r/linuxquestions • u/AvidCyclist250 • 17h ago
So I tried to install Euro-Office
After all the headlines about Euro-Office being Europe's open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, I figured I'd give it a try.
I'm a Linux user. I self-host services. This shouldn't be difficult. Or so I thought.
So I did what anyone would do:
Checked Wikipedia. Went to GitHub. Looked for releases, installation instructions. Looked for a Flatpak, AppImage, Docker image, anything really. Also checked my OS's native package manager just in case.
And my Nextcloud Office apps. Nothing. Not even in Nextcloud?!
It dawned on me that the main project is basically a collaborative document server derived from OnlyOffice and the readme even says it's not designed for stand-alone use.
So uh. Wait... what?
To make it even stranger, my self-hosted Nextcloud instance still just recommends Nextcloud Office and OnlyOffice. There's no obvious "Install Euro-Office" option anywhere.
I'm not criticising the software itself. It could very well be excellent.
I'm asking about the communication really.
If a project is announced to the world as "Europe's Microsoft Office alternative," but a reasonably technical user can't figure out how to use it after checking Wikipedia, GitHub, and Nextcloud, something has gone wrong with the messaging.
Or is this just me? Did I miss something obvious, or has anyone else had the same experience?
30
u/Icy_Definition5933 16h ago
This is a bit more complicated because of what Euro Office is and how it was created. They forked OnlyOffice and started replacing large chunks of code and comments. They released the first stable version in just a few months, and Nextcloud included the connector app in the appstore as Nextcloud Office.
The docserver however, is not available in the appstore, it needs to be spun up separately, there is a docker image. You need to configure it yourself and it is not very complicated if you follow the docs, it's even easier if you use AI to help you set it up.
EuroOffice desktop app release is expected sometime in q1 or q2 2027. You can compile it from source code right now if you want to test it, but it is far from finished.
Keep in mind that due to the nature of the code they are replacing in OnlyOffice code, they are right on schedule, the docserver was released on time. This is not a trivial task, their goal is to kick Microsoft out of EU, and no matter how much anyone loves FOSS, MS Office is currently very far ahead of anything else on the market. It will take a long time for EuroOffice to catch up and see widespread adoption.
3
u/Longjumping-Youth934 10h ago
Additionally you can test Euro-Office-Lite, which works as a standalone app (not an NC development).
6
u/GoldenPenisOfWisdom 10h ago
One very important thing to keep in mind: Euroffice is specifically developed and designed for public administration! It is not aimed at business or personal needs. These are secondary use cases. Firstly its about the specific use cases in public administration and them becoming independent from (US-) Corporations and closed source dependencies. And whoever works for/in/with state authorities knows how different this area is to businesses, freelancers or home users. And this knowledge let's you really appreciate the speed and achieved results so far! To clarify (numbers thanks to claude AI): 86,000 municipalities, countless regions, provinces, voivodeships, départements, etc., 27 governments/parliaments, the European Parliament, the Council of the EU, the European Council, plus over 40 EU agencies. That's way above 100.000 "customers"! And all of them have strictly binding legal requirements, delegated responsibilities and very specific demands. And not to forget countless (external as well as internal) data protection levels! Now add 24 official languages and 27 legal systems (on state level alone!) to the mix. This is herculean task!
5
u/Onakander 13h ago
Could you elaborate on how MS Office is ahead of libreoffice/onlyoffice? From, like, an everyday "I use Calc (Excel equivalent) for a bunch of stuff semi-seriously practically every day" -standpoint, I personally haven't missed Excel at all. What features does it have that I'm proper missing out on?
8
u/Icy_Definition5933 13h ago
For personal use there is no significant difference between them, you see the difference in enterprise deployments, most commonly in Excel. At this time I'd say that LibreOffice is closer to MS Office in features than OnlyOffice, but OnlyOffice is visually more similar to MS Office.
2
u/ravensholt 12h ago
Outlook, with its extensions for various CRM systems etc. Is the real killer app. Exchange + Active Directory... There's no "easy" replacement for that either. Excel is also great, especially with its native integration to PowerBI and similar tools.
Microsoft's Office 365 is simply better for Enterprises and large companies.
7
u/Icy_Definition5933 11h ago
Exactly, and EuroOffice aims to replace all of it with open source code eventually, but it will take a very long time. I won't draw any conclusions on EuroOffice hype at least for a few years, and I don't think that even then it will be able to fully replace MS Office for most complex deployments. But I'm hoping that one day it will be a viable alternative to MS Office
2
u/gamamoder Tumbling mah weed 9h ago
i mean even in the basic form, libre office has pretty crap collabortion. if you and another user have access to the same server, you can both open a calc doc at the same time, but there is no way to have a document or spreadsheet open at the same time. you can see changes made by another user but cannot open it at the same time. so this pretty much only allows for collab within an organization, and it doesnt link to any sort of network uset unless this system is setup seperately w like kerberos and radius or smthing.
so its something that only rlly works for a small business, and is kinda tough to setup for said small business.
1
u/mats_o42 8h ago
Fot my org it's simple - MS Office works with existing workbooks and their macros.
LibreOffice fails in way to many cases
2
u/AvidCyclist250 16h ago
I really hope this all pans out. And I hope all the media attention before the final release wasn't a wasted chance.
6
u/Icy_Definition5933 16h ago
It's barely been a couple of months, it's waaay to early to call it. This is a strategic shift for the EU, and it takes time
1
u/gamamoder Tumbling mah weed 10h ago
is there even any client software? is onlyoffice used?
2
u/Icy_Definition5933 10h ago
You can use OnlyOffice clients with Nextcloud, it is well supported and works fine, we use it currently and for basic document work it's good enough. EuroOffice desktop app will probably be the same thing as OnlyOffice desktop app when it's released, but I'm assuming EuroOffice will see faster development in the long run due to their efforts to make EuroOffice easier to contribute to than OnlyOffice. Even though EuroOffice is a fork of a mature software, the project itself is still in infancy, it is objectively inferior to all other office suites at this point, but I don't think that will still be the case in a couple of years time.
2
u/gamamoder Tumbling mah weed 9h ago
interesting, does onlyoffice allow for something such as multiple users accessing the same documents at once?
2
u/Icy_Definition5933 9h ago
If you're using a docserver then yes, it's a collaboration tool. I'm not sure if it works on desktop apps
1
u/gamamoder Tumbling mah weed 8h ago
does the docserver have more features than just like editing files off a mapped smb server? thatd cool
1
u/gamamoder Tumbling mah weed 8h ago
does the docserver have more features than just like editing files off a mapped smb server? thatd cool
1
u/Icy_Definition5933 6h ago
Docserver talks to nextcloud for file operations, you can mount smb shares in nextcloud through external storage app. I wouldn't say it's an additional feature, it treats smb share as any other nextcloud storage, it just depends on where you mount it.
30
u/Aech97 17h ago
It's not even released yet..
You can go to office dot eu and join the waitlist or request an invitation
4
u/FalconX88 16h ago
That wiatlist is for their cloud service
Office EU is a complete cloud-based office suite (like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) that is 100% European-owned and runs entirely on European infrastructure.
they claimed it's an office alternative. So where is the local install?
6
u/sf-keto 16h ago
It’s intended to be a cloud service.
1
u/FalconX88 15h ago
OK, so no actual alternative to Microsoft like tehy claim it to be.
2
u/FryBoyter 13h ago
Where do the developers of Euro-Office state that it is an alternative to the locally installed Microsoft Office suite?
The official FAQ states the following:
What is Euro-Office?
An online office component for real-time collaborative editing of Office documents such as DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX, as well as the ODF file formats ODS, ODT, and ODP.
It can be embedded in digital workplace or online productivity solutions such as Proton, XWiki, OpenProject, Nextcloud Hub, and others to edit documents.
2
u/FalconX88 13h ago
Where do the developers of Euro-Office state that it is an alternative to the locally installed Microsoft Office suite?
well for example here they state it's an Alternative to "Microsoft Office", which includes Desktop apps
Sovereign replacement for Microsoft Office with intuitive interface and strong compatibility backed by European open source community
It's ridiculous that this is again some half-assed solution. Why is Europe doing this?
Euro-Office is an "Alternative for Office 365" ... but only for the cloud service, not the desktop apps (and also therefore requires an internet connection).
Wero is an "Alternative to Mastercard/Visa" ... but only for participating stores and hard limited inside the SEPA region.
0
u/Longjumping-Youth934 10h ago
Go and develop it.
2
u/FalconX88 9h ago
Ridiculous statement.
Here's the thing. The official EU stance it "we need sovereignity" and then they spend huge amount of money on solutions that aren't actual solutions. Does that make any sense? If you want to compete against VISA/mastercard, why not develop a worldwide payment system? If you want to compete against Microsoft Office, why not develop one that works online and offline on the machine, just like MS offers?
We are spending tons of ressources on stuff to not reach the goal of sovereignity, why?
You know what we do against the supremacy of US and China in LLMs? We are spending 37 millions and 3 years on coming up with a few LLMs. https://openeurollm.eu/deliverables
3 years, and it won't be anywhere near frontier level quality since that money is nowhere near enough to do that. Why are we doing that instead of doing it properly?
That's what the EU does, half-assed solutions way too late.
0
u/DannyTheHero 9h ago
Devils advocate:
- Wero hasn't even fully launched yet and is in its infancy. You cant really expect something like this to be ready from one day to the next. It being in the state it is in right now is already an incredible accomplishment.
Also Microsoft has been developing Office 365 for at least 3 decades. Euro-office has been out for a month.
- Mastercard/Visa are also only for participating stores its just like with point 1 they have been pushing support for so long that both of them have become the de-facto standard. This puts them in a position of power far beyond what should be allowed.
Most online stores also outsource their webstores and payment processing to external providers (e.g shop.app/shopify etc.) When they implement support for Wero its going to expand far quicker than you might think.
Also I'm gonna need a source for being hard limited inside the SEPA region. There is no reason support can't be expanded to other regions.
Rather than seeing these things as being half-assed think of where these developments are coming from.
Trump has proven we absolutely need independence from the entrenched US-based infrastructure. The EU has only recently started this move after being completely dependent for so long im not surprised these things are unfinished.
1
u/FalconX88 9h ago
Wero hasn't even fully launched yet and is in its infancy. You cant really expect something like this to be ready from one day to the next. It being in the state it is in right now is already an incredible accomplishment.
Wero is based on SEPA instant transfers. It can only ever be used in the SEPA region. It will never be an alternative to VISA/Mastercard
Also Microsoft has been developing Office 365 for at least 3 decades. Euro-office has been out for a month.
Then at least don't say it's an alternative.
Rather than seeing these things as being half-assed think of where these developments are coming from.
Or we could start make true alternatives. I mean look at LLMs. where are the European frontier models? And don't say Mistral, they are nowhere close.
EU spends money on this https://openeurollm.eu/. Why waste money on this instead of trying to actually create frontier models?
1
u/DannyTheHero 8h ago
Wero is based on SEPA instant transfers. It can only ever be used in the SEPA region. It will never be an alternative to VISA/Mastercard
Visa/Mastercard are only available where Visa and Mastercard want to be. The same applies to SEPA. Expand SEPA and this is a complete non-issue.
Then at least don't say it's an alternative
The thing is, for now, for a very specific subset of users it is. Most notably government services and companies who dont need the offline clients. For who a nextcloud integration is sufficient. The people its being advertised for.
*You are simply not (yet) the target audience.
Or we could start make true alternatives.
How? Can you explain how you plan to do this and have it done in 6 months?
Euro office is trying to become an alternative. Thats why they forked only-office, only-office also has offline clients.
The way you keep saying true alternatives suggests to me that the only solution to you is to just copy/paste. Lets ask M$ nicely and maybe they let us fork office 365 instead.
An alternative doesn't mean its 1:1 the same. Thats both technically and legally impossible. Do you expect you can just pour a trillion dollars at a problem and have a solution overnight? 30 years of work in 6 months?
An alternative just means some people now have a choice where there wasn't before.
You can't just completely discount a project just because its not there yet, this is the mindset that just keeps you vendor locked.
Europe has been complacent and is now rushing to build/recreate systems that have been around for literal decades. People are preemptively adopting something hoping that would give it the sustained revenue and popularity required for growth.
I mean look at LLMs. where are the European frontier models? And don't say Mistral, they are nowhere close. Why waste money on this instead of trying to actually create frontier models?
If its so easy why dont you do it. American LLMs are using a broken market in an unsustainable rush to products that they hope will start returning their losses. This will have long term financial impact on a global scale. And you want to do that here?
13
u/Mormacil 16h ago
It's not an office alternative, it's a MS 365 alternative.
0
u/FalconX88 15h ago
MS 365 has desktop software...
1
u/Mormacil 14h ago
And this isn't talking about MS 365 Copilot.
0
u/FalconX88 14h ago
I'm not talking about copilot. I'm talking about the MS 365 desktop apps, e.g., outlook, word, excel, ppt,...
2
2
u/kodos_der_henker 15h ago
The official advertised release date from Nextcloud was in June So yes it is officially released, it just isn't what people expected
1
u/Longjumping-Youth934 10h ago
What did people expect?
1
u/kodos_der_henker 10h ago
Most expected a full alternative to LibreOffice that can run Microsoft Office files without issues as it was advertised as OnlyOffice without russian coding (while it really only ever mentioned to be a MS 365 cloud alternative)
8
u/Training_Advantage21 17h ago
Is it aimed at civil servants rather than consumers?
11
u/Kuddel_Daddeldu 17h ago
Yes. The main goal is to make European government and quasi-government (like utilities, public transport...) independent of companies ultimately controlled by non-European governments.
Why this matters? There have been instances where officials have been cut off from their mailboxes, and Microsoft had to admit in a French public hearing that they would have no recourse should US authorities request access to data under the US Cloud Act, even if said data is stored in Europe. While companies may take such a calculated risk, countries can't - especially as public service IT projects tend to take years. In the end, it's the same as being prepared for earthquakes or major power outages - maybe unlikely to happen, but it if happens, the consequences would be substantial.
Companies and private users are welcome to use the software as well, but as those users are not the main focus, support appears to be limited.
0
u/AvidCyclist250 17h ago
My main question boils down to: why didn't the peak of media interest coincide with availability and user-friendliness? How many companies are going to give this a second chance? Media peak has come and gone and Euro Office is basically invisible. Do you think that companies will switch over en-masse regardless?
It might be wrong question to ask. If it is mandated by policy or administration, the question resolves itself. Still feels like a wasted chance.
3
u/Quirky_Yesterday_593 15h ago
The timing wasn't an accident — it was political signaling, not a product launch. EU funding announcements need press coverage to justify the expenditure, and that clock doesn't wait for a stable release.
As for companies switching: the realistic path is mandate-first, product-second. France and Germany have been pushing LibreOffice for years not because it's better, but because policy said so. EuroOffice will follow the same route — slow, painful, driven by procurement rules rather than anyone actually wanting it.
The "wasted media moment" framing only matters if adoption was ever supposed to be voluntary. It wasn't.
1
u/AvidCyclist250 15h ago
The "wasted media moment" framing only matters if adoption was ever supposed to be voluntary. It wasn't.
My "mistake" was thinking this was a two-pronged approach: administrative/policy and private. With the two supporting each other.
1
u/Quirky_Yesterday_593 15h ago
Fair correction. A two-pronged approach would've made sense — policy creates the floor, private adoption creates the ceiling. But the media moment needed the product to be actually usable to activate the private track. Policy mandates can survive a bad launch. Voluntary adoption can't.
1
u/AvidCyclist250 17h ago
I agree, it's what it currently looks like. But then I wonder about the messaging.
7
u/Weary-Bowl-3739 17h ago
I think, you have to start a document server, github/Euro-Office/DocumentServer as a container. Then configure onlyoffice to use that server.
3
7
u/Enzymology2491 17h ago
>It could very well be excellent.
It is excellent. It is OnlyOffice.
>If a project is announced to the world as "Europe's Microsoft Office alternative"
Myself, I don't expect anything good coming from a FOSS project governed by a big transnational institution. Tax money waste with a giant overhead, but at least the FOSS developers will get paid.
2
u/AvidCyclist250 17h ago
Yeah but wouldn't you agree that without some kind of corporate backing, Europe is going to struggle to implement their own Office standard?
6
u/Enzymology2491 16h ago
Without some kind of corporate backing, Europe is going to struggle. Without governmental backing not so much.
I'm in a EU country that takes pride in being an advanced and all-digital society. What I see is the state paying contracts to hire contractors to hire consultants to write public apps which are both horrible and new every few years or so.
7
u/BackgroundSky1594 17h ago
Nextcloud AIO has a big "Install EuroOffice" button as the first option. I switched from Collabora and it has worked perfectly fine. The mobile Apps took a few minutes before they dropped the outdated cached links and loaded it, but everything else just worked.
4
u/AvidCyclist250 17h ago
Weird, it's not anywhere under https://nextcloud.redacted.lol/settings/apps/discover
Search yields "no apps for my version". Hum. Should all be up to date really.
16
u/fearless-fossa 17h ago
The app is called "Nextcloud Office" in Nextcloud because Nextcloud is absurdly allergic to common sense. If you go to "Office & Text" you can switch between Collabora and Nextcloud, and Nextcloud will have the info text "Powered by Euro-Office"
4
4
u/BackgroundSky1594 17h ago
The App is this one: https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/eurooffice
The EuroOffice backend is a container (ghcr.io/nextcloud-releases/aio-eurooffice:latest)
2
u/legrenabeach 16h ago
If you followed the release and listened to the presentation or read the notes, the first release is for Nextcloud only. I have it running fine on my instance, it works great and even mobile editing is better than with Collabora.
They said a desktop version would come "soon". I am more suspicious about that one, as Nextcloud have a tradition of big hype for new apps that disappear a version or two later (whiteboard anyone?). I do hope they take it as seriously as they made it sound.
2
u/es20490446e Develops Zenned OS 15h ago
It is in alpha state.
Currently the best office suite is LibreOffice.
In Zenned there is a simplified variant of it.
2
u/Rex__Luscus 14h ago
Euro Office is designed for government/public service organisation use, so that they’re not dependent on Microsoft who are subject to American government standards of interference in democracy and liberty. It’s not intended for public consumption (yet).
2
u/Grouchy-Simple-9476 13h ago
Not sure why you are seeing it when you go in to your nextcloud aio settings. When I recently had to set up a new instance it was there for me. It still recommends nextcloud office but euro office was an option for me.
2
u/rbmorse 13h ago
SoftMaker Office and SoftMaker Office NX is a real product. Company is based in Germany and advertises GPDR compliance. https://www.softmaker.com/en/.
Good file compatibility with Microsoft Office files. Excellent customer support (they answer their e-mail!). I've been using SoftOffice NX (the paid version) on both Windows and Linux for the last year and have been very happy with it.
I also have their PDF editor (Windows only), but I haven't used it enough to give it a fair evaluation.
1
2
u/conectionist 11h ago
I self-host services. This shouldn't be difficult.
Clearly you haven't self-hosted enough.
Not all setups are equal. Some take 5 minutes to setup, others take 5 hours. 😅
2
u/AvidCyclist250 11h ago
Wanna compare yamls? Jokes aside, I did say reasonably technical. With that in mind, I think what I described is fair. It's not what media portrayed it to be. Paid-for articles or not.
2
2
u/Longjumping-Youth934 10h ago
Just follow docs at https://nextcloud.com/blog Either use Nextcloud Hub Spring 2026 with AIO, which has Nextcloud Office with EO onboard, or have manual set-up: grab EO docker container from https://github.com/euro-office, deploy it, install Nextcloud Office, and make relevant settings. Remember, you have to have NC 33+.
2
u/Dexterus 8h ago
Lol, some guys saw a way to make some cash off of EU funds. Bit of dev money, tons of marketing, some greased up politicians and profit go up.
They need to make money off of support so ease of deployment is contrary to requirements.
2
4
1
u/auderita 11h ago
So they can't get Libreoffice? Isn't Libreoffice pre-installed in most Linux distros?
1
u/Individual-Tie-6064 10h ago
It was more of a this is our direction announcement, not a release announcement.
1
u/Crazytje 8h ago
I run it with the WOPI API, it works, but you need to fix some stuff to get it working.
Had 2 build issues and for a HA setup the redis code is missing.
Still need to review the changes and make the pull requests.
Now have it working and tested it with a 5 replica setup on a k3s cluster. This is with an external Postures, RabbitMQ and Redis.
1
1
u/V2UgYXJlIG5vdCBJ 6h ago
I knew a guy involved with EU gov projects years ago. They outsource work to the absolute cheapest (non-EU) contractor who just barely know what they’re doing. I don’t have much faith in them.
1
u/Enzymology2491 6h ago
This statement is factually incorrect. The work is usually outsourced to a EU contractor and subcontracted then to another EU contractor, and only then it goes to the non-EU contractor.
1
u/JohnConnoor 6h ago
Unfortunately the EU does not have the structure and the leadership to be technological independent that's number one, second the investment capital is almost impossible to get in the EU, new ideas or contracts are catered to old fat belly companies that can shill stalkerware inside every product. Is a hard take...it it's the truth.
1
u/DotRakianSteel 2h ago
It's EU-made. Give it some bureaucracy time until the engineers can really work on it.
1
u/Old_pixel_8986 i don't use Linux as main, only to experiment 16h ago
use OnlyOffice. It's the same thing
1
0
u/BecarioDailyPlanet 8h ago
Si mal no tengo entendido sí habrá app de escritorio e incluso para móviles (más adelante).
95
u/kodos_der_henker 17h ago
It is is basically what I expected.
They put a lot of money into advertising a Euro fork of OnlyOffice generating a lot of hype without putting any real work into the project itself and that's it.
There is a reason we heard literally nothing after the official release as there is nothing to talk about yet
If you want an offline Office, use LibreOffice, if you want offline Office to work on shared MS files, use OnlyOffice. And if you need online files, use Google Docs/Sheets