4 ms·
I feel it. If I had control to wipe all machines as start over today, the SMB I work for would have to strongly consider all machines on Linux. What is it our
by SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
I feel it.
If I had control to wipe all machines as start over today, the SMB I work for would have to strongly consider all machines on Linux.
What is it our users do? Word, Excel, PowerPoint, browsers. So right off the bat, I’ve either shuttered the idea, or need to commit my users to be software social pariahs whenever we need to work with another company.
I suggest the battle isn’t the OS. But, rather Microsoft Office.
- SoftTalker 1y agoGoogle Office docs are pretty acceptable these days unless you need really specific Excel functionality.
- roscas 1y agoDon't want anyone to use that but that is good to prove that almost everybody can use a spreedsheat that is not Excel. Including LibreCalc. And many others. The same situation is for email. Who needs Outlook? Nobody! You can do almost everything with Thunderbird. So does Outlook have some "special" things? Maybe, never used it! I even had my email on clawsmail and it was amazing.
- zdw 1y agoTrapping user's data in their roach motel formats (the data goes in, but can never leave with full fidelity) is the longest running objection I have to using any Microsoft software. This is also why they fought so hard against the XML standardization of docs formats, and still to this day docs created by their own apps don't even validate against the schemas they created.
- globalnode 1y agoAnd games.
- adamors 1y agoGaming has actually seen the biggest improvement on Linux in the last couple of years, check out https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ for just how many titles are playable.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoI figured that one is mostly solved now between Steam, Bazzite or even just VM Windows ( if you really have to go that route ).
- mvdtnz 1y agoIt definitely isn't solved.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoHmm. I might be speaking from a perspective of a more.. restrained gamer ( my last bigger indulgence was BG3 and, while there were issues after updates, drivers tended to solve those eventually ). Any particular titles you have a problem with? If you are thinking of permanently online games that effectively put malware on your system, I am ok with that not being solved ( but even for those there are ways to go around those restrictions -- which should not be surprise given the nature of cat and mouse game ).
- mvdtnz 1y agoBattlefield 2024 (and the upcoming 6) and all recent Call of Duty games are the obvious ones. And if you're interested in sim racing then device compatibility is a major problem even before you get to launch the game. > I am ok with that not being solved Great, good for you? You can't claim a problem is solved and then say "well I don't care" when shown it's not solved.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago<< You can't claim a problem is solved and then say "well I don't care" when shown it's not solved. It is a fair point in that sense so you get full points for argument counter. That said, I personally think gamers, as a demographic, has some responsibility to say.. 'yeah, no. stop being dicks'. It is not that I don't care exactly. It is that I care too much to allow this crap on my computer.
- bawolff 1y agoMaybe it depends on what you work on, but i havent seen powerpoint or .docx file in like a decade. Everyone i know uses google docs. I'm sure there are users with specialized needs who need something more complex, but i dont think microsoft office is quite the moat it used to be.
- ejiblabahaba 1y agoMy employer blocks access to Google Docs as part of our confidential information protection policy. They're certainly not the only ones. I'd hesitate to call on-premises file management "specialized needs" - rather, it's (still) the default, particularly if you take a peek outside of the software bubble.
- bawolff 1y agoI suspect that that is more an anti-shadow IT measure than an anti-google docs measure.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoTrade one devil for another? I’ve never looked to see the compatibility of Office to Gsuite. So unless it is 110% perfect it is a non-starter. The second we have a supplier send an excel with some goofball formula in it and we don’t see some data or can’t open it - it’s over. This isn’t even getting to the next devil… Adobe.
- n3storm 1y agoPlease consider checking LibreOffice periodically, every 4 - 6 months Ms compatibility increases at steady pace, it may have solved that issue that was keeping you back from using it (25 years using linux and staroffice)
- SoftTalker 1y agoFunctionality is pretty good but the UI is from the 1990s.
- bigstrat2003 1y agoThat's a good thing. UI design peaked around that era and has been going downhill ever since.
- zaruvi 1y agoThese days you can choose between different UIs, some of which will have the "ribbon" style. I do agree though that it feels a bit dated if you're used to MS' office, but you get used to it quite quickly.
- uncircle 1y agoGP probably wanted to say that LibreOffice’s UI is 90s era Linux quality, rather than the beauty of Office 97 and such. Mismatched, not native, terrible stock icons, clunky and frankly ugly.
- n3storm 1y agoYou haven't checked in a lon time ;)
- trinsic2 1y agoLibre office has some annoyances though. I cannot for the life of me disable the document recovery model that always pops up on every launch regardless if a document needs to be recovered or not. Also I cant seem to get printing to default to 8 1/2x11 formatting.
- BrenBarn 1y agoThe weird thing is that to a significant extent that battle is really just about the words "Microsoft Office". LibreOffice has some awkwardness and annoyances, but it's quite adequate for probably 90% of mundane office tasks people need to do (and MS Office has its own pain points). A major barrier is just a specific insistence that Word be used, without any reference to functional requirements of the actual document.
- jamiek88 1y agoPeople always say this but the 90% doesn’t count. The 90% is easy. It’s the other bit that people hit and compatibility issues mean any non standard approach whether it’s fair or not will always, always get the blame. Plus I dispute that libreoffice has even close to 90% of what excel can do.
- roscas 1y agoLet's not compare the advanced options of Excel or how Excel bugs annoy me. There are loads of them. Let's just compare what people do when they need a tool like Excel. That's when the 90 or maybe more % of people will do. That is what I do. Everything I do in Excel can be done on LibreCalc. So it is true that LibreCalc can replace 90% or more, because not everybody needs those advanced topics. Same for the other LibreOffice apps, Writer is good for almost everybody. As LibreDraw and others.
- bee_rider 1y agoI’ve never met a document an office document that wouldn’t have been better as a wiki (if it is intended to be impermanent), or as a something like a LaTeX document (if it is not).
- SV_BubbleTime 1y agoDoesn’t matter what you think (or I). The real world runs on MS Office.
- upboundspiral 1y ago
- rahkiin 1y agoWould the Office 365 in browser work for you?
- roscas 1y agoI've used it for very simple things but I don't thing it even has 1% of the installed Excel program does. It is too simple and buggy. Few days ago wife opened an excel file on the browser and something was right away wrong, she noticed, can't remember what it was. Had to download and execute local.
- p_ing 1y agoI wouldn’t call it simple. It does have Python scripting. Obviously not the functionality she needed, but that’s fairly advanced in the Excel world. And that’s the issue with every alternative, it lacks 1:1 features/bugs so what’s usable for one isn’t for another.