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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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    • jesterraiin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I haven’t seen an enterprise, where Excel wasn’t present.

      …and I am in IT since late 90s.

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      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        hardly anyone properly uses Excel capabilities though - I have seen way too many calculations using 5+ extra columns with provisional results used for the next formula, because people were incapable of opening a VBA editor and writing a custom formula to do what they need.

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  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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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    • jesterraiin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Literally the only thing MS Office has that LibreOffice does not, is MS Access

      Not quite. 😉

      www.microsoft.com/…/office365-plans-and-pricing

      E3 plan is the norm in more complicated workspaces now. Exchange, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, Sharepoint are commonly used in such an environment, followed by Forms (HR department loves these and rightly so), Onedrive and PowerBI. Viva (formerly Yammer) makes waves now. Teams entered the market aggressively during Pandemics and it had evolved almost as fast, as Android. It can now connect to great many deal of applications thus expanding the possible workflow and collaboration.

      The ribbon being the productivity killer you’re talking about is a non-existent issue, since typical office workers rarely venture further than the main set of icons + they have the most useful icons pinned to the quick access toolbar.

      In every environment where people have been using both pieces of software (MS Office and Star/Open/Apache/Libre), the former was preferred for its ease of use.

      Again: Linux/FOSS movements tends to produce the mindset that is hard to convince that there’s something wrong about anything it does, while listening to people’s - common people, instead of experienced power users - complains, and following tested and appreciated standards should be preferred.

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      • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Exchange, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, Sharepoint are commonly used in such an environment, followed by Forms (HR department loves these and rightly so), Onedrive and PowerBI

        Having worked and working with many of these:

        • Exchange is like poor man’s IMAP - it sucks in that it’s a closed ecosystem excluding non microsoft apps for emails
        • Outlook is worse than Thunderbird by far
        • Sharepoint is a clusterfuck of content management, especially(!) with in-website office document editing
        • Onedrive is only deemed “useful” because it is forced on people to share files e.g. in Teams, and because it is integrated into many IT environments to store homefolders etc. In effect, it’s a giant piece of spyware were users store their data in “clouds” that secret services will happily tap into
        • Teams is godawful in terms of UI - it’s decent conferencing, but so is matrix, with a much better chat interface / more flexibility for the user

        FOSS office products have been far superior to what’s available on windows for at least a decade. There’s certainly occasionally one or the other app on windows that may shine in one aspect or two, but overall the bloatware user experience on windows is killing productivity of anyone who knows how to operate a keyboard.

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