Comment on No More Windows! Indian Defence Services are Switching to Linux: Indian Govt offices to use Linux distribution, replacing Microsoft Windows

• jesterraiin@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Noprob.

  From what I gather, there were similar projects in the past attempted by great many deal of bodies and organizations. Some were quite successful. For example,CERN used and supported CENTOS-based computers and allowed Windows machines but on the “you care of this crap on your own” basis.

  As far as I can tell, the most important challenges were:

  • hardware compatibility (it’s easy to bypass, but it isn’t cheap)
  • support (you can’t rely on “Google it” approach when serious business is involved, there absolutely has to be experienced technician team available on-site)
  • Linux/FOSS office applications are shit and pain in the ass to work with (unless the movement at large won’t acknowledge this problem, nothing will change - Linux won’t enter mainstream)
  • government and other official organizations force document filetypes and build official apps that won’t run good in Linux - funnily enough they won’t even work well on Windows machines all the time (this is really hard to bypass)

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  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    luckily the relevant points have been solved in the past 20 years

    • linux native hardware support is way better than windows for 99% of chipsets out there
    • libreoffice is very advanced and way better than ms office by now (although MS office has been enshittified ever since XP)

    In terms of support, however, competent Linux support on site is a lot more feasible than competent windows support. Most organisations nowadays hire braindead morons for IT support & IT management, and then use Microsoft cloud / Office 365 services, and for any ticket the dumb mtherfckers in house can’t solve, they open a ticket at microsoft. And if that isn’t addressed, the user is shit outta luck.

    I have seen the same dumb and stubborn idiots in corporate IT first level (and second level) support across most major organisations whose core business is not IT, because - especially engineering - CEOs tend to think “IT is just enabling our “actual” work, so let’s give the controllers authority to procure IT services from a contractor”.

    Oh, and yes, that’s a lot of frustration speaking from my choice of words :)

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    • jesterraiin@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I agree, but there’s one thing, that needs to be perceived from different perspective: Linux Office suites > ARE < awful.

      They look ugly. They overcomplicate certain, simple tasks. They aren’t as compatible with MS’ documents as they need to be. The only exceptions to it are WPS Office, but since it joined the dark side (ads(, it can no longer be suggested, and OnlyOffice - possibly one of the most recent entries to the list of possible MS’ Office alternatives.

      Yes, yes, I know “I can do in Libre everything MS packet can do, and more”.

      …but the problem is that it’s not you who will need to work with it. People in business need a tool that gets the job done, is well supported and doesn’t get in the way. Libre, unfortunately does - everyone who tried to apply an unorthodox page numbering to a document knows that it’s too complicated for non tech-savvy user.

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      • darth_helmet@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I haven’t worked somewhere that really requires a desktop office suite in like 15 years. Almost everyone seems to get by with browser based tools. The big exception being finance and their excel monstrosities.

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      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        I am honestly surprised about the conclusions you came to. I use LibreOffice as my daily driver, and while it’s far from perfect, Microsoft Office is not even playing in the same league in terms of usability & stability. MS Office is an abomination of bloatware, and the ribbon kills all productivity. Not to mention load times, and sporadic multi-second hangs on a quick CTRL-S. Literally the only thing MS Office has that LibreOffice does not, is MS Access - and the only thing MS Office does better is VBA, and that’s probably more so for trademark / copyright reasons rather than LO not being able to implement the same thing.

        I work with “people in business”, and I see on a daily basis that most of them are unable to even memorize the simplest hotkeys / keyboard functions, such as shift + arrow keys to select, ctrl + arrow keys to jump words, wordstar (ctrl x,c,v) and so many others. I don’t think you will find many people who prefer MS Office and can work more efficiently on MS Office than an avid LibreOffice user on LO.

        The office suite directs the workflow of the user, and MS Office getting rid of the standard drop-down menus in 2007, guided all MS Office users down a road to insanity.

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