Submitted 7 hours ago by einlander@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/microsoft_pulls_ms365_business_premium/
Google offers workspace for free to nonprofits, Including device management. No one, I know in nonprofits even fucks with Microsoft because they’re so ridiculous. Now it’ll be even less people.
Google now has the market cornered because they aren’t as greedy.
And if you need a more MS Office like feel: Use Softmaker.
Yeah office isn’t the what orgs care about losing with this change. Business premium was the lowest cost license option available to non-profits that allowed access to identity management using entra.
That’s the real story here.
Sometimes I find myself annoyed by Lemmy users. We love to tout foss alternatives, even when they don’t work as well, or aren’t nearly as polished.
Libre office is a different story, it has everything you’ll need, it’s really complete, it does everything you want and it can read any format you throw at it and save its output in any format you need. It launches faster than Microsoft office, it’s more stable, I really have absolutely no complaints, everyone should be using it.
Does it support macros?
GNOME Evolution is also a good outlook alternative and am pretty sure it was made as a open source alternative to outlook
Has it gotten a makeover yet? Last time I used it ~3 years ago it still looked like it was built in the early 90s.
It was functional, not a complaint about that. The super old design just got on my nerves.
I use evolution! It has some advantages over thunderbird but afaik it’s *nix only.
And if you need it in a browser, there is Collabora, which exists as a paid business version with support or a free non-support version, that can easily be deployed with Nextcloud. Another alternative would be CryptPad.
If you also need your mails in your browser, there are multiple providers like mailbox.org that offer mail encryption even through the online mail interface.
Bootstraps, folks! Microsoft is basically BEGGING you to try Linux, and it’s now easier than ever - even easier than installing Windows!
Unfortunately the inevitable enshitification of our lives by capitalism will continue, even if we remove it from our lives as much as we are able.
What microsoft does to its products, it also does to our governments and civil liberties, social media does to society and democracy, data brokers do to privacy, zillow does to housing security, wallstreet does to economic mobility and financial regulations, etc, etc, etc.
you know, i always wondered why of all places to attack, they chose the twin towers. starting to understand it now.
Microsoft has no soul. I’m going to guess that Google will follow suit. There is no class solidarity quite like corporate class solidarity. Fuck all these companies.
Yesterday, I finally talked my parents into canceling MS356 and switching to LibreOffice and Thunderbird.
Now, the excessive subscription fees for MS365 goes to them instead.
If Microsoft keeps this up, I might even manage to persuade them to switch to Linux at some point.
MS13?
But can you also get all the enterprise features they have with Linux? Like, backups, mobile device management, identity and access management, MFA? All integrated tightly and easily deployable from a portal?
lame. The web versions suck.
I thought from the headline that it was just a downgrade to Business Standard, no this is to Business Basic! That’s a huge yikes, it’s so much harder to be productive in those web versions.
I honestly would not be surprised if users work out installing LibreOffice et al. so they can still have a desktop app experience because of this move.
Might as well pay up, what are you going to do learn something slightly different?
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
Yet again, I laugh, and remark ‘People still use Windows? People still use MSFT products?’
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 34 minutes ago
Sadly. An example: I work at a small school that does not have an IT department. Staff and teachers are nearly IT-illiterate, and the students can hardly be coaxed to do stuff on a laptop instead of their phones. So installing Linux would add an additional hurdle for both. Probably much smaller than they think, but still: it heightens the threshold to even consider switching to Linux.
There’s a few people who know that Linux is just as valid as Windows, but who would they trust to make the switch safely. Me? I’m not a professional. So they’d have to pay someone, properly. And then it all comes down to money again which usually comes down to “let’s not change anything”.
So for now I’d just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365.
The same goes for “Google Business Suite” or some such. Making the effort to roll your own would require to pay at least 1 person, and some sort of transitional period. It’s cheaper and easier to pay none and just blame it on Google when things don’t work as desired. These people just don’t see it as a priority. Don’t understand the dangers.
Etterra@discuss.online 1 hour ago
Especially when you can use literally any other word process and program and save in Microsoft document formats.