4 ms·

A lot of people use Microsofts products out of old habit and because they are simply not aware of any alternatives. I have helped alot of people try LibreOffice

by rsolva 2y ago

A lot of people use Microsofts products out of old habit and because they are simply not aware of any alternatives. I have helped alot of people try LibreOffice, which offers everything they need from their office suit. Most people also like that LibreOffice looks like what Word and Excel looked like before Microsoft changed up the menu system.

the_snooze 2y ago
>A lot of people use Microsofts products out of old habit and because they are simply not aware of any alternatives. This is an incomplete take. People use MS Office because everyone else uses it. In practice, that means if you try an alternative, then there's no assurance that your documents will render or function the same way on an MS Office installation. I tried going all LibreOffice when I was a grad student. I had to write a tech report to submit to our funding agency, using a Word template they require. It looked great on my computer. But when my advisor reviewed my document on his MS Office installation, the formatting was all wrong and unusable. Ditto for spreadsheets and slide decks (I can't count the number of times Google Slides mangled my PPTX formatting after I accidentally opened the file in the browser and it auto-saved). That's the reality of doing non-trivial work with external stakeholders if you're not using MS Office.
- teddyh 2y ago
  > I tried going all LibreOffice when I was a grad student. How long ago was this?
  - the_snooze 2y ago
    This was in the early 2010s. Then I tried again in the late 2010s. And again (with Google's suite) a year ago. It doesn't work when you're required to submit MS Office documents to people who pay you. You can't tell them "LibreOffice is so great, you should use it too!" You either use MS Office, or you look like a sloppy amateur when your figures are the wrong size and the text is overflowing off the side of the document.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      Heh! Maybe 14-15 years ago I got my small employer to start using OpenOffice. They couldn’t afford Office licenses for everyone, but it was super handy to give everyone a word processor. One time we were having a hard time exporting Word docs that a customer was able to open and view correctly. After much back and forth, it turned out they were also using OpenOffice and it was having trouble opening the emulated Word docs we sent. We cut out the middle man and started sending them OOo’s own native docs. Problem solved! I know that’s far from the common case, but it made me so happy at the time.
    - teddyh 2y ago
      Do a power move: Convert the document to an iWork Pages file, and send them that.
    - einpoklum 2y ago
      > It doesn't work when you're required to submit MS Office documents to people who pay you. Microsoft office supports ODT these days... you can tell them to "just open it in Office" and it will work. Also, the LibreOffice DOCX export filter is pretty good. Not perfect, but then, if you need that perfection, why not submit a PDF? --- And finally: To help LibreOffice (and its filters) improve, we need to contribute either money or development time: www.libreoffice.org/donate
- rsolva 2y ago
  It is much better today, but still not perfect. For relatively simple word processing tasks, it is not a problem anymore. And saving as a pdf is a fine compromise when the receiver doesn't have a need to edit the document.
  - kyawzazaw 2y ago
    no office workers is gonna bother doing that
    - acomjean 2y ago
      When I worked in an office with my linux machine, Libre office worked for me. No issues really. I didn't do anything super complex, but it was nice to be able to open those file formats. Though to be fair, I didn't really have a choice in the matter. its was that or the web version of office.
- notahacker 2y ago
  Yeah. I'd go further: Office is a clear exception to the rule that the alternatives tend to be better than the complacent market leader with the massive lockin. Using LibreOffice (or cut down stuff like Pages/Numbers or Google Docs) gets me missing Office features pdq even when I don't need the compatibility, despite me not particularly loving Office's last couple of decades of interface changes, having limited interest in "cloud" and "AI" features, not exactly being a power user of Excel and even having fond memories of other systems' features like WordPerfect's Reveal Codes. And the compatibility issue is obviously massive
- r00fus 2y ago
  Doesn't Google Docs produce nice usable .docx output? I use it occasionally along with Word, and there doesn't seem to any compatibility issues.
bluedino 2y ago
I use a free office suite at home because I don't want to pay $99/year to edit resumes and the occasional other document. It works, but its clunky, you have font shenanigans, it just overall feels weird and not smooth... Then again, I'm one of the people who would force you to pry Office 2003 (the last version before the ribbon) out of my cold, dead hands.
dartharva 2y ago
For most professionals Excel alone carries 99% of the worth of an O365 subscription. I would give anything for a standalone, offline spreadsheet software as robust and powerful as Excel. Unfortunately, that doesn't exist.
- layer8 2y ago
  Office still exists as a standalone version.
n144q 2y ago
I am not a power user by any means. In fact I use Word and Excel maybe no more than 5 times a year for both professional and personal use. Yet I quickly run into things that are not well supported in other word processor/spreadsheet applications and need to go back to Office.
hoistbypetard 2y ago
> Most people also like that LibreOffice looks like what Word and Excel looked like before Microsoft changed up the menu system. I feel exactly the same way about that. And I often use it for stuff I don't need to collaborate on. But for paid jobs with stuff I need to round-trip with people who I know are using Microsoft products, I just use the Microsoft products myself. It's cheap insurance against giving the people who are paying me to collaborate with them a bad experience.
- rsolva 2y ago
  I have used OnlyOffice for my collaborative writing needs the last year, and it has been great. They offer a free hosted version, everything is open source and it can be self-hosted. I can invite people in with SSO so they do not need to make yet another account.

by rsolva 2y ago

the_snooze 2y ago

>A lot of people use Microsofts products out of old habit and because they are simply not aware of any alternatives. This is an incomplete take. People use MS Office because everyone else uses it. In practice, that means if you try an alternative, then there's no assurance that your documents will render or function the same way on an MS Office installation. I tried going all LibreOffice when I was a grad student. I had to write a tech report to submit to our funding agency, using a Word template they require. It looked great on my computer. But when my advisor reviewed my document on his MS Office installation, the formatting was all wrong and unusable. Ditto for spreadsheets and slide decks (I can't count the number of times Google Slides mangled my PPTX formatting after I accidentally opened the file in the browser and it auto-saved). That's the reality of doing non-trivial work with external stakeholders if you're not using MS Office.

teddyh 2y ago
> I tried going all LibreOffice when I was a grad student. How long ago was this?
- the_snooze 2y ago
  This was in the early 2010s. Then I tried again in the late 2010s. And again (with Google's suite) a year ago. It doesn't work when you're required to submit MS Office documents to people who pay you. You can't tell them "LibreOffice is so great, you should use it too!" You either use MS Office, or you look like a sloppy amateur when your figures are the wrong size and the text is overflowing off the side of the document.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Heh! Maybe 14-15 years ago I got my small employer to start using OpenOffice. They couldn’t afford Office licenses for everyone, but it was super handy to give everyone a word processor. One time we were having a hard time exporting Word docs that a customer was able to open and view correctly. After much back and forth, it turned out they were also using OpenOffice and it was having trouble opening the emulated Word docs we sent. We cut out the middle man and started sending them OOo’s own native docs. Problem solved! I know that’s far from the common case, but it made me so happy at the time.
  - teddyh 2y ago
    Do a power move: Convert the document to an iWork Pages file, and send them that.
  - einpoklum 2y ago
    > It doesn't work when you're required to submit MS Office documents to people who pay you. Microsoft office supports ODT these days... you can tell them to "just open it in Office" and it will work. Also, the LibreOffice DOCX export filter is pretty good. Not perfect, but then, if you need that perfection, why not submit a PDF? --- And finally: To help LibreOffice (and its filters) improve, we need to contribute either money or development time: www.libreoffice.org/donate
rsolva 2y ago
It is much better today, but still not perfect. For relatively simple word processing tasks, it is not a problem anymore. And saving as a pdf is a fine compromise when the receiver doesn't have a need to edit the document.
- kyawzazaw 2y ago
  no office workers is gonna bother doing that
  - acomjean 2y ago
    When I worked in an office with my linux machine, Libre office worked for me. No issues really. I didn't do anything super complex, but it was nice to be able to open those file formats. Though to be fair, I didn't really have a choice in the matter. its was that or the web version of office.
notahacker 2y ago
Yeah. I'd go further: Office is a clear exception to the rule that the alternatives tend to be better than the complacent market leader with the massive lockin. Using LibreOffice (or cut down stuff like Pages/Numbers or Google Docs) gets me missing Office features pdq even when I don't need the compatibility, despite me not particularly loving Office's last couple of decades of interface changes, having limited interest in "cloud" and "AI" features, not exactly being a power user of Excel and even having fond memories of other systems' features like WordPerfect's Reveal Codes. And the compatibility issue is obviously massive
r00fus 2y ago
Doesn't Google Docs produce nice usable .docx output? I use it occasionally along with Word, and there doesn't seem to any compatibility issues.

bluedino 2y ago

I use a free office suite at home because I don't want to pay $99/year to edit resumes and the occasional other document. It works, but its clunky, you have font shenanigans, it just overall feels weird and not smooth... Then again, I'm one of the people who would force you to pry Office 2003 (the last version before the ribbon) out of my cold, dead hands.

dartharva 2y ago

For most professionals Excel alone carries 99% of the worth of an O365 subscription. I would give anything for a standalone, offline spreadsheet software as robust and powerful as Excel. Unfortunately, that doesn't exist.

layer8 2y ago
Office still exists as a standalone version.

n144q 2y ago

I am not a power user by any means. In fact I use Word and Excel maybe no more than 5 times a year for both professional and personal use. Yet I quickly run into things that are not well supported in other word processor/spreadsheet applications and need to go back to Office.

hoistbypetard 2y ago

> Most people also like that LibreOffice looks like what Word and Excel looked like before Microsoft changed up the menu system. I feel exactly the same way about that. And I often use it for stuff I don't need to collaborate on. But for paid jobs with stuff I need to round-trip with people who I know are using Microsoft products, I just use the Microsoft products myself. It's cheap insurance against giving the people who are paying me to collaborate with them a bad experience.

rsolva 2y ago
I have used OnlyOffice for my collaborative writing needs the last year, and it has been great. They offer a free hosted version, everything is open source and it can be self-hosted. I can invite people in with SSO so they do not need to make yet another account.