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LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

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171–180 of 227 posts

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tide turning, and it has been especially strong in the places mentioned in the parent comment to yours. People at large there are actively label-watching to sort out the U.S. products in favour of others. It is real and it is happening, so I'm led to believe that your exposure to popular sentiment from those places is low. Its not too late for you and others who would wave away international discontent wit…

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Consumers in the countries mentioned do not have to ''sound threatening'' when they look at the country of origin label on products and actively choose a non-U.S.A. alternative. Your reaction to that is of no concern to them when their sovereignty and jobs are threatened. This leads me to strongly believe that your exposure to current events in those places seems to be quite limited.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#172
post #91
post #86

To my surprise, what used to be called iWork has been my main "Office" replacement for years now. It's good enough, and it's free. I have switched over most of the non-technical people in my life to it, and they have no issues using it (except if they email a .pages document to a Windows user). I especially enjoy Numbers and the way you can arrange multiple tables on a page. It's a different paradigm coming from Goog…

I tried using Numbers across my Mac and iPad. It has some show stopping sync bugs there which result in it completely destroying documents. Then when you try and recover previous versions you get a lesson in Apple's commitment to things other than the facade on the front of their stuff: not a lot. The document versions thing sometimes doesn't even work and if it does it's so slow it's unusable. Probably backed with s…

Yeah. I was using numbers and it's not serious software.

I needed "true" or "false" in certain cells. When typing in a cell, sometimes it would capitalize it to TRUE and you would need to type "'true" to avoid that; and sometimes it randomly would accept typing "true". I simply couldn't figure out which would happen at any time.

The whole program is riddled with things like that.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has the worst commenting and track history I've seen. My company went to Google docs about 5 years ago and I have steadily walked the work product of engineers go downhill because of it.

For what reasons? I've used both and never seen such a thing. In fact I'd argue the simplicity and collaboration features of Google Docs gives it an edge.

One issue is information density of the UI, the other is that text edits are embedded as comments.

I think it is great for planning a birthday party. Less so for critical engineering documentation when lives are on the line. My experience is that sloppy imprecise tools lead to sloppy imprecise work.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a sensible response that seems to not be informed by recent buying trends in countries that are now grappling with sudden U.S. trade policy shifts. The sentiments are very strong, and need to be examined seriously by folks in the U.S. who will suddenly be feeling the negative effects. This is the world today, and it is taking a decidedly anti-U.S. tone for buyers and shoppers in other countries. To wit: https:…

Trump wants to disrupt global trade so people making their own small disruption is an odd way to protest that, although I understand the sentiment. Shipyard Brewery are not my enemy and I hope I will continue to be able to buy their beer in the UK.

When one person makes such a disruption, it is small. When entire countries are actively suppressing or removing U.S.-made products from the marketplace, the effects are of course much stronger, which is why I gave those links as only just a few examples.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the default one. I haven’t tried the other ones.

The default one is different per operating system or desktop environment. On KDE it's Breeze, on Windows it's Colibre, on macOS it's Sifr (off the top of my head).

I just checked, the one I was using, the default on NixOS with Sway, was Elementary, which I didn't like. I will admit that I liked the other built-in ones better, but I still like OpenOffice's better than any of them.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Consumers in the countries mentioned do not have to ''sound threatening'' when they look at the country of origin label on products and actively choose a non-U.S.A. alternative. Your reaction to that is of no concern to them when their sovereignty and jobs are threatened. This leads me to strongly believe that your exposure to current events in those places seems to be quite limited.

What's the problem in that situation? The consumer has the full privilege to pick the alternative they prefer, for whatever reason. But there has to be a suitable alternative for that to happen. I would assume that the world is big enough to have a bunch of fully fledged office suites.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#177
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue I had migrating as a Photoshop user since 1996 was the key bindings. But using the config files people shared online sorted that. I'm not going to link to a specific one implying I'm recommending it, but a web search will show multiple. One important gimp note is if you don't have 3.0+ already, get it. It finally has non-destructive editing, which is the main reason I had to keep using ps for for a…

> The biggest issue I had migrating as a Photoshop user since 1996 was the key bindings RIP GIMPshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop

PhotoGIMP is the current thing like that I think?

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm looking for a simple editor that can do color adjustments, crop/resize images, and add text. Those are all pretty simple in GIMP though? I'm not doubting that they are different from Photoshop but how long could it take to learn the GIMP way?

I'd like to know more about color adjustments. I know GIMP can do them in some form, but I have no idea what the options are or what kind of results I should hope to be able to achieve. Documentation doesn't really seem to address these questions, though it is available if your question is "how do I run this menu item I found?" (Answer: open the menu, and click on the menu item.) Cropping and resizing are trivial. It…

You can use the gmic plugin alongside with Gimp, and adjust the CMYK values. I use that all the time. Color adjustments like yellow -> orange, or green -> purple, might exceed your expectations. Photoshop is excellent at it as well, i have never used Photoshop to compare though.

For more professional work Clut (Color Look Up Table) is supported by gmic as well.

I also made my own open source tool to pass gmic filters to whole videos, see an example here [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8of-R-5zcs

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumers in the countries mentioned do not have to ''sound threatening'' when they look at the country of origin label on products and actively choose a non-U.S.A. alternative. Your reaction to that is of no concern to them when their sovereignty and jobs are threatened. This leads me to strongly believe that your exposure to current events in those places seems to be quite limited.

What's the problem in that situation? The consumer has the full privilege to pick the alternative they prefer, for whatever reason. But there has to be a suitable alternative for that to happen. I would assume that the world is big enough to have a bunch of fully fledged office suites.

Current events are motivating people and their stores and governments to not choose U.S. products. The motivation is strong and widespread. I would have to think that sensible marketing folks in the U.S. have to be wargaming the effects upon their bottom line when their product lines are under such suppressing forces:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/f35-blair-trump-1.7484477

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#180
post #172
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried using Numbers across my Mac and iPad. It has some show stopping sync bugs there which result in it completely destroying documents. Then when you try and recover previous versions you get a lesson in Apple's commitment to things other than the facade on the front of their stuff: not a lot. The document versions thing sometimes doesn't even work and if it does it's so slow it's unusable. Probably backed with s…

Yeah. I was using numbers and it's not serious software. I needed "true" or "false" in certain cells. When typing in a cell, sometimes it would capitalize it to TRUE and you would need to type "'true" to avoid that; and sometimes it randomly would accept typing "true". I simply couldn't figure out which would happen at any time. The whole program is riddled with things like that.

I have run into similar issues and I agree, it’s not without flaws. The formula editor is another example, as others have pointed out.

A good solution I have found to your particular problem is to use checkboxes in the cells. You can select them as a cell type and it converts from Boolean value text to checkbox. I also prefer that, as a user, to typing True/False.

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