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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

#321

Post by breadwinner »

nullindividual wrote: post #320
breadwinner wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Search? Where is that exactly? Search is the biggest weak point of Microsoft products. Try finding anything in Teams. Now try the Search box at the bottom of Hacker News. See the difference? Microsoft's revenue from Office was $211B in 2023. That's almost a quarter of a TRILLION dollars in annual revenue. And for that you got what? A presenter mode and data access? Imagine if that revenue was split between…

If you're unaware of what features/functionality are part of the M365 suite, why are you commenting that it is stagnant? It seems like you're discussing a subject you're objectively unfamiliar with. And no, of course the couple things I mentioned aren't all that's happened in the M365/M365 Apps space. They're what came to top of mind. It doesn't mean they're the biggest or best features.

I use Teams every day and I know exactly how much its search sucks. I am very familiar with how Microsoft doesn't innovate, does not have a history of innovation, and only copies competitors' successful products and features. Unless you were born yesterday you should too.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#322

Post by gitaarik »

bruce511 wrote: post #119
UberFly wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggestions based on ignorance of the product isn't the best place to start.

This. Believe me, Office and Office clones are very distinguishable. It's like saying a Macdonalds burger is indistinguishable from a Gordon Ramsey burger. They may both be food, but they are very much not the same thing. There's a reason people use Office. Pretending that reason does not exist does not make the argument for switching better.

Well probably the reason most people use it is because they are ignorant about the alternatives and ignorant about the vendor lock-in character of M§.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#323

Post by kkfx »

ctrw wrote: post #259
MenhirMike wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LiMux (Linux for Munich) was started in 2004: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux Of course, Microsoft did some of their... persuation of politicians and initially killed the project in 2017, but it seems that since 2020 it's back. I do think that LibreOffice could need some more full-time User Interface people to polish some rough edges (please none of the hackjob wanna-be UX people that ruin all modern apps by obno…

You just copy office 97 and can't go wrong with it. The problem with having UX people on a team is that they need to jusity their existence which they do by change for changes sake. I've yet to meet anyone who appreciates ms office UX changes that happen every 5 years and move everything around.

There are two kind of issue:

- the first is that the office paradigm suck, no matter the specific implementation. We need to teach people about good desktop computer usage paradigms, like "hey, learn LaTeX, maybe ConTeXt not a WYSIWYG tool", "hey learn R, or Python not a spreadsheet", and that's sound nearly impossible even if (I've tried) it's not on NEW/computer virgin users;

- the second is "the rest of the world", a Public Administration must deal with Citizens, let's say in EU we have started to roll out ID card as smart-card usable also for on-line authentication BUT most users do not have a reader, so many have invented crappy solution to use a smartphone NFC support to read them while authenticate on a desktop. The result is a good idea, having a smart card to identify users, a thing we should have spread since at least 20+ years in the past, turned into a mess. Similarly we have "certified mails" where a third party certify message delivery like a postal mail delivery, but again they are implemented in messy ways and nothing is really uniform across EU states.

These are the biggest obstacles not the software per se.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#324

Post by coffeeling »

PawgerZ wrote: post #302
Semaphor wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use outlook for work mails and tried new outlook for a short while. It’s like an alpha version, it’s not even close to feature parity, a pure showcase for a new design. If it ever becomes the only version, I’m switching to thunderbird.

I used the default Mail Microsoft Store app for the past 2 years at work. The past 6 months, it's been telling me to move to Outlook desktop app. A couple weeks ago, it wouldn't allow me to use the Microsoft Store app anymore, so I installed the desktop version, tried to login, and got an error message that my account would only work on the webapp. Set up Thunderbird on my work desktop that day, and haven't looked ba…

Wino Mail is native and nice.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#325

Post by csdreamer7 »

Shorel wrote: post #221
csdreamer7 wrote: post #23

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. My mom had to buy a copy of MS Office. Her university provided free ms office online, but there were certain features missing from it she needed for her papers. I am remembering wrong, but it was annotations? Citations? I do not remember. Libreoffice kinda could do it, but I could not fi…

Annotations, citations, bibliography management I can understand, even if I use LaTeX for that and consider it a far superior tool. But video recording and streaming? Why would anyone prefer to use MS Office for that when OBS exists? Is it as obnoxious as having to use Teams for chat? That's certainly a case of having a hammer and thinking all problems are nails xD

> But video recording and streaming? Why would anyone prefer to use MS Office for that when OBS exists?

OBS was a lot more complicated. Yes, professional streaming you should use it.

She was doing a ph.d in social sciences. She had little desire, or really need, to use it when MS Office did what she wanted out of the box. Screen recorded presentations with powerpoint.

> Is it as obnoxious as having to use Teams for chat?

They did not use teams for chat. They used gsuite for almost everything else.

> That's certainly a case of having a hammer and thinking all problems are nails xD

No, it really is not.

> Annotations, citations, bibliography management I can understand, even if I use LaTeX for that and consider it a far superior tool.

Really? My mother was struggling to remember how to use a Windows desktop. You really want to suggest learning latex when she had term papers to do for a $60k degree? The required document format was ms word.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#326

Post by coffeeling »

andylynch wrote: post #258
Reviving1514 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already use the search function in Office to find everything I need. Is that what you had in mind or was it something different?

The search bar is excellent and being keyboard driven fast too. The ribbon is also entirely keyboard-drivable and fast that way. I’ve seen the data on why it was introduced; it was a scaling issue- the old toolbars simply could no longer fit all the functionality in apps like Excel, so they made them context-aware.

Importantly: The ribbon also makes the shortcut chords discoverable, so people can find shortcuts for the stuff they use often by themselves. It lets you get at tons of functions both as a first-timer discovering stuff visually, as well as a seasoned veteran with keyboard alone. There's some things they could polish a bit (colour pickers, mainly), but the system is overall really good.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#327

Post by coffeeling »

orwin wrote: post #97
jseliger wrote: post #44

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.

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 compe…

A lot of productivity type people on Twitter are to some extent slaves to fashion, and in that world eg. Microsoft just doesn't exist. Cool people don't use it, so we end up in a comedy world where ostensible productivity experts gush over random startups' products while M365 is like six times the size of Google Workspace, which again dwarfs all the startups by itself. It gets really silly sometimes when they start gushing about like, a new way to make slide decks. Then you read some essay about all the ways GSlides is torture, and you start to understand.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#328

Post by midnight2 »

petepete wrote: post #220
midnight2 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel blows Sheets out of the water. Try opening a million row CSV in Sheets.

This is a feature few people need.

I doubt it's very uncommon for businesses to work with million+ row worksheets. Personal usage, I'd agree.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#329

Post by PawgerZ »

coffeeling wrote: post #324
PawgerZ wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the default Mail Microsoft Store app for the past 2 years at work. The past 6 months, it's been telling me to move to Outlook desktop app. A couple weeks ago, it wouldn't allow me to use the Microsoft Store app anymore, so I installed the desktop version, tried to login, and got an error message that my account would only work on the webapp. Set up Thunderbird on my work desktop that day, and haven't looked ba…

Wino Mail is native and nice.

Oh, very cool. Thanks for sharing -- glad to know I have this option if I want to go back. Now that I have Thunderbird set up, I'll probably never use the UWP Mail and Calendar app or this Wino Mail app.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#330

Post by PawgerZ »

Semaphor wrote: post #318
PawgerZ wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used the default Mail Microsoft Store app for the past 2 years at work. The past 6 months, it's been telling me to move to Outlook desktop app. A couple weeks ago, it wouldn't allow me to use the Microsoft Store app anymore, so I installed the desktop version, tried to login, and got an error message that my account would only work on the webapp. Set up Thunderbird on my work desktop that day, and haven't looked ba…

You inspired me, decided to set up Thunderbird and give it a week or so to see how it feels ;)

Hope it goes well!
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