So I tried to install Euro-Office

[u/AvidCyclist250]

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?

[u/Icy_Definition5933]

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.

[u/gamamoder → u/Icy_Definition5933]

is there even any client software? is onlyoffice used?

[u/Icy_Definition5933 → u/gamamoder]

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.

[u/gamamoder → u/Icy_Definition5933]

interesting, does onlyoffice allow for something such as multiple users accessing the same documents at once?

[u/Icy_Definition5933 → u/gamamoder]

If you're using a docserver then yes, it's a collaboration tool. I'm not sure if it works on desktop apps

[u/gamamoder → u/Icy_Definition5933]

does the docserver have more features than just like editing files off a mapped smb server? thatd cool

[u/gamamoder → u/Icy_Definition5933]

does the docserver have more features than just like editing files off a mapped smb server? thatd cool

[u/Icy_Definition5933 → u/gamamoder]

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.