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

computerworld.com

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

#61

Post by chii »

pcurve wrote: post #16
nitrogen99 wrote: post #13

Google docs doesn’t work?

It works fine for most use cases, but Google Docs and Sheets features pale in comparison full desktop base apps.

google docs and sheets have 99% of the features that an average home user would want to use for a word processor and a spreadsheet.

The things that docs don't have are things like templated designs, and other typesetting features that a professional document creator would want to use. It also isn't completely compatible with office document formats (some formatting and alignments are wrong). I would imagine similar with spreadsheets.

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

#62

Post by eddythompson80 »

chii wrote: post #58
eddythompson80 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that’s true. Last Office I bought was “Home Edition 2016” and it’s been running on a machine that doesn’t have internet access since 2017 without any issues.

2016 is almost a decade in the past. The phoning home thing hasn't really taken off at the time.

Microsoft doesn’t release an Office version every year. They technically released 2019, 2021 and 2024, but they have all been “Office 16” versions. As far as I could tell they are more or less “service packs” + random improvements/small features on to of the 2016 base. I was planning to upgrade last year but life got in the way and I only use that machine in the deep winter. Do you know what release they introduced that in?

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

#63

Post by fodkodrasz »

Shopper0552 wrote: post #3
vunderba wrote: post #2

If I'm evaluating a potential application whose core functionality does not require external resources/servers (Dropbox for example) and they don't at a minimum offer some kind of perpetual fallback license (aka the Jetbrains annual subscription model), then I straight up bounce. Examples of good alternatives - Pixelmator > Photoshop - Davinci Resolve > Premiere - Reaper > Audition I have no interest in renting my to…

Do you have any good alternatives to Photoshop that are open source? And that are not GIMP. Nothing against GIMP, I just found it too hard to learn coming from photoshop. I'm looking for a simple editor that can do color adjustments, crop/resize images, and add text.

Paint.Net on Windows. Though on Windows there is Paint, that is less capable, but still no equivalent is on MacOS OOTB. (Also the drama around Paint is worth its own bashing).

I'd be interested in a similar basic tool as paint for mac and Linux (and possibly also for windows, if MS crappifies Paint, after it has tried to kill it earlier)

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

#64

Post by eastbound »

jwr wrote: post #56
saagarjha wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days developers have to invest significant time and effort into making sure the software just runs on the constantly updated operating systems and platforms — which costs money on an ongoing basis. What’s different today?

The Internet happened, and operating systems evolve much faster. You could buy a piece of software and run it on MS-DOS 5.0 for a long time if you didn't need networking and the software did what you wanted it to do. You didn't have to update. Today everything is connected to the internet and exposed to threats, so the updates are much more frequent, and OS makers take advantage of this to push additional stuff and e…

That’s only sustainable if we pour a humongous percentage of our GDP in upgrading all software all the time.

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

#65

Post by hyperlink014 »

Shopper0552 wrote: post #3
vunderba wrote: post #2

If I'm evaluating a potential application whose core functionality does not require external resources/servers (Dropbox for example) and they don't at a minimum offer some kind of perpetual fallback license (aka the Jetbrains annual subscription model), then I straight up bounce. Examples of good alternatives - Pixelmator > Photoshop - Davinci Resolve > Premiere - Reaper > Audition I have no interest in renting my to…

Do you have any good alternatives to Photoshop that are open source? And that are not GIMP. Nothing against GIMP, I just found it too hard to learn coming from photoshop. I'm looking for a simple editor that can do color adjustments, crop/resize images, and add text.

I use Photopea which tries to mimic Photoshop UI and runs entirely on your browser. In fact, you can even install it as a Web App to run it offline. Pretty intuitive UI.

https://www.photopea.com/

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

#66

Post by mamonoleechi »

Duanemclemore wrote: post #8
Shopper0552 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any good alternatives to Photoshop that are open source? And that are not GIMP. Nothing against GIMP, I just found it too hard to learn coming from photoshop. I'm looking for a simple editor that can do color adjustments, crop/resize images, and add text.

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…

It's easy to change keybindings on Gimp, most of mines are ones i used in photoshop 4-CS2.

>It finally has non-destructive editing

not for the fonts unfortunately, if you resize a text with the scale tool, it gets rasterized

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

#67

Post by nxpnsv »

vunderba wrote: post #2

If I'm evaluating a potential application whose core functionality does not require external resources/servers (Dropbox for example) and they don't at a minimum offer some kind of perpetual fallback license (aka the Jetbrains annual subscription model), then I straight up bounce. Examples of good alternatives - Pixelmator > Photoshop - Davinci Resolve > Premiere - Reaper > Audition I have no interest in renting my to…

I really enjoy the affinity suite.

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

#68

Post by GoblinSlayer »

jwr wrote: post #25
vunderba wrote: post #2

If I'm evaluating a potential application whose core functionality does not require external resources/servers (Dropbox for example) and they don't at a minimum offer some kind of perpetual fallback license (aka the Jetbrains annual subscription model), then I straight up bounce. Examples of good alternatives - Pixelmator > Photoshop - Davinci Resolve > Premiere - Reaper > Audition I have no interest in renting my to…

> I have no interest in renting my tools. While I appreciate the sentiment, the world where you could use the same software for many years without updates is gone. These days developers have to invest significant time and effort into making sure the software just runs on the constantly updated operating systems and platforms — which costs money on an ongoing basis. Expecting your software to be updated regularly with…

Time to settle on wine as portable API. Bloatware is custom drawn anyway, so a drawing context is all environment they need.

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

#69

Post by dokyun »

snielson wrote: post #34
Shopper0552 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any good alternatives to Photoshop that are open source? And that are not GIMP. Nothing against GIMP, I just found it too hard to learn coming from photoshop. I'm looking for a simple editor that can do color adjustments, crop/resize images, and add text.

I use Paint.net for simple tasks like those you listed. I paid $10 for it in the Microsoft store but I think you can get it for free from the website.

Paint.net isn't free software, it's proprietary freeware. It used to be free a long time ago, but the author is a tool and made it closed source because people were creating other versions of it.

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

#70

Post by poglet »

vunderba wrote: post #2

If I'm evaluating a potential application whose core functionality does not require external resources/servers (Dropbox for example) and they don't at a minimum offer some kind of perpetual fallback license (aka the Jetbrains annual subscription model), then I straight up bounce. Examples of good alternatives - Pixelmator > Photoshop - Davinci Resolve > Premiere - Reaper > Audition I have no interest in renting my to…

Wishing there was a capable Lightroom alternative.
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