble spreadsheet (Score:2)
Isn't there an Apple II emulator on which you could use visicalc?
--mike
Re:nimble spreadsheet (Score:3, Funny)
Re:nimble spreadsheet (Score:3, Insightful)
The original Ask
There are lots of spreadsheets which grandma can use on linux just as easily as excel on windows, but not on a PC that has a 475MHz K6-2 processor with 64MB RAM (read the original question). Actually, quite a few spreadsheets will run on a PC that has a 475MHz K6-2 processor with 64MB RAM. Will windows XP? XP is not ready for grandma if she owns a PC that has a 475MHz K6-2 processor with 64MB RAM.
The specs
Re:nimble spreadsheet (Score:1)
a while ago I was stuck with an pentium 133 Mhz, and 32 MB ram machine.. i installed red hat 7.1 (.2?) with KDE (and gnome) and it even ran OpenOffice!
I even made it a multiboot with windows ME
It swapped alot, but it worked :-)
Re:nimble spreadsheet (Score:1)
case-sensitivity, remember
Gnumeric (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gnumeric (Score:2)
what you should have done is which will show _all_ dependencies.
dependencies (Score:2)
Re:Gnumeric (Score:2)
Well, that may be a bit over-zealous, as it lists things like bash and pam... Let's stick "tree" in there to organizes it a bit better, and clear out the use flage to reduce the number of optional packages (the lameness filter won't let me include all of the whitespace - argh!):
xxx@xxx xxx $ USE='-' emerge -pe --tree gnumeric | cut -c 17-
app-office/gnumeric-1.2.13
dev-python/pygtk-2.2.0
x11-libs/gtkglarea-1.99.0
dev-python/pyopengl-2.0.0.44
media-libs/glut-3.7.1
x11-themes/gnome-themes-2.8.0
x
Re:off topic, about your sig (Score:3, Funny)
Re:off topic, about your sig (Score:1)
If that's not sarcasm, then you're not cautious, you're gullible.
Gnumeric's dependencies (Score:2)
The dependency that sticks in my mind while I was trying to keep Gnumeric up to date on SuSE is "libgsf", but that might be because that's where the trouble always started. I probably would have had more problems if I'd managed to resolve that. Is there some way to make st
OpenOffice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox lightweight? (Score:4, Interesting)
Firefox is far from lightweight. It's a great program and all, but lightweight is the last word I'd use. Granted I don't use Windows, so maybe it's relative. I would say that Firefox is the single biggest resource sucking app I run on a regular basis. Not to mention it seems to have some sort of memory leak that makes me eventually have to close it (or it crashes).
Re:Firefox lightweight? (Score:2)
Opera 7.54 (shared) with 4 tabs open is using 82 Megs of RAM.
FireFox 1.0-2 (Fedora Core 3) with the same 4 tabs open is using 123 Megs of RAM.
Re:Firefox lightweight? (Score:4, Insightful)
Turn down the memory cache. Follow the steps at the link above and then fully restart firefox. It will make a huge difference.
Their are a lot of config hacks at that link that will let you do a lot on really neat stuff.
Re:Firefox lightweight? (Score:2)
i know i am OT. sorry, dont mean to hijack the thread..
Re:Firefox lightweight? (Score:1)
A fair few actually... (Score:5, Informative)
An amazing tool google
OTOH Gnumeric and / or OOo would be a good place to start. OOo xls compatibility is very good in my experience. Havent used Gnumeric for a while last time (several yrs ago) its xls compatibility was a tad ropey - Im sure its improved by now though!
Nick
Re:A fair few actually... (Score:2)
I used it a while ago and found it fine for my purposes. Later I noticed an announcement by the lead programmer that it was now a feature complete Excel clone.
Sure, it uses the Gnome libs, but you don't need to be actually running Gnome to use it.
Re:A fair few actually... (Score:2)
That all depends on your definition(and the original poster's) of "compatibility". To open and view spreadsheets that were saved in Excel, yes, it is generally "compatible". If you are used to using Excel though, with formulas and calculations, they are all diff
OpenOffice? (Score:2)
I've been happy using it for several months. If you're not involved in extremely complex spreadsheets it should work fine.
Re:OpenOffice? (Score:1)
sc -- for super lightweight... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:sc -- for super lightweight... (Score:2)
sc takes a bit of getting used to, but it's incredibly small and startlingly powerful. I don't believe it's programmable, but it's got a batch mode so that it's trivial to call it from shell scripts and the like. It's definitely spreadsheeting done The Unix Way. I used it years ago to calculate X modelines, and it was great. (I could use it when X wouldn't start!)
OTOH, it's not entirely user friendly to someone who isn't used to vi-like keybindings.
Have you looked at an old program called Cliq? (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't know if its still available, used to be about 30 bucks US a seat. Had a nice spreadsheet program (which was probably the best part of the suite). Maybe they have an X version now, I haven't look at Cliq in about 3 years. URL for Cliq:
http://www.dr-quad.com/products.htm
HTH
OO and Spreadsheet::ParseExcel (mostly OT) (Score:3, Insightful)
I find that some cells return the content type rather than the content when retrieving $cell->Value
(e.g., "GENERAL" rather than "foo", which is the cell contents).
If I use a spreadsheet saved from Excel it works; if I read it into OO, and save it out, I experience the problem.
This is under Perl 5.8.1mumble on Mac OS X.
Re:OO and Spreadsheet::ParseExcel (mostly OT) (Score:2)
-Leigh
Re:OO and Spreadsheet::ParseExcel (mostly OT) (Score:2)
I just came across it yesterday, and haven't had a chance to do a rigorous test to prove that it's not something stupid I'm doing in my code.
I was actually hoping that Wisdom of Slashdot would descend upon me, and someone would say "you *did* remember to [whatever I'm forgetting], didn't you?" so I could just say "doh!" and get my code to work. I'll be digging deeper in the next couple of days, and will be able to report back then.
Re:OO and Spreadsheet::ParseExcel (mostly OT) (Score:2)
After further testing, well, it is in fact just me.
As pointed out by "Mr. Perl Foo," the more general approach of looking at $cell->{Val} will work correctly for either.
My humble apologies to both the OO Team and the author of ParseExcel for casting unwarranted aspersions.
GNOME Depends are optional in next release (Score:5, Informative)
Use Open Office 2.0 snapshots (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are a hacker, Open Office also has language bindings to Java, Python, C++, JavaScript and many others so you can build some powerful applications and do things that is possible in Excel but the code would be very obfuscated and unreadable as is expected with M$ objects and VB API's.
I am a power user of spreadsheets being a heavy user of Lotus 123 back in the early 90's and was switched to excel 5.0 back in 94 I think.
OOO 2.0 looks extremely promissing and aparently they are putting in alot of performance improvements as well.
Just remember, these 2.0 snapshots are intended for developers and you may get crashes (Although since about 1.9.4n I have not had many at all).
JsD
DOSEmu (Score:3, Interesting)
Well if you can drop the excel compatable part :) (Score:2)
You can download it from Dan Bricklins website and run it under dosemu. It run under WindowsXP on my system. As far as light goes it is only 27k!
Get more RAM - it's plenty of CPU (Score:2)
But seriously, have you thought about getting a bit more RAM? SuSE7.3 w/ KDE and Calc from OOo PR1 runs cleanly - SURPRISINGLY well - on a PPro 200 with 128 MB of RAM. Starting applications, including those, is slow. Of course, it is also running softRAID on 5400rpm drives - in PIO, not DMA - and being a SAMBA & netatalk file server, among other things. Since you said you're from BSD - SuSE is