4 ms·

I gave LibreOffice a go, but quickly became frustrated with incompatibility issues and some of the other quirks in Calc. So I've switched to using Google Docs,

I gave LibreOffice a go, but quickly became frustrated with incompatibility issues and some of the other quirks in Calc. So I've switched to using Google Docs, which is powerful enough for my modest needs and has so far been pretty frustration free. It also has the advantage of being easily accessible from my other non-Linux devices. The free browser-only versions of Microsoft Office also look good... but I just haven't had a reason to seriously evaluate them. What are the benefits to going with something like OnlyOffice over Google's and Microsoft's offerings?

snazz 6y ago
I’m in a similar situation to you. I use Google Docs as my primary office suite and occasionally switch to native Microsoft Office when I need to edit a complex or macro-covered Excel sheet. Google Docs is very convenient, free of frustration, and quickly improving. It also integrates nicely with the other G Suite apps. I think a lot of the free software people prefer to avoid proprietary web apps made by companies that they view as poorly aligned to their beliefs. Also, performance is a valid reason to avoid web apps.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  I don't know if it's improved since I last tried it but the offline experience with Google Docs was not great. Web apps do require the web, and sometimes there are situations where you don't have it or are not willing to do it.
  - threentaway 6y ago
    I've had no issues with offline mode. Pre-covid, I worked on a long document while on a cross-country flight and once I had WiFi again it just synced it up to Drive.
    - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
      There's quite a bit of essential (to me) functionality that is not available offline though. For instance, you can't convert a sheet to PDF or XSLT. Version history is not available either.
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
The benefit that the linked article specifically mentions is being able to round-trip documents between OnlyOffice and coworkers who are still using Microsoft Office apps without losing any formatting. If you're not in a position where you have to do this, it probably doesn't sound like a big deal. Most of the time I don't have to do this, and I think most engineers hanging around HN wouldn't need to, either. But if you are in a position where this is a job requirement, it generally makes "hey, it's 95% compatible" into a 100% nonstarter. I've found this is super hard to explain to people who haven't had to deal with it. I have, in sending fiction stories back and forth to editors. The formatting for those is ridiculously simple... except that you need absolute 100% compatibility with Word's document revision tracking features to see your editor's comments, respond to them, accept or reject their changes, and so on. And while I haven't checked in a couple years, when I did, the only non-Microsoft stuff I found that could do it reliably were two commercial, Mac-only word processors (Apple Pages and Nisus Writer Pro). I hadn't heard of OnlyOffice before this; if I ever switch to Linux, I'll keep it in mind.
- 6c696e7578 6y ago
  If M$ really loves open source, then they would have opened their office formats. They may even have made life easy for themselves by dropping their proprietary formats in favour of open. This has never happened. Their intention is to retain customers on Office 365 and Azure AD subscriptions to keep large corporations on their books. A large portion of people are moving away form documents and using things like markdown which is a sensible move. Another sensible move is towards LaTeX. Calc and presentations though is a sore point. I think the days are numbered for office applications on the desktop, sadly. There is certainly much less interest in it now than there was a decade ago, maybe this is true for the laser printer also, are the two in tandem? Do we need a spreadsheet? Isn't that an anti-pattern where we'd just be better off with sqlite and a perl/python script to pipe to gnuplot? I know one of things I hated greatly was having to do the same graph fiddling over and over again. It is probably better to have the graph/calculation run on demand. 'member when the reveal that MS buried system information in word documents shocked people as it allowed for tracing authors? Regardless of editing, opening the document on another computer grow the file.
brnt 6y ago
I understand how you might find Calc lacking compared to Excel, but surely Google Spreadsheet is not any better. Why do you prefer it anyway?

snazz 6y ago

I’m in a similar situation to you. I use Google Docs as my primary office suite and occasionally switch to native Microsoft Office when I need to edit a complex or macro-covered Excel sheet. Google Docs is very convenient, free of frustration, and quickly improving. It also integrates nicely with the other G Suite apps. I think a lot of the free software people prefer to avoid proprietary web apps made by companies that they view as poorly aligned to their beliefs. Also, performance is a valid reason to avoid web apps.

bobthepanda 6y ago
I don't know if it's improved since I last tried it but the offline experience with Google Docs was not great. Web apps do require the web, and sometimes there are situations where you don't have it or are not willing to do it.
- threentaway 6y ago
  I've had no issues with offline mode. Pre-covid, I worked on a long document while on a cross-country flight and once I had WiFi again it just synced it up to Drive.
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    There's quite a bit of essential (to me) functionality that is not available offline though. For instance, you can't convert a sheet to PDF or XSLT. Version history is not available either.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago

The benefit that the linked article specifically mentions is being able to round-trip documents between OnlyOffice and coworkers who are still using Microsoft Office apps without losing any formatting. If you're not in a position where you have to do this, it probably doesn't sound like a big deal. Most of the time I don't have to do this, and I think most engineers hanging around HN wouldn't need to, either. But if you are in a position where this is a job requirement, it generally makes "hey, it's 95% compatible" into a 100% nonstarter. I've found this is super hard to explain to people who haven't had to deal with it. I have, in sending fiction stories back and forth to editors. The formatting for those is ridiculously simple... except that you need absolute 100% compatibility with Word's document revision tracking features to see your editor's comments, respond to them, accept or reject their changes, and so on. And while I haven't checked in a couple years, when I did, the only non-Microsoft stuff I found that could do it reliably were two commercial, Mac-only word processors (Apple Pages and Nisus Writer Pro). I hadn't heard of OnlyOffice before this; if I ever switch to Linux, I'll keep it in mind.

6c696e7578 6y ago
If M$ really loves open source, then they would have opened their office formats. They may even have made life easy for themselves by dropping their proprietary formats in favour of open. This has never happened. Their intention is to retain customers on Office 365 and Azure AD subscriptions to keep large corporations on their books. A large portion of people are moving away form documents and using things like markdown which is a sensible move. Another sensible move is towards LaTeX. Calc and presentations though is a sore point. I think the days are numbered for office applications on the desktop, sadly. There is certainly much less interest in it now than there was a decade ago, maybe this is true for the laser printer also, are the two in tandem? Do we need a spreadsheet? Isn't that an anti-pattern where we'd just be better off with sqlite and a perl/python script to pipe to gnuplot? I know one of things I hated greatly was having to do the same graph fiddling over and over again. It is probably better to have the graph/calculation run on demand. 'member when the reveal that MS buried system information in word documents shocked people as it allowed for tracing authors? Regardless of editing, opening the document on another computer grow the file.

brnt 6y ago

I understand how you might find Calc lacking compared to Excel, but surely Google Spreadsheet is not any better. Why do you prefer it anyway?