Microsoft office activation

Questions about Wine on Linux
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bcv
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Microsoft office activation

Post by bcv »

I have a question in the lines of microsoft office activation
I was happily using my linux machine with office 2013 retail. I did a distupgrade (debian) and the next time I launch msword, I see the installer kicks in and the activation dialog came up. The second time activation did go through fine.
I was under the impression that the sandbox under the WINEPREFIX must be unaffected by the external programs in linux. In this case I am not sure what happened.

So, the question is: What shall I do so that I do not change the sandbox properties under WINEPREFIX. OR in what instance, is there a chance, that wine can trigger msoffice (or any other proprietery software) to understand that there has been a significant hardware change and a reactivation is required.

The potential issue I am worried about is if I do a upgrade and the wine installed apps end up getting deactivated due to a change in machineID or something how do I get it back to the same original state.
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dimesio
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Re: Microsoft office activation

Post by dimesio »

bcv wrote: I was under the impression that the sandbox under the WINEPREFIX must be unaffected by the external programs in linux.
I don't know where you got that impression. Wine is not a sandbox at all, and it certainly can be affected by any change to the host system. To the host system, the wineprefix is just another directory.
OR in what instance, is there a chance, that wine can trigger msoffice (or any other proprietery software) to understand that there has been a significant hardware change and a reactivation is required.
That's going to depend on what the apps in question check for, but I would assume that any change, including upgrading Wine, might trigger it. I would not recommend using Wine for any application that has a limited number of activations.
bcv
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Re: Microsoft office activation

Post by bcv »

wine2 does say that it supports running office2013. In this case even if I am using winehq-stable, every update from wine will need a re-activation of office2013 ? This would prove complicated in the terms of "wine supports office2013" since people who buy the license and run it on wine will definitely hit the maximum activation limit. This i am assuming since you said
That's going to depend on what the apps in question check for, but I would assume that any change, including upgrading Wine, might trigger it.
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dimesio
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Re: Microsoft office activation

Post by dimesio »

I said might, not will.

I have Office 2010, and a Wine upgrade has never triggered reactivation, but then neither has upgrading my OS. I can say you are the first user to report this happening with Office 2013.
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