6 ms·

The only thing that holds back my Employer to switch to Linux for 6500+ Desktops is Microsoft Office and full MS Exchange compatibility. The Collegues who need

The only thing that holds back my Employer to switch to Linux for 6500+ Desktops is Microsoft Office and full MS Exchange compatibility. The Collegues who need Adobe Products just have to work with Apple Machines anyway.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
Just switch to LibreOffice. The dependency on .docx/.xlsx is an overblown propaganda. I personally had a business in 2007..2011 that replaced windows for Linux. All that time I heard that same old song again: "But but MS Office is so essential!". Turned out, not so much, on over 5000 PCs in several dozen companies. Update: business eventually failed, for one simple reason - Ubuntu Linux is too freaking stable. The idea was transferring customers to Ubuntu, and have them pay a monthly service fee to do maintenance and fixes. And we have soon discovered that a properly configured GNU/Linux desktop PC can run for YEARS without maintenance at all. Customers had it figured out too and opted to do one-time fees when something goes wrong, and it just wasn't sustainable.
- Kipters 6y ago
  You'd lose the realtime collaboration features though.
- sparkling 6y ago
  Ignoring format issues, LibreOffice just feels extremly slugish for me. I get little freezes all the time, the UI is laggy and startup time is pretty bad too. I came to dislike it so much that i prefer to edit things in Google Docs over LibreOffice .
  - readwind 6y ago
    I haven't tried it but some people say 'OnlyOffice' is a better branch than libreoffice, it seems to support MS-Office standards better, but, as I said I've never tried it. Only trouble these people had was with certain fonts, but I guess the remedy would be to choose embed all fonts upon saving and sharing, if that helps, then perhaps OnlyOffice, desktop version, is an option, for some. I plan to try it, although I use my old office-versions, in a vm, for now.
    - amaccuish 6y ago
      I love OnlyOffice along with WPS Office, but they're not "branches" of libreoffice at all, completely different products. You might be confusing LibreOffice branching from Sun OpenOffice.org/Star Office.
      - readwind 6y ago
        It's most likely that I am totally wrong, they just told me it was some "Latvian" branch, Lituanian, so I don't know. I might be confused overall but it's good someone knows. Thank you.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    I personally didn't experience any problems with LibreOffice performance, but things happen probably. Maybe you'll feel better about it since that sluggishness you experience is compensated by the fact that you can run LibreOffice on a proper OS, not slowed down by necessary antivirus software and the likes
  - karatestomp 6y ago
    It's always felt slow (I mean, since early in the OpenOffice days). I've assumed it has something to do with its Java dependencies. Back when I used linux I'd stick to Abiword and Gcalc and such when I didn't need Microsoft compatibility, for that reason. On Mac, Pages and Numbers and such are nice and light. Google Docs is too input-laggy and glitchy for me.
- innocenat 6y ago
  In addition to sibling comments about UI, if you work with Asian/Complex Script Language, Libre/OpenOffice is terrible choice. I use WPS Office (not open source) on Ubuntu mainly because it supports Asian/Complex script much, much better (as in, almost identical to MS Office).
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    Well, it's a matter of preference and tastes. I can't stand the ribbon interface introduced in MS Office 2007. I'm not familiar enough with Asian/Complex Script language, but I once was in China and have installed a few Ubuntu 10.04 (brand new at the time) to a class of PCs where students were struggling greatly with Chinese version of Windows. On Ubuntu they were quite happy with how pinyin support worked in OS and LibreOffice.
  - amaccuish 6y ago
    I don't do Asian scripts, just latin and cyrillic, but I still use WPS office, since a lot of the options are in exactly the same place as they would be in MS Office, it's so nice not to have to go searching for things.
- readwind 6y ago
  It's great that you got so good results of it, say yes to free software. May it continue and may it improve. Perfect man.
- coinerone 6y ago
  Have you ever tried to open an Excel Sheet from 2002, that one that is existencially important for the whole success of the company :), with makros as big as the Windows Codebase itself, in Libre Office? I can tell MS Office will not leave the field.
  - theelous3 6y ago
    Sounds like something a human wouldn't have any use looking at anyway. Multi gb excel files? This is what programming is for.
    - majewsky 6y ago
      > Multi gb excel files? This is what programming is for. Excel is arguably the most successful programming language ever, or at the very very least second most successful after JavaScript. (Note to future commenter: I said "most successful", not "best".)
      - readwind 6y ago
        Yeah excel, outlook, etc, and their db-app, access, word, and photoshop, adobe, etc, will be tough beasts to either man handle or convince, I guess. Looking forward to handle being a terminal app to install all of those things. Throw us some games too. No manual entry for handle
    - baq 6y ago
      Excel is a very nice purely functional programming environment with a fantastic debugger.
      - readwind 6y ago
        Excel is a nice flight-simulator, it's just too bad it doesn't wear a miniskirt. Edit: here's the procedures to activate a flight sim in excel 97 as I understand https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw You can fly around using your mouse or the arrow keys. The monolith lists Excel 97's developers.
- viraptor 6y ago
  > The dependency on .docx/.xlsx is an overblown propaganda. It depends on the company. One will use it as a glorified letter composer. Another has a sharepoint integration with version control and documents with ActiveData integration into SQL servers and (literally) thousands of lines of scripting.
- jedieaston 6y ago
  Nothing, not LibreOffice, not Google Sheets, not Excel for Mac can replace Excel for me. It's wonderful, they keep adding features and I know all the quirks like the back of my hand. If I ever swap to Linux on the desktop, I'll keep a VM around just for Excel. Word is nice too, although that I could probably change that rather quickly (word processing is not hard to get right).
  - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
    This speaks only that you are so used to MSOffice that you don't want to study different app, not that it is really better. When I switched to OpenOffice.org in 2006 it took me some time to switch, and you know what? I have found that OOo was way more stable, predictable and logical in how things are done. It was also really free as in freedom, and I could run it on any OS of my choice. Now, I know LibreOffice like the back of my hand and it's wonderful. People who used MS Office all their life usually do this: launch LibreOffice,see different interface, and like "nah... I don't want any changes, I'd rather keep myself and the world vendorlocked into proprietary software".
    - insulanian 6y ago
      > _"nah... I don't want any changes, I'd rather keep myself and the world vendorlocked into proprietary software"_ People don't have a problem changing if the change doesn't break their work(flows). The fact that Internet Explorer is pretty much dead proves it - everyone switched to Chrome although is different. MS Office document format support is simply not good enough on any alternative (of which Libre Office is the only serious contender). I have tried to switch to Libre Office on multiple occasions over the years, but every time I gave up after couple of weeks of frustration, because I couldn't collaborate on shared documents. Either the stuff I created in Libre Office looked different when others open it in MS Office, or I was breaking the documents for other people. I don't consider MS Office to be better - it's simply that the alternatives are not compatible.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
        > MS Office document format support is simply not good enough on any alternative This is a key fault in your logic. You SHOULD NOT judge the alternative by how it supports the document format that is specifically created in such a way to block competition from effectively supporting it. The company that did it also corrupted the international standards organization to get it an official 'standard' status. But the truth is, you don't really need MS Office document format support at all. The company I've founded in 2007 never ever sent out any document in MS Office format, never owned any copy of MS Office, and we survived since then just fine. If you want an electronic spreadsheet, use an open, documented and well supported standard - OpenDocument, and get on with it. Oh, and it is supported just fine on Ubunut 20.04 that we discuss here, as is on a Mac and Windows. The only thing it lacks is a proper online collaborative editor, that's true.
anthony_barker 6y ago
office 360 seems to work ok. The bank I used to work for moved to cloud exchange already.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  I think this is the answer. Since edge has moved closer to chromium, chromium on Linux should be decently supported there.

Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago

Just switch to LibreOffice. The dependency on .docx/.xlsx is an overblown propaganda. I personally had a business in 2007..2011 that replaced windows for Linux. All that time I heard that same old song again: "But but MS Office is so essential!". Turned out, not so much, on over 5000 PCs in several dozen companies. Update: business eventually failed, for one simple reason - Ubuntu Linux is too freaking stable. The idea was transferring customers to Ubuntu, and have them pay a monthly service fee to do maintenance and fixes. And we have soon discovered that a properly configured GNU/Linux desktop PC can run for YEARS without maintenance at all. Customers had it figured out too and opted to do one-time fees when something goes wrong, and it just wasn't sustainable.

Kipters 6y ago
You'd lose the realtime collaboration features though.
sparkling 6y ago
Ignoring format issues, LibreOffice just feels extremly slugish for me. I get little freezes all the time, the UI is laggy and startup time is pretty bad too. I came to dislike it so much that i prefer to edit things in Google Docs over LibreOffice .
- readwind 6y ago
  I haven't tried it but some people say 'OnlyOffice' is a better branch than libreoffice, it seems to support MS-Office standards better, but, as I said I've never tried it. Only trouble these people had was with certain fonts, but I guess the remedy would be to choose embed all fonts upon saving and sharing, if that helps, then perhaps OnlyOffice, desktop version, is an option, for some. I plan to try it, although I use my old office-versions, in a vm, for now.
  - amaccuish 6y ago
    I love OnlyOffice along with WPS Office, but they're not "branches" of libreoffice at all, completely different products. You might be confusing LibreOffice branching from Sun OpenOffice.org/Star Office.
    - readwind 6y ago
      It's most likely that I am totally wrong, they just told me it was some "Latvian" branch, Lituanian, so I don't know. I might be confused overall but it's good someone knows. Thank you.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  I personally didn't experience any problems with LibreOffice performance, but things happen probably. Maybe you'll feel better about it since that sluggishness you experience is compensated by the fact that you can run LibreOffice on a proper OS, not slowed down by necessary antivirus software and the likes
- karatestomp 6y ago
  It's always felt slow (I mean, since early in the OpenOffice days). I've assumed it has something to do with its Java dependencies. Back when I used linux I'd stick to Abiword and Gcalc and such when I didn't need Microsoft compatibility, for that reason. On Mac, Pages and Numbers and such are nice and light. Google Docs is too input-laggy and glitchy for me.
innocenat 6y ago
In addition to sibling comments about UI, if you work with Asian/Complex Script Language, Libre/OpenOffice is terrible choice. I use WPS Office (not open source) on Ubuntu mainly because it supports Asian/Complex script much, much better (as in, almost identical to MS Office).
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  Well, it's a matter of preference and tastes. I can't stand the ribbon interface introduced in MS Office 2007. I'm not familiar enough with Asian/Complex Script language, but I once was in China and have installed a few Ubuntu 10.04 (brand new at the time) to a class of PCs where students were struggling greatly with Chinese version of Windows. On Ubuntu they were quite happy with how pinyin support worked in OS and LibreOffice.
- amaccuish 6y ago
  I don't do Asian scripts, just latin and cyrillic, but I still use WPS office, since a lot of the options are in exactly the same place as they would be in MS Office, it's so nice not to have to go searching for things.
readwind 6y ago
It's great that you got so good results of it, say yes to free software. May it continue and may it improve. Perfect man.
coinerone 6y ago
Have you ever tried to open an Excel Sheet from 2002, that one that is existencially important for the whole success of the company :), with makros as big as the Windows Codebase itself, in Libre Office? I can tell MS Office will not leave the field.
- theelous3 6y ago
  Sounds like something a human wouldn't have any use looking at anyway. Multi gb excel files? This is what programming is for.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    > Multi gb excel files? This is what programming is for. Excel is arguably the most successful programming language ever, or at the very very least second most successful after JavaScript. (Note to future commenter: I said "most successful", not "best".)
    - readwind 6y ago
      Yeah excel, outlook, etc, and their db-app, access, word, and photoshop, adobe, etc, will be tough beasts to either man handle or convince, I guess. Looking forward to handle being a terminal app to install all of those things. Throw us some games too. No manual entry for handle
  - baq 6y ago
    Excel is a very nice purely functional programming environment with a fantastic debugger.
    - readwind 6y ago
      Excel is a nice flight-simulator, it's just too bad it doesn't wear a miniskirt. Edit: here's the procedures to activate a flight sim in excel 97 as I understand https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw https://kb.iu.edu/d/agqw You can fly around using your mouse or the arrow keys. The monolith lists Excel 97's developers.
viraptor 6y ago
> The dependency on .docx/.xlsx is an overblown propaganda. It depends on the company. One will use it as a glorified letter composer. Another has a sharepoint integration with version control and documents with ActiveData integration into SQL servers and (literally) thousands of lines of scripting.
jedieaston 6y ago
Nothing, not LibreOffice, not Google Sheets, not Excel for Mac can replace Excel for me. It's wonderful, they keep adding features and I know all the quirks like the back of my hand. If I ever swap to Linux on the desktop, I'll keep a VM around just for Excel. Word is nice too, although that I could probably change that rather quickly (word processing is not hard to get right).
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
  This speaks only that you are so used to MSOffice that you don't want to study different app, not that it is really better. When I switched to OpenOffice.org in 2006 it took me some time to switch, and you know what? I have found that OOo was way more stable, predictable and logical in how things are done. It was also really free as in freedom, and I could run it on any OS of my choice. Now, I know LibreOffice like the back of my hand and it's wonderful. People who used MS Office all their life usually do this: launch LibreOffice,see different interface, and like "nah... I don't want any changes, I'd rather keep myself and the world vendorlocked into proprietary software".
  - insulanian 6y ago
    > _"nah... I don't want any changes, I'd rather keep myself and the world vendorlocked into proprietary software"_ People don't have a problem changing if the change doesn't break their work(flows). The fact that Internet Explorer is pretty much dead proves it - everyone switched to Chrome although is different. MS Office document format support is simply not good enough on any alternative (of which Libre Office is the only serious contender). I have tried to switch to Libre Office on multiple occasions over the years, but every time I gave up after couple of weeks of frustration, because I couldn't collaborate on shared documents. Either the stuff I created in Libre Office looked different when others open it in MS Office, or I was breaking the documents for other people. I don't consider MS Office to be better - it's simply that the alternatives are not compatible.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 6y ago
      > MS Office document format support is simply not good enough on any alternative This is a key fault in your logic. You SHOULD NOT judge the alternative by how it supports the document format that is specifically created in such a way to block competition from effectively supporting it. The company that did it also corrupted the international standards organization to get it an official 'standard' status. But the truth is, you don't really need MS Office document format support at all. The company I've founded in 2007 never ever sent out any document in MS Office format, never owned any copy of MS Office, and we survived since then just fine. If you want an electronic spreadsheet, use an open, documented and well supported standard - OpenDocument, and get on with it. Oh, and it is supported just fine on Ubunut 20.04 that we discuss here, as is on a Mac and Windows. The only thing it lacks is a proper online collaborative editor, that's true.

anthony_barker 6y ago

office 360 seems to work ok. The bank I used to work for moved to cloud exchange already.

mixmastamyk 6y ago
I think this is the answer. Since edge has moved closer to chromium, chromium on Linux should be decently supported there.