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German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

zdnet.com

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Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#91

Post by shrimp_emoji »

bfrog wrote: post #90
holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

Microsoft in a nutshell… I swear they offplanered their ux people to the moon where they couldn’t do anything. Or they have no ux people. Or their ux people have no effect.

They fired all the testers and figured user telemetry could be everything they need.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#92

Post by shrimp_emoji »

CharlesW wrote: post #63
holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

> Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. For knowledge workers who live in these tools, the difference is stark. Even for companies who've standardized on Google Workspace or Apple iWork, advanced users will need Microsoft Office.

In that case, they can use FreeOffice, whose office suite is indistinguishable from MS Office and works on Mac and Linux! (Granted, I say that as someone who very much does not live in those tools except as a rare hardship imposed by normies society.)

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#93

Post by drekipus »

Difwif wrote: post #56
holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

So many microcosms with tech. I'm always reminded here on HN how terrible Office is and why we don't just use Google Docs. I hold this same opinion personally. However I go to other communities (I think the last one I remember was some startup subreddit) and GSuite is being mocked and everyone is recommending Office and Teams as the obvious choice for starting your business. I assume it's just that we prefer the devi…

> and everyone is recommending Office and Teams as the obvious choice for starting your business.

Welcome to astro-turfing and shilling. A pretty commonplace occurrence since about 2014 or so.

You can only really rely on people you know and their experiences. always discount "what everyone says".

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#94

Post by Perenti »

Can anyone tell me what this means:

"Other countries, notably China, have proverbs that say they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux."

Proverbs? A stitch in time saves nine. Many hands make light work.

Please, anyone, show me a proverb that says "they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux."

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#95

Post by xw38011 »

holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

Lots of reasons. Here are some: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-law-school-applicants-sho...

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#96

Post by shrimp_emoji »

Perenti wrote: post #94

Can anyone tell me what this means: "Other countries, notably China, have proverbs that say they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux." Proverbs? A stitch in time saves nine. Many hands make light work. Please, anyone, show me a proverb that says "they are much more stubborn when shifting gears from Windows to Linux."

No tux, no bucks!

Wait, that would be the other way around.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#97

Post by orwin »

jseliger wrote: post #44
holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

Writing/editing offline, complex formatting, familiarity. I'm not an Excel jockey but friends who are testify to its power and flexibility. I use Word a lot and the ease of use still beats gdoc's. For example, the macros and the "customize keyboard" options are great. cmd-l for "next edit," cmd-j for "accept and move on," cmd-; for "reject change." The speed is paramount.

To be fair, or maybe only in my opinion (but i had a teacher who agreed with me so :/), from at least 2008 until at least 2012 (So from when i discovered how nice it was until after i quit using word/openoffice entirely and only used Latex), OpenOffice/libreoffice templating features were more powerful than word's, although less intuitive.

Gdoc is shitty however and i don't see how/why i want to use it over any competitors. I think i prefer Nextcloud's editor, even without the privacy/data mining consideration, and i really think that could be improved.

Gdoc is better than Jira and Confluence editor though, and better than the standard redmine editor froma few years ago (the non-markdown one), so that's nice.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#98

Post by runeb »

holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

Some institutions have requirements that files don't leave your computer or network

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#99

Post by FdbkHb »

sega_sai wrote: post #35

I have been using Libreoffice/OpenOffice continuously pretty much for last 20 years (mostly Impress/presentation part for teaching/presentations). And the number of bugs, crashes, issues with video etc occasionally gets very annoying. I was hoping over the years things would improve, but I don't quite see that unfortunately. If I could get something to replace LibreOffice that is not online and works on Linux I would…

The other parts aren't much better either. Calc is unbearably slow on large spreadsheets.

It's always been a janky and stuttery experience and the massive improvements in computer performance (CPU, SSD etc) have never managed to bring it up to par, you can see how much faster Word loads even on a simple document compared to Writer. It's been that way since before it became open source: Star Office made you look at its splash screen for a decent while back in the day.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#100

Post by UberFly »

CharlesW wrote: post #63
holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

> Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. For knowledge workers who live in these tools, the difference is stark. Even for companies who've standardized on Google Workspace or Apple iWork, advanced users will need Microsoft Office.

This is true. Among other things, I do a lot of label printing and the tools in MS Word are miles more mature. You get these same types of responses when people list off all the alternatives to Photoshop. Just not the same.
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