21 ms·

Running a Law Firm on Linux

256 points by pimterry 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago
I think one thing important to not overlook is the value of HTML templating systems. I was exploring using Hugo for creating legal documents, and each paper and form can easily be populated using frontmatter. HTML is a lot more friendly for making legal documents than Word IMO, and can be exported to PDF all the same.
PascLeRasc 5y ago
> A scanner still relies on macOS so, even though it's a virtualised macOS instance running atop Linux, it's still macOS. Many people believe this violates the macOS license. Do you have a different read on it? https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1014.pdf https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1014.pdf
- david_allison 5y ago
  > A scanner still relies on macOS so, even though it's a virtualised macOS instance running atop Linux (on an Mac Mini), it's still macOS. Note the parens. It's on Apple-branded hardware, so IANAL, but that's more likely to be kosher.
- named-user 5y ago
  It does not. As long as you own the physical hardware you are okay to install on virtualized hardware.
  - skuhn 5y ago
    The scenario from the post is acceptable only because it is running on a Mac Mini running Linux. If it were running on any non-Apple hardware it would not be permissible -- even if he bought an Mac Mini and never used to attempt to "buy a seat", because the Apple license states: "The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so."
fsflover 5y ago
> "Exclusively" on Linux? > I'm struggling with a couple of bits on my mobile device, but my goal is to move away from my iPhone once I've resolved them. I'm close. I wonder if they are going to switch to GNU/Linux phones.
- n_decoded_legal 5y ago
  > I wonder if they are going to switch to GNU/Linux phones. I've updated the post with a response and a link to some of the investigation I've done so far but, honestly, probably not - I can't make it work for my needs.
blodkorv 5y ago
So what distro and DE are they using?
- ginko 5y ago
  The screens in the photo say Debian.
- laumars 5y ago
  The distro is mentioned several times throughout the article and even featured in the screenshots: Debian. I didn’t spot the DE but I might have missed it because I largely skimmed the article.
  - blodkorv 5y ago
    But is it Stable or Testing or something other?
clircle 5y ago
Word, powerpoint, Teams... can't all these just run in the browser now? Why futz with Libreoffice?
- juniperplant 5y ago
  I think the online version of Microsoft Office is not as feature-complete as the offline one. That, and performance is surely worse on large documents.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Consider a future where Microsoft will eventually build co-pilot for office documents based on all the crap stored in office applications/onedrive.
  - clircle 5y ago
    Consider a present where lawyers just need to get their work done
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      Luckily both can be done without Microsoft, eh?
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  No, thank you. I prefer emulated Windows native apps over web apps, and that's despite virtualisation and seamless app delivery being a giant pain in the ass for as long as I can remember. Web apps have worse latency and feature sets even if they didn't have a worse resource consumption.
ciurca 5y ago
I was thinking about Windows/macOS being the standard choice for most folks. Nowadays, people that mainly use the browser for their work/life stuff could just use some Linux distro like Ubuntu. The standard choice for standard people should probably become an easy to use Linux distro.
- luke2m 5y ago
  > The standard choice for standard people should probably become an easy to use Linux distro. More and more, it is becoming exactly that with Chrome OS.
  - dddddaviddddd 5y ago
    Android as well, to some extent.
  - thomastjeffery 5y ago
    That seems to be the goal of Chrome OS. Unfortunately, Chrome OS prioritizes simplicity over functionality, so most of the non-technical users I talk to complain that it's not enough to replace windows. Something like Ubuntu with a really good wine interface would be much more valuable to the average user.
    - Mikeb85 5y ago
      > really good wine interface Do people even use wine for anything that's not gaming? Also nowadays Steam Proton takes care of that.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Browser is the new X-Windows/telnet thin client, the OS is meaningless. Problem is that those kind of people will also buy a hardware XYZ at the shopping mall and the experience won't be like on Windows/macOS when they plug it at home.
- rvba 5y ago
  Do people use browsers for their work stuff? I thought most non programmers usually use: email, chat, some ERP, some CMS, spreadhseets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets, some word processing software and maybe some project management tool like Jira (it seems to starting to be adopted outside of IT). It seems that every company has some data in ERP and few various other databases, but then there are hundreds of various Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. I think there are decent Word replacements (but can they really work in a browser when the documents have more than dew pages?), but Im not convinced that Excel has anything good enough (I tried few). Google sheets probably is the best alternative due to its multi-user features, but I dont think it is a good daily driver: too laggy with big files, also problematic when one file collects data from other files. Maybe I am a bit skewed, but it seems most work is more Excel heavy: lists, lists, lists of everything. On a side note MS could make Excel so much better in few areas. Also "downloading something from ERP to Excel, reworking it and uploading back" is something that seems to happen in most companies that I know (as long as they have an ERP, or even financial software). There is a lot of money for some better Acess replacement though. Lots of companies need small databases, but it is hard to build them for non programmers. That's why "excel as a database"..
elchief 5y ago
IIRC, UNIX started at Bell Labs as a legal document processing system. However, this was just an excuse for Ritchie to work on a game he liked on Multics
- smhenderson 5y ago
  Wasn't it Ken Thompson who did the game thing? I mean, I know they worked it all out together but I thought it was Ken who wanted to do the Space Travel game... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game)
  - jjice 5y ago
    That's what I was thinking as well. There's also an interview somewhere on YouTube with Ken Thompson talking about this game and he goes off on a bit of a tangent talking about it. Really fun to hear him talk about it.
    - smhenderson 5y ago
      Yeah, seems they had a lot of fun with it and at the same time they were making history. It's a great story! I've always been quite fascinated by computer history, Unix history in particular.
      - jjice 5y ago
        This is a late reply, but I'd check out Unix: A History and Memoir by Brian Kernighan. It came out late 2019 and it was his recount of what Bell Labs and Unix was like in the early days. So much neat history there - I highly recommend that book.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  That was the excuse to sponsor the port into PDP-11 hardware, UNIX started on a PDP-7.
  - 5y ago
proxysna 5y ago
I remember reading something like that a few years back on Reddit. I always was a bit confused why would office tasks require a windows installation with office on it until i saw how unnecessarily tightly some tasks and tools are coupled with microsoft stack. Found the post i saw. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9cxwhy/i_am_a_lawyer_and_i_love_gnulinux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9cxwhy/i_am_a_lawyer...
8K832d7tNmiQ 5y ago
> Screensharing can be a bit iffy, but I don't need to do this often, thankfully. And, if I switch from Wayland to X11, even if just for that session, I expect it will work better. I don't know about other chromium browsers, but you can do it on wayland compositor by enabling "WebRTC PipeWire support" flag on edge chromium.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
This is nice but I have suggestions and questions. Case management. I use "cliniccases" which does most of the work but it is geared towards law clinics and does not have "billing". That can be improved but that's something. What do you use for crm ? Is that self hosted too ? There are softwares like cryptpad that solves collaborative editing problem for those used to google docs. I use mailinabox for my emails and that has been quite great. Libreoffice all the way. It has improved immensely. The import export to docx is becoming better and better. I use a network shared drive to host all clients data, working papers and such. I have been thinking of " nextcloud" but I do not see the benefit.
- bogwog 5y ago
  > I have been thinking of "nextcloud" but I do not see the benefit. Nextcloud does a lot and supports "apps" for things like Google Docs-style editors in the browser. You can even do encrypted messaging, voice, and video chat with it. More here: https://apps.nextcloud.com/ https://apps.nextcloud.com/ If all you need is network storage, it's definitely overkill.
terminalcommand 5y ago
Also a lawyer here, I think the biggest hurdle is MS Word. MS word is the defacto IDE of the law world. We spend most of our time in Word. The drafting of documents won't be a problem with libre office. You can send a PDF to the client. But working with other lawyers/parties could be a challenge. I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track changes/comments. I even stumble upon bugs in MS Word while working on such documents. You also need a reliable compare tool to generate redlines. Video conferencing is also important. You may access zoom/teams through web but it won't be as convenient as the desktop client. For an independent lawyer / small-mid sized office, linux may work. But for large companies the tooling may not be there. For example is there an easy way to clean metadata off of documents in Libreoffice, are there any compare tools, drafting assistants etc.? And if you're doing any litigation, the e-signature systems (dongles) also need to work reliably.
- beermonster 5y ago
  > I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track changes/comments I don’t really use MS Word but could Office 365 be used for this, requiring just a browser?
- traceroute66 5y ago
  It should also be pointed out that the lawyer who runs decoded.legal is very much a tech savvie lawyer that enjoys playing with tech. Something which I am led to believe is not a character trait typically attributable to our learned friends.
- b20000 5y ago
  if you are editing a 500 page document you should use other software for writing, perhaps use latex, and put the document in git. but i get that there are lots of lawyers who don’t want to learn any new tools. for all the other stuff you mentioned you have solutions for linux that work and conferencing software has clients these days for linux. you can use diff or visual diff tools for comparisons.
bbqmaster999 5y ago
Libreoffice subtly reformatting the documents sent to me by my divorce lawyer was not the most fun thing let me tell you.
- david422 5y ago
  A long time ago I was using linux and created my resume in Libreoffice and sent it to various job postings as a Word doc. Never had any luck. Then years later I learned that what looked perfect (my resume) in Libreoffice looked pretty terrible when opened with official MS Word. I always wondered if that impacted my application. A guy that couldn't bother to format his resume appropriately.
  - pseingatl 5y ago
    These days you need an ATS-compatible machine-readable cv because no human being is going to see it. Text works perfectly fine.
  - juniperplant 5y ago
    This is the case where I would have used PDF. Didn't employers accept that?
    - pseingatl 5y ago
      They use ATS. Think text.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    I learned long ago to never send an editable format to anyone who's not going to edit it. Every device can open PDFs and see it exactly as it should be.
    - andylynch 5y ago
      Mostly. Assuming you having the same font installed or embedded- to be sure about this you want to go further and use PDF/A
tyingq 5y ago
I guess it depends on the firm and what they do, but MS Word, with "track changes" and exchanging red-lined passages of text in a contract seems really common. I don't see that working well across law firms, without using MS Word.
tiahura 5y ago
I disagree. Lawyer and Linux user since downloading Slackware 1.x from tsx11 many moons ago. 1. Libreoffice is still not comparable to Word 6 (circa 93). 2. Outlook - With several dozen lines of VBA, and a little customization, Outlook becomes a full blown case management system. 3. Acrobat Pro. 4. Fujitsu SnapScan - Scanner that every (smart) small firm uses. Not Twain. Linux drivers exist, but functionality isn’t there. These are just some of the roadblocks. Maybe someday MS will release a Office for Linux.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Libre Office is really lacking and lagging compared to MSOffice. I wanted to patch some stuff that need love.
- antb123 5y ago
  Fujitsu automated scanner I got working pretty well. Agree with the rest. I mostly think Lawyers don't really care about technology (except good research tools) and billing tools.
- teddyh 5y ago
  ITYM “Fujitsu ScanSnap”.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > 1. Libreoffice is still not comparable to Word 6 (circa 93). And it can't be, because Microsoft does not allow that to happen.
- pseingatl 5y ago
  No need to wait: Textmaker by Softmaker is part of a 100% compatible, native-Linux suite.
jamesmishra 5y ago
Law firms often charge by the hour, right? If my law firm switches to Linux, would they bill me more hours if they run into technical issues?
- pseingatl 5y ago
  OH YES THEY WOULD. Nothing like paying a $500/hr lawyer for debugging a Word table (how can I center text in a table?) or an autonumbered nested list. Not to mention trying to figure out why a whole section doesn't appear in the ToC because "Update Table of Contents" only changed page numbers (Styles weren't used for that section).
  - james_in_the_uk 5y ago
    At the type of firms charging those rates, fixing Word's many formatting glitches is usually done by non-fee earning staff.
    - pseingatl 5y ago
      I see you haven't been in the market for legal services recently. Yes, Magic Circle and Silver Circle firms have IT departments and secretarial services. Barristers have nothing like that. Thirty lawyer London firms charge London rates (when they can) and don't have that secretarial back-up. Baker & McKenzie even has an office (a subsidiary) to do such work. But--this encourages the £500./hr lawyer to not learn this arcana. He moves to a firm without the backup and then guess who is charging the client for tinkering with tables (can't you just scale a table in Word? No.) or trying to add a section and subsections to a document with auto-numbering in place; he doesn't know how to do this so futzes around and finally decides to manually add the section; looks fine on the screen until he prints--to pdf, why not?--but the new manually entered section isn't in the so carefully prepared Table of Contents, updating the table only changes the page numbers, the section isn't showing and it's not in the index either, and counsel for the seller is screaming something about a closing and the paralegal who is supposed to know these things hasn't learned auto-numbering ("learned" isn't really accurate here, "seen in practice" is the best you can hope for) and decides to fix things by making everything manual (not too hard--just convert to text and then past back) and so yes, very much yes, the £500./lawyer at the 30-member firm is definitely charging for this under the general heading of "Revising" for which there is a numerical code when the accountants send out the bill. Were the bill broken down to include "futzing with Word" then the client would refuse to pay, but the client never can get down to that level of granularity. Maybe at a three hour deposition in a dispute over fees--where if you lose, you pay for three sets of attorneys (your new, Word-savvy attorney, your old non-Word savvy attorney, and your old attorney's attorney--now its £1500/hour, by the way), but the judge will not question the non-Word savvy lawyer because he too has had to futz with Word and that is part of the legal practice that Mr. Client agreed to pay £500/hour for. And that paralegal is a fee earner, haven't you looked at a legal bill lately? Next case.
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
Excellent article. I would like to read a line or two explaining how this law-firm contributes to the F/LOSS community.
- fsflover 5y ago
  By using FLOSS and spreading information about it?
  - WaitWaitWha 5y ago
    Sure; also by providing financial resources, code development, or similar. I "pay" (i.e. make a financial donation) to any software development where I would have purchased commercial equivalent. It makes sense.
ghastmaster 5y ago
I would love to do this at the small firm I work for. The biggest problem is the attorneys and staff not willing to learn new systems or methods. It is not a software capability or compatibility problem.
- jedimastert 5y ago
  I remember working as a Systems Analyst for city government. It was always super hard to predict who would and wouldn't like change. for the most part it didn't matter what the change was, they either had an affinity for it or not. Our 70-odd year old archivist learned how to use the new OCR software and was ingesting tax documents faster than with the old system in under a week. The 30 year old finance guys would dig their heels in. The mayor always followed instructions, the city manager had no clue how computers actually worked but had no clue they had no clue. You just never know.
jedimastert 5y ago
I guess I might have to try using Libreoffice again. Then again, I haven't made a "document" on anything but Google Docs for a pretty long time. If I'm writing for my website, I'm usually physically writing or using Docs so I can have it on my phone to fiddle with when I get a random minute. After that I'll transfer to markdown directly on my server. Does anyone know a reasonable way to edit text files from a server on mobile? I'm looking for the lowest friction possible, but I don't mind editing raw text files (in fact I prefer it).
- thepete2 5y ago
  I find the Markor app (open source) great for editing text files, you can also customize it quite a bit. Then for uploading possibly syncthing would work. (I do this to sync my text files between my PC and phone, works great)
  - RealStickman_ 5y ago
    I personally moved to Joplin and have it sync with my Nextcloud instance using webDAV. It's been working very well for me so far.
syats 5y ago
Silly but honest question: why hasn't google docs taken over the legal world? I find g suite's collaborative editing waaay better than sending around docx/xlsx files with dates in the filenames.. and don't even get me started with that office365 thing.
- pushingice 5y ago
  My wife is a lawyer. The biggest issue is that they have proprietary document management systems for security. G-suite is just as big a risk as O365.
- pseingatl 5y ago
  Google can and will cancel your account for a host of reasons and there is no recourse, no customer service and when that happens, you're out of luck. You don't have control over your documents and the Bar mandates that you do. Of course, you can back everything up, but then why use Google in the first place.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  Perhaps because of confidentiality? Lawyers would best understand the pros and cons of Google's Terms and conditions, and are probably the only one who read it.
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  Google Docs do not have the 1:1 feature parity as Word and LibreOffice. Law Firms are particular with their documents and templates. It have to be consistent across word processors which Google Docs lack. Google Docs is a ultra-lite version of Word/LibreOffice. Workplace collaborative editing is superior, you are right. At the same time, it lacks a lot of thing in other way.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  I can understand not wanting sensitive documents in the cloud. It's also way too easy to share Google docs (good for collaboration, bad for confidentiality). I'm more surprised something like LibreOffice or Emacs Org-Mode hasn't taken over. You'd think lawyers would want to truly 'own' the software they use for sensitive documents and not rely on a company who may or may not have spyware in the software.
pushingice 5y ago
I think the biggest risk here is that one of the lawyers will murder you. And being lawyers, they will find a way not to be convicted for it.
thanatos519 5y ago
I'm curious as to what scanner /needs/ MacOS. I have yet to meet a scanner that VueScan doesn't support. I'm a mild free software zealot, VueScan is such a gem that I was more than happy to pay for it. (this comment not sponsored, really!)
- jawtheshark 5y ago
  Another vote for VueScan. I actually looked through the comments to see if anyone mentioned it yet.
upofadown 5y ago
Why would law firms want to exchange documents in a dense, opaque format like Microsoft Word anyway? Legal documents are mostly about the actual words, not all the word processing stuff that Word is about. You would think that the legal world would of come up with their own application specific format by now.
- traceroute66 5y ago
  You've never worked with a law firm have you (either as a client or internally). Two words: Tracked Changes Everyone knows how Word tracked changes works. Especially lawyers and their clients. Beyond the above. Formatting. Firms will have have substancial know-how in Word formatting. Sure the contract is about the words, but when you present it to the client, it is all nicely formatted in a standardised format.
  - themadturk 5y ago
    It’s not just clients and nice formatting. Courts can be very specific in what they will accept. If court rules say an appellate brief can be no more than 50 pages, it damn well not be presented with more than 50 pages, and lawyers will want to use every available word they can get into that 50 pages.
- andylynch 5y ago
  Lawyers also have clients! Its sounds facetious even saying it but it’s also not that surprising to discover that an industry heavily reliant of word processing uses the market leading word processor.
  - upofadown 5y ago
    But that is my point. They don't do much of any word processing from the era of Microsoft Word. They just process some text. What does Word give them that, say, a Wiki would not do faster and easier? Emailing word processing files around strikes me as very last century.
beermonster 5y ago
has anyone here used decoded.legal? They do appear from time to time in articles on theregister. Would be tempted to try their services at some point.
- n_decoded_legal 5y ago
  Feel free to drop me a line and have a chat! Contact details are in the blog post.
- james_in_the_uk 5y ago
  I am a fellow lawyer and I have known Neil for a long time now. He is very highly qualified and impressive in action. I think you'd be in safe hands.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
michnaugh1 5y ago
Another lawyer here. I've been successfully running Ubuntu for my practice for the past five years. Currently on 21.10. Crossover Office takes care of the Word problem but I mostly use LibreOffice. Word is useful for appellate briefs and Table of Authorities. For Crossover, I need to be in X11, not Wayland. Otherwise, it's entirely boring and seamless. Brother ADS-1700W scanner works with Document Scanner. Thunderbird 91 is great for encrypted email. It's really not an inconvenience to use Ubuntu in an office. Edit: Document Scanner not Scan.
submeta 5y ago
Whenever I read an article like this („I am a CEO, I run my company on Emacs / Linux / Xyz“) I am reminded of Peter Drucker‘s book „The Effective Executive“. He distills five (?) behaviours, one of them: „Effective executives start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.“ Use whatever works to get the job done.
- throwawayapples 5y ago
  But that doesn't seem to be as useful or relevant advice in this case, because all of these tools (or operating systems) can perform the baseline of the job (creating and sharing documents, etc.) One might have initially lower resistance than others, but another might have better long-term results and be more efficient. As an executive, why would you focus on making your factory be more efficient when your executive team's workflow was also inefficient? In a law firm, the workflow essentially is the factory floor for the product being manufactured. It may be a difficult question to answer, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be asked.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  For some value of "works". I would never entrust a document longer than 20 pages to Word for editing, because I've had bad experiences. I'd much sooner deal with LaTeX, even though it is missing an easy way to do many things.
bobdupneu 5y ago
French/Iranian lawyer here. Moved to Linux 5 years ago (from OS X) because Apple kept changing my workflow and suppressing functionality. Libre office proved to be better than Mac Word (better support for Persian and so called complex languages) and than windows word (could open old word documents that word itself couldn’t open any more!). Regarding ScanSnap, I replaced it with a Brother multifunctional printer that scans to an sftp folder which is watched by ocrmypdf. I get to one touch scan a document without logging in a computer. When I need the document it’s there for me as an OCRed and cleaned PDF. Super convenient. Replaced Word with latex. Our contracts are generated with latex and smart: they check themselves up for coherency when the pdf is built. Overall no driver problem but you need to check before buying peripherals that they will be compatible with Linux. Updating the system is as easy as it could be. Installing software is a breeze with ‘yay’. Arch Linux is very well documented and when encountering a hurdle chances are that the solution is already in the wiki. On the server side, CentOS proved super stable and a welcomed improvement over OSX server which terribly lacked documentation.
- pseingatl 5y ago
  You might try Mellel, which has baked-in right-left language support. (You'd probably have to buy it from France though). I haven't tested its collaboration feature, but if you want to switch from L-R to R-L, Mellel is your friend. Merci.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  Running such a setup would seem to require a professional level of competence in systems administration. Do you find it challenging to maintain that alongside your legal expertise?
  - throwawayapples 5y ago
    Not a lawyer, but once you've acquired that knowledge, you have it forever. It's not like LaTeX changes very often (unlike, for example, Microsoft Word)
    - 5y ago
seltzered_ 5y ago
Interesting to see the blogger is using what seems to be an HP tablet with debian. [EDIT: No, it's a surface pro 6, thanks for the correction!] I switched from a mac to an HP Elite X2 G4 running linux and while it took some setup most things work pretty fine and am happy it's a bit easier to open up and repair compared to other tablets. - https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/ptdug1/feeling_good_i_didnt_wait_for_the_sp8/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/ptdug1/feeling_goo... Most of my concerns before switching have been less around software development but the administrivia - screen recording, surfing/organizing files, etc. - I keep a spreadsheet around such workflows here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=115795755008503287756 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3... . I kept an old macbook around to help with the transition but the last time I needed it was for screenrecording (OBS has some wayland issues causing slow framerates) and browser testing.
sandGorgon 5y ago
has anyone used Softmaker Office ? https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office it is far more Word compliant than Libreoffice. Compatibility with MS Office is its #1 goal. It costs 80$. I have found it to be far far more better than Libreoffice honestly. I have actually installed it in a backoffice (using Fedora) and nobody has ever had compatibility issues with MS Office till today (the other side does not even realise it)
Kessler83 5y ago
I've used GNU/Linux in large, Windows/Mac dependent companies for 25 years. You need to convince the IT-department, and you need to survive the first week learning how to connect to whatever system is in place, but after that, it's free of incidents to the point of being boring. My advice for convincing the IT-department is to pick something that is known to be very secure and stable. I use Debian Stable. My advice for the first week is to initially use the web interfaces for printers, e-mail etc. Move onto native solutions at your own pace. When somebody tells you how GNU/Linux isn't good enough, 99 times out of a 100, it is someone who has limited actual hands-on experience, or someone who is a bit insecure and territorial about the Windows/Mac systems that he does know. Ask them how they know, and tell them you will look into the specific issues they mention. Return later and show them what you have found. Word documents cause problems in Windows/Mac contexts too, constantly, so don't fret if you run into trouble. In addition to Libreoffice, a very quick way to deal with small inconsistencies in layout is to use pandoc with a template word-file. Basically, export a new word-file from your old one, using the template to strip the inconsistencies away. Aim to learn Bash and regexp, at least to some degree. It can save you a ton of time. GNU/Linux has fantastic tools for working with pdfs, comparing files of various kinds, quickly find information in a large file system and many other things. They evolve all the time. Make it a habit to check how others handle the same task you handle. Perhaps they have found a new and even better way? Gradually start using Emacs Org-mode. There is nothing that compares.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Why not use WSL? You get all the benefits of a Windows machine (printing and whatever pre-installed software will just work) and a Linux environment.
  - Kessler83 5y ago
    Because that also gives you all the problems of having a Windows machine at the bottom (so to speak): bloat, intrusive updates, bugs, viruses etc. And the IT-department will constantly be on your ass with some new configuration and program that they have decided is what you need :). If you want to combine Windows tools with GNU/Linux, having the latter at the bottom is a way better solution imo.
rpmisms 5y ago
The real question here is how does Linux scale video? Is it bicubic or nearest neighbor?
- pseingatl 5y ago
  They were discussing just this point in the Rittenhouse trial.
  - rpmisms 5y ago
    That's why I brought it up. Seems like there should be evidentiary standards for this sort of thing.
pseingatl 5y ago
Styles? Not exactly. Unless the people you're sharing the document with have the same defined styles, your "normal" won't look like theirs, nor will their "body" look like yours, never mind headings, where H1 can look like H2 which looks nothing like what you've got.
pseingatl 5y ago
If you're using Linux, you don't have to wait for Microsoft to put out Office for Linux. There is already a 100% compatible native Linux suite made by Softmaker in Germany and called Textmaker (the Word program) and Softmaker Office for the suite. (Not affiliated with the company, just a user).

256 points by pimterry 5y ago

I think one thing important to not overlook is the value of HTML templating systems. I was exploring using Hugo for creating legal documents, and each paper and form can easily be populated using frontmatter. HTML is a lot more friendly for making legal documents than Word IMO, and can be exported to PDF all the same.

PascLeRasc 5y ago

> A scanner still relies on macOS so, even though it's a virtualised macOS instance running atop Linux, it's still macOS. Many people believe this violates the macOS license. Do you have a different read on it? https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1014.pdf https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macOS1014.pdf

david_allison 5y ago
> A scanner still relies on macOS so, even though it's a virtualised macOS instance running atop Linux (on an Mac Mini), it's still macOS. Note the parens. It's on Apple-branded hardware, so IANAL, but that's more likely to be kosher.
named-user 5y ago
It does not. As long as you own the physical hardware you are okay to install on virtualized hardware.
- skuhn 5y ago
  The scenario from the post is acceptable only because it is running on a Mac Mini running Linux. If it were running on any non-Apple hardware it would not be permissible -- even if he bought an Mac Mini and never used to attempt to "buy a seat", because the Apple license states: "The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so."

fsflover 5y ago

> "Exclusively" on Linux? > I'm struggling with a couple of bits on my mobile device, but my goal is to move away from my iPhone once I've resolved them. I'm close. I wonder if they are going to switch to GNU/Linux phones.

n_decoded_legal 5y ago
> I wonder if they are going to switch to GNU/Linux phones. I've updated the post with a response and a link to some of the investigation I've done so far but, honestly, probably not - I can't make it work for my needs.

blodkorv 5y ago

So what distro and DE are they using?

ginko 5y ago
The screens in the photo say Debian.
laumars 5y ago
The distro is mentioned several times throughout the article and even featured in the screenshots: Debian. I didn’t spot the DE but I might have missed it because I largely skimmed the article.
- blodkorv 5y ago
  But is it Stable or Testing or something other?

clircle 5y ago

Word, powerpoint, Teams... can't all these just run in the browser now? Why futz with Libreoffice?

juniperplant 5y ago
I think the online version of Microsoft Office is not as feature-complete as the offline one. That, and performance is surely worse on large documents.
fartcannon 5y ago
Consider a future where Microsoft will eventually build co-pilot for office documents based on all the crap stored in office applications/onedrive.
- clircle 5y ago
  Consider a present where lawyers just need to get their work done
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    Luckily both can be done without Microsoft, eh?
selfhoster11 5y ago
No, thank you. I prefer emulated Windows native apps over web apps, and that's despite virtualisation and seamless app delivery being a giant pain in the ass for as long as I can remember. Web apps have worse latency and feature sets even if they didn't have a worse resource consumption.

ciurca 5y ago

I was thinking about Windows/macOS being the standard choice for most folks. Nowadays, people that mainly use the browser for their work/life stuff could just use some Linux distro like Ubuntu. The standard choice for standard people should probably become an easy to use Linux distro.

luke2m 5y ago
> The standard choice for standard people should probably become an easy to use Linux distro. More and more, it is becoming exactly that with Chrome OS.
- dddddaviddddd 5y ago
  Android as well, to some extent.
- thomastjeffery 5y ago
  That seems to be the goal of Chrome OS. Unfortunately, Chrome OS prioritizes simplicity over functionality, so most of the non-technical users I talk to complain that it's not enough to replace windows. Something like Ubuntu with a really good wine interface would be much more valuable to the average user.
  - Mikeb85 5y ago
    > really good wine interface Do people even use wine for anything that's not gaming? Also nowadays Steam Proton takes care of that.
pjmlp 5y ago
Browser is the new X-Windows/telnet thin client, the OS is meaningless. Problem is that those kind of people will also buy a hardware XYZ at the shopping mall and the experience won't be like on Windows/macOS when they plug it at home.
rvba 5y ago
Do people use browsers for their work stuff? I thought most non programmers usually use: email, chat, some ERP, some CMS, spreadhseets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets, some word processing software and maybe some project management tool like Jira (it seems to starting to be adopted outside of IT). It seems that every company has some data in ERP and few various other databases, but then there are hundreds of various Excel spreadsheets and Word documents. I think there are decent Word replacements (but can they really work in a browser when the documents have more than dew pages?), but Im not convinced that Excel has anything good enough (I tried few). Google sheets probably is the best alternative due to its multi-user features, but I dont think it is a good daily driver: too laggy with big files, also problematic when one file collects data from other files. Maybe I am a bit skewed, but it seems most work is more Excel heavy: lists, lists, lists of everything. On a side note MS could make Excel so much better in few areas. Also "downloading something from ERP to Excel, reworking it and uploading back" is something that seems to happen in most companies that I know (as long as they have an ERP, or even financial software). There is a lot of money for some better Acess replacement though. Lots of companies need small databases, but it is hard to build them for non programmers. That's why "excel as a database"..

elchief 5y ago

IIRC, UNIX started at Bell Labs as a legal document processing system. However, this was just an excuse for Ritchie to work on a game he liked on Multics

smhenderson 5y ago
Wasn't it Ken Thompson who did the game thing? I mean, I know they worked it all out together but I thought it was Ken who wanted to do the Space Travel game... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Travel_(video_game)
- jjice 5y ago
  That's what I was thinking as well. There's also an interview somewhere on YouTube with Ken Thompson talking about this game and he goes off on a bit of a tangent talking about it. Really fun to hear him talk about it.
  - smhenderson 5y ago
    Yeah, seems they had a lot of fun with it and at the same time they were making history. It's a great story! I've always been quite fascinated by computer history, Unix history in particular.
    - jjice 5y ago
      This is a late reply, but I'd check out Unix: A History and Memoir by Brian Kernighan. It came out late 2019 and it was his recount of what Bell Labs and Unix was like in the early days. So much neat history there - I highly recommend that book.
pjmlp 5y ago
That was the excuse to sponsor the port into PDP-11 hardware, UNIX started on a PDP-7.
- 5y ago

proxysna 5y ago

I remember reading something like that a few years back on Reddit. I always was a bit confused why would office tasks require a windows installation with office on it until i saw how unnecessarily tightly some tasks and tools are coupled with microsoft stack. Found the post i saw. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9cxwhy/i_am_a_lawyer_and_i_love_gnulinux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/9cxwhy/i_am_a_lawyer...

8K832d7tNmiQ 5y ago

> Screensharing can be a bit iffy, but I don't need to do this often, thankfully. And, if I switch from Wayland to X11, even if just for that session, I expect it will work better. I don't know about other chromium browsers, but you can do it on wayland compositor by enabling "WebRTC PipeWire support" flag on edge chromium.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

This is nice but I have suggestions and questions. Case management. I use "cliniccases" which does most of the work but it is geared towards law clinics and does not have "billing". That can be improved but that's something. What do you use for crm ? Is that self hosted too ? There are softwares like cryptpad that solves collaborative editing problem for those used to google docs. I use mailinabox for my emails and that has been quite great. Libreoffice all the way. It has improved immensely. The import export to docx is becoming better and better. I use a network shared drive to host all clients data, working papers and such. I have been thinking of " nextcloud" but I do not see the benefit.

bogwog 5y ago
> I have been thinking of "nextcloud" but I do not see the benefit. Nextcloud does a lot and supports "apps" for things like Google Docs-style editors in the browser. You can even do encrypted messaging, voice, and video chat with it. More here: https://apps.nextcloud.com/ https://apps.nextcloud.com/ If all you need is network storage, it's definitely overkill.

terminalcommand 5y ago

Also a lawyer here, I think the biggest hurdle is MS Word. MS word is the defacto IDE of the law world. We spend most of our time in Word. The drafting of documents won't be a problem with libre office. You can send a PDF to the client. But working with other lawyers/parties could be a challenge. I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track changes/comments. I even stumble upon bugs in MS Word while working on such documents. You also need a reliable compare tool to generate redlines. Video conferencing is also important. You may access zoom/teams through web but it won't be as convenient as the desktop client. For an independent lawyer / small-mid sized office, linux may work. But for large companies the tooling may not be there. For example is there an easy way to clean metadata off of documents in Libreoffice, are there any compare tools, drafting assistants etc.? And if you're doing any litigation, the e-signature systems (dongles) also need to work reliably.

beermonster 5y ago
> I am not certain how Libreoffice could handle a 500 page memo being worked by 50+ people including thousands of track changes/comments I don’t really use MS Word but could Office 365 be used for this, requiring just a browser?
traceroute66 5y ago
It should also be pointed out that the lawyer who runs decoded.legal is very much a tech savvie lawyer that enjoys playing with tech. Something which I am led to believe is not a character trait typically attributable to our learned friends.
b20000 5y ago
if you are editing a 500 page document you should use other software for writing, perhaps use latex, and put the document in git. but i get that there are lots of lawyers who don’t want to learn any new tools. for all the other stuff you mentioned you have solutions for linux that work and conferencing software has clients these days for linux. you can use diff or visual diff tools for comparisons.

bbqmaster999 5y ago

Libreoffice subtly reformatting the documents sent to me by my divorce lawyer was not the most fun thing let me tell you.

david422 5y ago
A long time ago I was using linux and created my resume in Libreoffice and sent it to various job postings as a Word doc. Never had any luck. Then years later I learned that what looked perfect (my resume) in Libreoffice looked pretty terrible when opened with official MS Word. I always wondered if that impacted my application. A guy that couldn't bother to format his resume appropriately.
- pseingatl 5y ago
  These days you need an ATS-compatible machine-readable cv because no human being is going to see it. Text works perfectly fine.
- juniperplant 5y ago
  This is the case where I would have used PDF. Didn't employers accept that?
  - pseingatl 5y ago
    They use ATS. Think text.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  I learned long ago to never send an editable format to anyone who's not going to edit it. Every device can open PDFs and see it exactly as it should be.
  - andylynch 5y ago
    Mostly. Assuming you having the same font installed or embedded- to be sure about this you want to go further and use PDF/A

tyingq 5y ago

I guess it depends on the firm and what they do, but MS Word, with "track changes" and exchanging red-lined passages of text in a contract seems really common. I don't see that working well across law firms, without using MS Word.

tiahura 5y ago

I disagree. Lawyer and Linux user since downloading Slackware 1.x from tsx11 many moons ago. 1. Libreoffice is still not comparable to Word 6 (circa 93). 2. Outlook - With several dozen lines of VBA, and a little customization, Outlook becomes a full blown case management system. 3. Acrobat Pro. 4. Fujitsu SnapScan - Scanner that every (smart) small firm uses. Not Twain. Linux drivers exist, but functionality isn’t there. These are just some of the roadblocks. Maybe someday MS will release a Office for Linux.

agumonkey 5y ago
Libre Office is really lacking and lagging compared to MSOffice. I wanted to patch some stuff that need love.
antb123 5y ago
Fujitsu automated scanner I got working pretty well. Agree with the rest. I mostly think Lawyers don't really care about technology (except good research tools) and billing tools.
teddyh 5y ago
ITYM “Fujitsu ScanSnap”.
fsflover 5y ago
> 1. Libreoffice is still not comparable to Word 6 (circa 93). And it can't be, because Microsoft does not allow that to happen.
pseingatl 5y ago
No need to wait: Textmaker by Softmaker is part of a 100% compatible, native-Linux suite.

jamesmishra 5y ago

Law firms often charge by the hour, right? If my law firm switches to Linux, would they bill me more hours if they run into technical issues?

pseingatl 5y ago
OH YES THEY WOULD. Nothing like paying a $500/hr lawyer for debugging a Word table (how can I center text in a table?) or an autonumbered nested list. Not to mention trying to figure out why a whole section doesn't appear in the ToC because "Update Table of Contents" only changed page numbers (Styles weren't used for that section).
- james_in_the_uk 5y ago
  At the type of firms charging those rates, fixing Word's many formatting glitches is usually done by non-fee earning staff.
  - pseingatl 5y ago
    I see you haven't been in the market for legal services recently. Yes, Magic Circle and Silver Circle firms have IT departments and secretarial services. Barristers have nothing like that. Thirty lawyer London firms charge London rates (when they can) and don't have that secretarial back-up. Baker & McKenzie even has an office (a subsidiary) to do such work. But--this encourages the £500./hr lawyer to not learn this arcana. He moves to a firm without the backup and then guess who is charging the client for tinkering with tables (can't you just scale a table in Word? No.) or trying to add a section and subsections to a document with auto-numbering in place; he doesn't know how to do this so futzes around and finally decides to manually add the section; looks fine on the screen until he prints--to pdf, why not?--but the new manually entered section isn't in the so carefully prepared Table of Contents, updating the table only changes the page numbers, the section isn't showing and it's not in the index either, and counsel for the seller is screaming something about a closing and the paralegal who is supposed to know these things hasn't learned auto-numbering ("learned" isn't really accurate here, "seen in practice" is the best you can hope for) and decides to fix things by making everything manual (not too hard--just convert to text and then past back) and so yes, very much yes, the £500./lawyer at the 30-member firm is definitely charging for this under the general heading of "Revising" for which there is a numerical code when the accountants send out the bill. Were the bill broken down to include "futzing with Word" then the client would refuse to pay, but the client never can get down to that level of granularity. Maybe at a three hour deposition in a dispute over fees--where if you lose, you pay for three sets of attorneys (your new, Word-savvy attorney, your old non-Word savvy attorney, and your old attorney's attorney--now its £1500/hour, by the way), but the judge will not question the non-Word savvy lawyer because he too has had to futz with Word and that is part of the legal practice that Mr. Client agreed to pay £500/hour for. And that paralegal is a fee earner, haven't you looked at a legal bill lately? Next case.

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

Excellent article. I would like to read a line or two explaining how this law-firm contributes to the F/LOSS community.

fsflover 5y ago
By using FLOSS and spreading information about it?
- WaitWaitWha 5y ago
  Sure; also by providing financial resources, code development, or similar. I "pay" (i.e. make a financial donation) to any software development where I would have purchased commercial equivalent. It makes sense.

ghastmaster 5y ago

I would love to do this at the small firm I work for. The biggest problem is the attorneys and staff not willing to learn new systems or methods. It is not a software capability or compatibility problem.

jedimastert 5y ago
I remember working as a Systems Analyst for city government. It was always super hard to predict who would and wouldn't like change. for the most part it didn't matter what the change was, they either had an affinity for it or not. Our 70-odd year old archivist learned how to use the new OCR software and was ingesting tax documents faster than with the old system in under a week. The 30 year old finance guys would dig their heels in. The mayor always followed instructions, the city manager had no clue how computers actually worked but had no clue they had no clue. You just never know.

jedimastert 5y ago

I guess I might have to try using Libreoffice again. Then again, I haven't made a "document" on anything but Google Docs for a pretty long time. If I'm writing for my website, I'm usually physically writing or using Docs so I can have it on my phone to fiddle with when I get a random minute. After that I'll transfer to markdown directly on my server. Does anyone know a reasonable way to edit text files from a server on mobile? I'm looking for the lowest friction possible, but I don't mind editing raw text files (in fact I prefer it).

thepete2 5y ago
I find the Markor app (open source) great for editing text files, you can also customize it quite a bit. Then for uploading possibly syncthing would work. (I do this to sync my text files between my PC and phone, works great)
- RealStickman_ 5y ago
  I personally moved to Joplin and have it sync with my Nextcloud instance using webDAV. It's been working very well for me so far.

syats 5y ago

Silly but honest question: why hasn't google docs taken over the legal world? I find g suite's collaborative editing waaay better than sending around docx/xlsx files with dates in the filenames.. and don't even get me started with that office365 thing.

pushingice 5y ago
My wife is a lawyer. The biggest issue is that they have proprietary document management systems for security. G-suite is just as big a risk as O365.
pseingatl 5y ago
Google can and will cancel your account for a host of reasons and there is no recourse, no customer service and when that happens, you're out of luck. You don't have control over your documents and the Bar mandates that you do. Of course, you can back everything up, but then why use Google in the first place.
webmobdev 5y ago
Perhaps because of confidentiality? Lawyers would best understand the pros and cons of Google's Terms and conditions, and are probably the only one who read it.
Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
Google Docs do not have the 1:1 feature parity as Word and LibreOffice. Law Firms are particular with their documents and templates. It have to be consistent across word processors which Google Docs lack. Google Docs is a ultra-lite version of Word/LibreOffice. Workplace collaborative editing is superior, you are right. At the same time, it lacks a lot of thing in other way.
Mikeb85 5y ago
I can understand not wanting sensitive documents in the cloud. It's also way too easy to share Google docs (good for collaboration, bad for confidentiality). I'm more surprised something like LibreOffice or Emacs Org-Mode hasn't taken over. You'd think lawyers would want to truly 'own' the software they use for sensitive documents and not rely on a company who may or may not have spyware in the software.

pushingice 5y ago

I think the biggest risk here is that one of the lawyers will murder you. And being lawyers, they will find a way not to be convicted for it.

thanatos519 5y ago

I'm curious as to what scanner /needs/ MacOS. I have yet to meet a scanner that VueScan doesn't support. I'm a mild free software zealot, VueScan is such a gem that I was more than happy to pay for it. (this comment not sponsored, really!)

jawtheshark 5y ago
Another vote for VueScan. I actually looked through the comments to see if anyone mentioned it yet.

upofadown 5y ago

Why would law firms want to exchange documents in a dense, opaque format like Microsoft Word anyway? Legal documents are mostly about the actual words, not all the word processing stuff that Word is about. You would think that the legal world would of come up with their own application specific format by now.

traceroute66 5y ago
You've never worked with a law firm have you (either as a client or internally). Two words: Tracked Changes Everyone knows how Word tracked changes works. Especially lawyers and their clients. Beyond the above. Formatting. Firms will have have substancial know-how in Word formatting. Sure the contract is about the words, but when you present it to the client, it is all nicely formatted in a standardised format.
- themadturk 5y ago
  It’s not just clients and nice formatting. Courts can be very specific in what they will accept. If court rules say an appellate brief can be no more than 50 pages, it damn well not be presented with more than 50 pages, and lawyers will want to use every available word they can get into that 50 pages.
andylynch 5y ago
Lawyers also have clients! Its sounds facetious even saying it but it’s also not that surprising to discover that an industry heavily reliant of word processing uses the market leading word processor.
- upofadown 5y ago
  But that is my point. They don't do much of any word processing from the era of Microsoft Word. They just process some text. What does Word give them that, say, a Wiki would not do faster and easier? Emailing word processing files around strikes me as very last century.

beermonster 5y ago

has anyone here used decoded.legal? They do appear from time to time in articles on theregister. Would be tempted to try their services at some point.

n_decoded_legal 5y ago
Feel free to drop me a line and have a chat! Contact details are in the blog post.
james_in_the_uk 5y ago
I am a fellow lawyer and I have known Neil for a long time now. He is very highly qualified and impressive in action. I think you'd be in safe hands.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

michnaugh1 5y ago

Another lawyer here. I've been successfully running Ubuntu for my practice for the past five years. Currently on 21.10. Crossover Office takes care of the Word problem but I mostly use LibreOffice. Word is useful for appellate briefs and Table of Authorities. For Crossover, I need to be in X11, not Wayland. Otherwise, it's entirely boring and seamless. Brother ADS-1700W scanner works with Document Scanner. Thunderbird 91 is great for encrypted email. It's really not an inconvenience to use Ubuntu in an office. Edit: Document Scanner not Scan.

submeta 5y ago

Whenever I read an article like this („I am a CEO, I run my company on Emacs / Linux / Xyz“) I am reminded of Peter Drucker‘s book „The Effective Executive“. He distills five (?) behaviours, one of them: „Effective executives start out with the question, “What results are expected of me?” rather than with the work to be done, let alone with its techniques and tools.“ Use whatever works to get the job done.

throwawayapples 5y ago
But that doesn't seem to be as useful or relevant advice in this case, because all of these tools (or operating systems) can perform the baseline of the job (creating and sharing documents, etc.) One might have initially lower resistance than others, but another might have better long-term results and be more efficient. As an executive, why would you focus on making your factory be more efficient when your executive team's workflow was also inefficient? In a law firm, the workflow essentially is the factory floor for the product being manufactured. It may be a difficult question to answer, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be asked.
selfhoster11 5y ago
For some value of "works". I would never entrust a document longer than 20 pages to Word for editing, because I've had bad experiences. I'd much sooner deal with LaTeX, even though it is missing an easy way to do many things.

bobdupneu 5y ago

French/Iranian lawyer here. Moved to Linux 5 years ago (from OS X) because Apple kept changing my workflow and suppressing functionality. Libre office proved to be better than Mac Word (better support for Persian and so called complex languages) and than windows word (could open old word documents that word itself couldn’t open any more!). Regarding ScanSnap, I replaced it with a Brother multifunctional printer that scans to an sftp folder which is watched by ocrmypdf. I get to one touch scan a document without logging in a computer. When I need the document it’s there for me as an OCRed and cleaned PDF. Super convenient. Replaced Word with latex. Our contracts are generated with latex and smart: they check themselves up for coherency when the pdf is built. Overall no driver problem but you need to check before buying peripherals that they will be compatible with Linux. Updating the system is as easy as it could be. Installing software is a breeze with ‘yay’. Arch Linux is very well documented and when encountering a hurdle chances are that the solution is already in the wiki. On the server side, CentOS proved super stable and a welcomed improvement over OSX server which terribly lacked documentation.

pseingatl 5y ago
You might try Mellel, which has baked-in right-left language support. (You'd probably have to buy it from France though). I haven't tested its collaboration feature, but if you want to switch from L-R to R-L, Mellel is your friend. Merci.
titanomachy 5y ago
Running such a setup would seem to require a professional level of competence in systems administration. Do you find it challenging to maintain that alongside your legal expertise?
- throwawayapples 5y ago
  Not a lawyer, but once you've acquired that knowledge, you have it forever. It's not like LaTeX changes very often (unlike, for example, Microsoft Word)
  - 5y ago

seltzered_ 5y ago

Interesting to see the blogger is using what seems to be an HP tablet with debian. [EDIT: No, it's a surface pro 6, thanks for the correction!] I switched from a mac to an HP Elite X2 G4 running linux and while it took some setup most things work pretty fine and am happy it's a bit easier to open up and repair compared to other tablets. - https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/ptdug1/feeling_good_i_didnt_wait_for_the_sp8/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/ptdug1/feeling_goo... Most of my concerns before switching have been less around software development but the administrivia - screen recording, surfing/organizing files, etc. - I keep a spreadsheet around such workflows here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3mF-c4vqV3CqyEWXuqaAiXoA/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=115795755008503287756 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/148zTJUwfVv9xfDcpSoH3... . I kept an old macbook around to help with the transition but the last time I needed it was for screenrecording (OBS has some wayland issues causing slow framerates) and browser testing.

sandGorgon 5y ago

has anyone used Softmaker Office ? https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office it is far more Word compliant than Libreoffice. Compatibility with MS Office is its #1 goal. It costs 80$. I have found it to be far far more better than Libreoffice honestly. I have actually installed it in a backoffice (using Fedora) and nobody has ever had compatibility issues with MS Office till today (the other side does not even realise it)

Kessler83 5y ago

I've used GNU/Linux in large, Windows/Mac dependent companies for 25 years. You need to convince the IT-department, and you need to survive the first week learning how to connect to whatever system is in place, but after that, it's free of incidents to the point of being boring. My advice for convincing the IT-department is to pick something that is known to be very secure and stable. I use Debian Stable. My advice for the first week is to initially use the web interfaces for printers, e-mail etc. Move onto native solutions at your own pace. When somebody tells you how GNU/Linux isn't good enough, 99 times out of a 100, it is someone who has limited actual hands-on experience, or someone who is a bit insecure and territorial about the Windows/Mac systems that he does know. Ask them how they know, and tell them you will look into the specific issues they mention. Return later and show them what you have found. Word documents cause problems in Windows/Mac contexts too, constantly, so don't fret if you run into trouble. In addition to Libreoffice, a very quick way to deal with small inconsistencies in layout is to use pandoc with a template word-file. Basically, export a new word-file from your old one, using the template to strip the inconsistencies away. Aim to learn Bash and regexp, at least to some degree. It can save you a ton of time. GNU/Linux has fantastic tools for working with pdfs, comparing files of various kinds, quickly find information in a large file system and many other things. They evolve all the time. Make it a habit to check how others handle the same task you handle. Perhaps they have found a new and even better way? Gradually start using Emacs Org-mode. There is nothing that compares.

908B64B197 5y ago
Why not use WSL? You get all the benefits of a Windows machine (printing and whatever pre-installed software will just work) and a Linux environment.
- Kessler83 5y ago
  Because that also gives you all the problems of having a Windows machine at the bottom (so to speak): bloat, intrusive updates, bugs, viruses etc. And the IT-department will constantly be on your ass with some new configuration and program that they have decided is what you need :). If you want to combine Windows tools with GNU/Linux, having the latter at the bottom is a way better solution imo.

rpmisms 5y ago

The real question here is how does Linux scale video? Is it bicubic or nearest neighbor?

pseingatl 5y ago
They were discussing just this point in the Rittenhouse trial.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  That's why I brought it up. Seems like there should be evidentiary standards for this sort of thing.

pseingatl 5y ago

Styles? Not exactly. Unless the people you're sharing the document with have the same defined styles, your "normal" won't look like theirs, nor will their "body" look like yours, never mind headings, where H1 can look like H2 which looks nothing like what you've got.

pseingatl 5y ago

If you're using Linux, you don't have to wait for Microsoft to put out Office for Linux. There is already a 100% compatible native Linux suite made by Softmaker in Germany and called Textmaker (the Word program) and Softmaker Office for the suite. (Not affiliated with the company, just a user).