131–140 of 333 posts
Go Germany go! In the diesel repair shop I work in, I managed to convince the suits to switch out ms office for libre office. 90% of our stuff is now libre by default...only 2 users have full office suites and theyre both in the bean counting department. We print our BOMs, labels, envelopes and invoices using libre. Compared to office it runs like a scalded dog and never crashes.
Can LibreOffice on Linux deliver management solutions? Think of 1,000 workstations, a small to mid-sized network: you need software that automates installation, configuration, security, etc. It's not like at home: Even if everyone is in the same building, you can't manually install, configure, change configuration, upgrade, etc. 1,000 times (think about it; not only the time and quality issues, but you'd spend a tota…
First, start with software packaging: In Microsoft-land, there is MSI, but there is also stuff delivered as .zip, .exe (generated from tons of different install builders, so completely inconsistent) and a handful of half-assed package non-solutions like chocolatey, nuget and others. When you want to install something, and there is an MSI, and the MSI can accept a proper set of parameters, you are in luck. If its an .exe (and even most Microsoft software doesn't consistently come as an MSI), good luck finding the right set of parameters for an unattended install, repackaging it as MSI or one of the other proprietary formats du jour. This repackaging is of course done in each and every company, all over again, for each version.
In Linux, there is a consistent format per distribution, and the distribution does all of my packaging for me. If I want libreoffice, I'll type something like 'dnf install libreoffice' and I'm done. If I want to update all the installed packages on one machine, 'dnf update', wait a little, done. No hunting for a bazillion updates in various weird formats (even Microsoft patches come as .exe with inconsistent parameters and stuff) on a bazillion different websites. And removing software, the bane of any windows installation? The stuff where the solution is usually 'reinstall'? dnf remove libreoffice. The package manager keeps track of all installed files and does a reliable, reproducible removal. If necessary, configs can be kept for a later reinstallation or deleted automatically, no guessing what to save and what to delete. No "nobody tests the uninstall.exe ever".
If I want to install a thousand packages on a thousand machines consistently, I'll give the package list to dnf on each machine via my preferred management software, be it 'for i in $hostlist ; do ssh $i dnf install ...' or (far better) something like ansible, puppet, cfengine, ....
Consistent configuration? Easy, same software, use a regular ansible, puppet or cfengine run to distribute necessary changes.
Update management and keeping older versions for a staged beta/testing/production software rollout? Easy, you can host your own package repositories. Want it fancy? Use Foreman and Katello, then your former windows GPO click monkeys can now click through staged Linux rollouts. Meanwhile cursing about how many years of their lives they wasted on Microsoft "solutions".
Sorry if I come across somewhat annoyed. But any Windows setup I've ever seen has been abysmal compared to even the worst-run Linux shop out there. Just even something as trivial as a for-loop and ssh being possible makes such a huge difference. And the openness and distribution model make it easier to automate everything and be reproducible and consistent.
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…
Let me explain: I cut my teeth on Vim. I've been using Vim since I was 17 (I'm 33 now). Nearly everything I do for fun has been with Vim. Most of what I've done for work has also been with Vim (or NeoVim). I write documents in Vim with Pandoc. I compose emails in Vim (using Mutt). I use Vim whenever I do an interactive rebase in git. I do CAD Modeling with Vim using openSCAD. The keystrokes are just second nature to me, I think in Vim keystrokes now, for better or worse.
The IntelliJ Vim plugin is actually very good, but it's not quite perfect, there's subtle, intangible things that I have to adapt to, but are different enough to annoy me. For 99% of people, I think this is more than "good enough", and I still use it when I write Java, but I still am just unable to "like" it.
I don't use MS Office, but I suspect that if you've been using it for a long time, even tiny differences that you'd experience with Google Docs would become infuriating.
I'm sorry, what year is it? Am I posting on Slashdot still? Is this year finally going to be the year where Linux desktops become something for normies? When Munich did this it never got to a majority of their desktops, is my recollection, it maxed out in the 40%s. Now we're going to do it all over again with a different, much poorer, German state?
Munich Finally Starts to Embrace Linux, September 26, 2006
- https://slashdot.org/story/06/09/26/0236246/munich-finally-s...
Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft, August 18, 2014
- https://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/08/18/2219253/munich-rev...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Schleswig-Holstein is not poor. It is next to Denmark, and it is really nice and well developed. I think transitioning to a different platform is mostly an organizational and political, rather than technical problem, and the main roadblock is educating users and altering processes to migrate away from MS Office. That said, modern Linux distributions like NixOS or Guix could be great to manage large fleets of computer…
As a long time Linux user, I think problems are partially technical. For example: * A lot of software used by them is certainly Windows only (they will have to find alternatives, change their workflows or invest in some windows virtual machines) * Windows tooling for organizations is much more mature. There's a reason virtually everyone uses AD. * Linux is very focused on user freedoms. This is not usually important…
The reason everyone uses AD is that you can have a functional Linux client in AD. But you cannot have a Windows client in any Linux-based LDAP+Kerberos setup.
The problem isn't that there isn't a good solution for Linux in big organisations, the problem is that Windows is only compatible with AD, nothing else, so the more compatible system (Linux) gets shoved into AD.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
What features in Office are essential for those users that you don't get from Google? If you're talking about Excel I can imagine there are such features but not so much in other apps.
* Google docs are uglier than Microsoft word documents. This matters when I prepare an offer that I want to send to a client, and it should look good.
* Google slides are hideous, and the only reason I get away with using them is because programmers (including me) have no taste[1]
* Related to the looks, I sometimes buy paid document templates that I can use to format my offers. They often have an option to download a docx file, but it's complex through that you can't important it to Google docs without breaking it completely.
* Word/Libreoffice works offline (maybe docs with serviceworkers too? It never worked for me when I needed it).
* You can use word to generate documents using a template, don't think it's possible with Google docs
* Macros are not supported in Google docs
And I'm a complete noob when it comes to document editing software and actively avoid it. I can only imagine how much powerusers miss.
[1] https://medium.com/@laurajavier/google-slides-is-actually-hi...
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…
Office has become a bit of a UX mess in parts, due to the cloud and web integration, but the overall functionality and integrations are still unmatched. Many people also continue to prefer native applications.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Word and Excel, like Photoshop, are dominant because of their maturity as well as the muscle memory of their users. People were pissed 18 years ago when the Office ribbon was implemented because it broke their workflow. MS might have gussied it up now, but they haven’t dared to reinvent it since.
Wow, now I feel old more than any "movie X was released Y years ago" factoid could make me feel.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.)