Linux in Excel

186•radeeyate•9mo ago

Comments

nailer•9mo ago

I just posted the ‘doom on a lightning adapter’ story, and saw this in submissions. I’ll have to tip my hat to the better bizarre ‘X on Y’ post. You win this time, radeeyate.

dheatov•9mo ago

I support you to one up them with `Lightning adapter on Excel`

userbinator•9mo ago

Unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to run WINE in it, and thus another Excel inside that.

notpushkin•9mo ago

Can it run Lotus 1-2-3, though? https://github.com/taviso/123elf

anthk•9mo ago

qemu-i386->export X with serial->SLIP->TCPIP->wine with X exported->Excel

Dog slow, but Turing complete.

necovek•9mo ago

It runs on neither MacOS nor Excel cloud though, as it depends on a Windows DLL.

yjftsjthsd-h•9mo ago

Wouldn't help with cloud of course, but there's WINE for macOS, isn't there? Or does that version of Excel not allow loading binary libraries such that you could hand it a DLL if WINE translated it?

nxobject•9mo ago

mini-rv32ima is incredibly compact -- I imagine a translation to VBA might not be too hard.

pjmlp•9mo ago

Microsoft 365 is the reason why the new add-in model is focused on Web technologies, and mostly deprecated going forward for new forward.

jeroenhd•9mo ago

On the other hand, if you can get it to work in the new O365 architecture using whatever JS API they're exposing now, you can call it "cloud-based" or maybe even "serverless".

p_ing•9mo ago

It's focused on web tech as COM add-ins are a huge source of security and instability in Office apps. It's also more flexible for developers as they can modify the backend without having to update the client and the deployment model is significantly easier for admins.

pjmlp•9mo ago

The .NET ones are also going away.

Regarding COM, it wouldn't be that bad when using COM Servers.

However I do agree that although COM as idea is enticing, Microsoft keeps failing to deliver a productive way to use it, despite how much they keep focusing on it for Windows extensibility and API delivery since Vista.

Vilian•9mo ago

they don't care more about API the same way the cared in Vista days https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...

pjmlp•9mo ago

Indeed, nowadays I feel myself a fool for having advocated for WinRT, it was one of the reasons why I returned back to Web and distributed systems, after spending four years back in Windows GUI development land.

And my advice now is for .NET devs, stay with Windows Forms or WPF, depending on which approach they favour.

For C++, I suggest the aging MFC if it has to be on the Visual Studio (still better out of the box experience than WinUI 3.0 for C++, and C++/WinRT is in maintenance anyway), but really Qt or C++ Builder are much better option.

tinktank•9mo ago

This is the insanity that I miss.

bagatelle•9mo ago

I don't know that I miss it, it's still around if you look for it. Even here, I find several posts a month doing something this insane and fun, let alone finding out about my friends' personal projects.

unixhero•9mo ago

How can you miss it, when it is right here

AdieuToLogic•9mo ago

They didn't press F9?

tinktank•9mo ago

I ended up in HW design

65•9mo ago

I think the guy who made Doom in only Typescript types is a testament to the fact people are still doing insane things with their computers.

redbell•9mo ago

For the curious, here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43184291

sargstuff•9mo ago

Preference for NP over P?

dmitrygr•9mo ago

“ The emulator is built as a seperate dll which is loaded by the VBA macro. The VBA macro calls the emulator in the dll and gets the output and writes it into the cells in the spreadsheet. ”

Not really in excel. Excel is just the console. Emulator is a native DLL

jayd16•9mo ago

Excshell

ChocolateGod•9mo ago

Execell

zipping1549•9mo ago

Still funny

AshamedCaptain•9mo ago

By the same logic I can also put a crappy emulator in a dll and make notepad load it via a hook. Linux on notepad.exe. should I make that into a HN post too?

Now that I mention it, I think someone already posted that on HN...

anthk•9mo ago

Ditto with a ZMachine being called from a VIM plugin...

A native one would be emulating a DOS 8086 PC with PostScript (some people already did a ZMachine emulator).

padjo•9mo ago

Coulda shoulda woulda…

qwertox•9mo ago

We've seen better on HN. Much better.

DrillShopper•9mo ago

We've also seen worse. Much much worse.

Wowfunhappy•9mo ago

It's not Linux, but here's DOOM in Notepad:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/how-to-get-doom-runni...

qwertox•9mo ago

I was expecting something like the cells being used as registers and the computer being implemented in the spreadsheet itself. Loading an emulator via a DLL and using the spreadsheet as a line oriented display feels like cheating.

yesco•9mo ago

I still think this is pretty neat even if it's just acting like the console.

nogajun•9mo ago

Linux can run on Excel, but not Excel on Linux.

grishka•9mo ago

Excel, at least old versions, does run on Linux using Wine.

Aardwolf•9mo ago

Then it may be possible to run Excel on Linux in Excel

xattt•9mo ago

I’d like to see bare-metal Excel.

grishka•9mo ago

I was going to say that first versions were technically that, but apparently Excel was never released for DOS, Excel 2.0 was already a Windows application, and 1.0 was only available on Mac.

Aardwolf•9mo ago

Lotus 1-2-3 was available for DOS

tech234a•9mo ago

It was actually a Windows application that shipped it's own runtime copy of Windows [1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42168173

redbell•9mo ago

> run Excel on Linux in Excel

This remind me of the top comment on Puter's post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33838179):

"I am the author of the 'app' called Puter which loads up Puter inside Puter, which then loads up the Puter app again, which ..."

smodo•9mo ago

Excel is not even Excel anymore. It’s different on Windows, Mac, web, mobile… And there’s different bugs across all them! My favorite ones have to do with regional defaults.

sargstuff•9mo ago

> Excel is not even Excell anymore.

?? LAMBDA: The ultimate Excel worksheet function ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ult... )

or "Autocorrect errors in excel still creating genomics headaches" ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02211-4 )

Guess time to bump things up to a higher order portable programming language. Python for excel anyone vs. go "R".

valorzard•9mo ago

Would this same trick work on LibreOffice Calc?

shakna•9mo ago

Probably not. It calls out to a DLL library for most of the work. One that, unfortunately, is 32bit.

Libre Calc can load 64bit Excel plugins, but not 32bit (at the moment).

padde•9mo ago

Any practical use cases come to mind? Could you actually interact from Excel cells with Linux userspace, e.g. running a cell's value through a bash script as if applying a formula?

aussieguy1234•9mo ago

Excel > Linux > Wine > Excel...to infinity?

ngcazz•9mo ago

I thought for a second this would be about the use of a spreadsheet as a general computation device.

sargstuff•9mo ago

Excel does support lambda style programming ( https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ult... )

tolien•9mo ago

Next step is to get Doom working on it :-)

euroderf•9mo ago

Before long you'll have a different LLM embedded in each of a series of cells, and they'll each have an opinion on what you are doing elsewhere in the sheet, and your One True Trusted Overview LLM (named OTTO) will survey them and take a vote and get back to you.

sosborn•9mo ago

Sounds like how things are run at my place of work.

CartwheelLinux•9mo ago

My vote for comment thread of the year. Had coffee coming out of my nose with these two

cyanydeez•9mo ago

Before long, CEOs will be on Mars and their AI avatars will download daily updates into their excels.

sargstuff•9mo ago

sounds like excel cell that calls html link to dynamically 'fetch' what needs to be display in cell. Link results can be the result(s) of almost anything. OTTO could well be a redirected link by server to 'sub-server' machine.

apexalpha•9mo ago

Wow! We are in awe that you managed to run Linux on a database tool designed to query Bigdata tables sharded over 72 sheets.
Very impressive.
Greetings,
Deloitte.

unixhero•9mo ago

Now lets sing a consulting song

ivolimmen•9mo ago

Question remains: can you run Windows in LibreOffice under Linux?

zombot•9mo ago

I was about to say, "If it can run Doom...", but actually the deamons in Windows are worse and even more hellish than those in Doom.

vidarh•9mo ago

Then port psdoom to it, and you can shoot them...

https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

sargstuff•9mo ago

what's 'run'?? same box or link to cloud instance ?

goodboyjojo•9mo ago

linux and the hit game doom are the things hackers always put on something first. any eletronic

snvzz•9mo ago

RISC-V is inevitable.

h4ck_th3_pl4n3t•9mo ago

So when will there nmap be backported to run in this VM?

Would be awesome to have a little VM that can scan for lateral movement possibilities, in an excel spreadsheet. Next-gen malware!

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Linux in Excel

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