LibreOffice is right about Microsoft, and it matters more than you think.

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Submitted ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Mrkawfee@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.xda-developers.com/libreoffice-is-right-about-microsoft/

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PM_ME_YOUR_BOOBIES@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The “windows just works” claim is stupid. Especially the statement the author makes on how you just double click an icon and it just works everytime and if ever there is an issue, someone else will eventually fix it.

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- trillnsfw@lemmynsfw.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  on windows id just give up if I couldnt solve an issue, on linux I actually find a solution, the solution for windows is click 50 obscure things if it exists, linux is usually modifying something with the terminal which can be scary if you arent used to it and don’t know what commands do, eventually youll realize its mostly heading to a director and editing a file, technically you can click around and do that without opening a terminal, using a file editor and manager instead.
  
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EarthshipTechIntern01@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Disappointing Fox news version of Windows’ take of something somebody at Libre once said about Windows’ domination of markets.

This read like basics. Was hoping for more info on how unusable XML was fot LibreOffice or if it wasn’t (unusable to OSS versions). Obviously, OSS is better for enough reasons that a few in the EU are switching government computers from Windows to Linux.

Yes, corporate & proprietary schtick is lame & crippling. Old news. Guess it needs to be yelled until we research start taking about (marketing) FOSS Solutions.

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Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I mean, they could just really suck at writing good software. Isn’t some sort of rule of thumb law to never attribute to malicious intent what can just as easily be explained by stupidity?

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- EnsignWashout@startrek.website ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There is such a law, but many of us feel that Microsoft has proven malice a few times, when it comes to open standards.
  
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Shanmugha@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
There are people for whom this is news? Cheesus chroist

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Tehhund@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The problem: our desire for convenience

Bring on the downvotes, but: When it comes to tools like computers, convenience is synonymous with productivity. People aren’t unreasonably demanding to have their hands held, they want to get stuff done. We need to stop acting like ~~convenience~~ productivity is just one of many concerns. It is the primary concern.

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- lefaucet@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I find dealing with Micros~1 a giant pain in the ass. It’s always getting in the way of productivity with pointless rearranging of menus all the time, constantly trying to get me to use One Drive, shoving AI into every corner of everything.
  
  I’m trying to make a spreadsheet to figure out and share budgets, instead I’m spending my time hunting for that menu that disappeared and figuring out how to disable copilot because I’m legally not allowed to share client data with third parties.
  
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  - Tehhund@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This an incredibly tech-brained answer. “Sure, lots of OSS is difficult to install, breaks frequently, and lacks key features, but did you know Microsoft sometimes moves a menu item?”
    
    I love OSS and I want it to succeed but “an item moved” isn’t in the same ballpark as the barriers to OSS adoption.
    
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  - tomkatt@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Micros~1
    
    I see what you did there. 😆
    
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- Zink@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yes, exactly that! That convenience == productivity connection is exactly why I am a Linux Mint fan!
  
  Convenience has value, so a lot of people will give their “free” information, attention, and control to commercial entities in exchange for it. Enshittification ensues and many of us are conditioned to beware of things that are simple to use because it REALLY just means you’ve been locked out of 95% of the options.
  
  When a good FOSS project can bring convenience and productivity to more people around the world with NO strings attached, that is an incredibly good thing. It’s like, humanity actually working together just for the sake of the greater good, but doing it on the internet because governments can suck at it.
  
  Damn, I need to find a good open source project to help out this winter when I’m forced to stop my oudoor “engineer turned farmer” hobbies for the season.
  
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- sunbeam60@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  In addition to that, with great respect to the hard working developers on LibreOffice, at least some of what seems like “unnecessary complexity” in Microsoft’s format is most likely just requirements LibreOffice isn’t solving or haven’t even encountered yet. You don’t get to Office’s size without having to deal with the most insane batshit crazy backcompat or compatibility issues.
  
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  - Noja@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They are intentionally obfuscating their file formats. It has nothing to do with complexity or “backwards compatibility” Microsoft has a LONG history of stuff like this.
    
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- UltraMagnus@startrek.website ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No, what you say makes sense, and I think it’s part of the reason why linux usage (as a daily driver) is starting to increase now versus 20 years ago. It’s just easier to install and use linux distros nowadays.
  
  And most folks who want office for free are going to go with google docs, for the convenience factor.
  
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Unyieldingly@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
microsoft is a dirty bastard

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dance_ninja@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If the standard is overly complex, does that mean it’ll be a bigger pain for MS employees to maintain? Sounds like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

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- CriticalMiss@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Iirc the openXML standard was open sourced due to some anti trust stuff brewing. They then expanded on the standard with proprietary addons that give LibreOffice/Google Docs trouble.
  
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Corelli_III@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not sure why this author is spreading “paid software is convenient and just works” rhetoric. Simply isn’t the case. You just get addicted to trying to solve your problems with money.

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- hansolo@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Right?! That’s how this article ends?! “Sorry, but people are lazy, so, uh…Microsoft just wins I guess.”
  
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Bluewing@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’mma just going to sit over here in the corner with my AbbiWord and Gnumeric…

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racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve heard this comment about OpenXML (the xml format of the office documents) before, and i’m a bit on the fence about it.

It’s of course indeed ridiculously complex, but so is office. Microsoft both adds a shit ton of functionality to their documents, and keeps an impressive amount of backwards compatibility.

In the past i heard complaints about part of the OpenXML spec that also allows older binary data in there for backwards compatibility reasons, which of course means for OSS implementations that they don’t just have to implement this spec, but also the older spec that came before to be truly compatible with everything a modern office version can open.

But on the other hand, if i look at it from the side of Microsoft, they opened up their format, they’ve got a gazillion functionalities, should they remove functionality to appease the open source developers? If so which? Should they stop being backwards compatible with documents of decades ago to appease the open source developers? If so how long should they support? Are you going to tell their customers?

Office is an immense program with an immense amount of legacy features, backwards compatibility, …

It’s incredibly complex by nature. And might they have made the format more complex to dissuade competition? Could be. However, in this instance Occam’s razor pushes me more to “write a huge program over a timespan of many decades, with thousands upon thousands of programmers working on it, and you’ll indeed most likely end up with something very complex…”

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- kattfisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Office Open XML was only standardized in order to combat the threat posed by Open Document as organisations were starting to mandate use of standardized formats.
  
  You write as if Microsoft did this because they wanted interoperability, when in reality they only begrudgingly accept that some must be allowed in order to avoid losing control of the market.
  
  The real solution would have been to never approve the OOXML standard and not legitimize Microsoft’s attempt to make their proprietary format appear open.
  
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- lengau@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I would agree, except that every piece of it is significantly more complex than it needs to be. ODF is considerably simpler in part because it makes use of other pre-existing standards for things like dates and times. OOXML redefines so many of those things, and in many cases Microsoft Office’s implementation isn’t actually compatible with their own standard.
  
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  - racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Do you have more concrete examples? I’m reasonably familiar with OpenXML, and seeing the date issues in microsoft systems (Excel having the same bug that considers 1900 a leap year, to stay compatible with Lotus Notes), i can imagine them redefining everything just to be in full control ^^'…
    
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- madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The one thing you have to give Microsoft is backwards compatibility. They make hot garbage, but God damn if you can’t run that garbage from 10 years ago.
  
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  - EnsignWashout@startrek.website ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure, but it’s not quite the compelling argument it used to be.
    
    Today, I’m not sitting here pining for old Linux software that stopped working. And the small amount of old windows software that did finally stop working actually works now only works on Linux with Wine.
    
    That’s another of the decision points that finally switched to fully favoring Linux, for me, in the last decade.
    
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  - T156@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Although 10 years ago isn’t that long in computer terms any more. That’s basically 4th Gen Intel Core CPU territory. It’s an older computer, but still perfectly usable these days.
    
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TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My only issue with Libre Office is that they are not available on mobile phones. I want to use spread sheets to make calculate and make projections on my finances if I can’t use my computer at a given moment.

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- bigbabybilly@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I understand your desire, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna use any spreadsheet software on my phone. I can think of few worse platforms for excel. Even my iPad Pro is a nightmare if I don’t have my Magic Keyboard and a mouse. I’ll crack out a laptop or talk through it with gpt.
  
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- lefaucet@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  opendocument.app
  
  github.com/opendocument-app/OpenDocument.droid
  
  I’ve used this a couple times. Seemed okay
  
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- Mwa@thelemmy.club ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think there is a version on F-droid right?
  
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  - logan_hero@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Only a viewer not full package: f-droid.org/…/org.documentfoundation.libreoffice
    
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  - napkin2020@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    droidify.eu.org/app/?id=com.collabora.libreoffice…
    
    No Libreoffice.
    
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TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t buy the argument that windows just works or that it’s somehow better or more stable. The reality is we all have grown to learn about computers specifically using windows and it’s been a steep learning curve. We have gotten familiar with its specificities and its sporadic misbehavior and accepted that as the norm. And people prefer what they are used to even if it’s suboptimal because they would rather not learn something else from scratch, even if in the long run it could be better.

Put any person who has zero computer experience in front of a windows computer or Linux computer and I doubt they would say the windows computer just works and the Linux one doesn’t.

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- EnsignWashout@startrek.website ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Put any person who has zero computer experience in front of a windows computer or Linux computer and I doubt they would say the windows computer just works and the Linux one doesn’t.
  
  I did this experiment on my own kids. They find Linux more usable, and find it hard to believe people tolerate Windows.
  
  There’s also some indoctrination involved.
  
  But they have access to both, and they prefer Linux. I think that the “Windows is genuinely easier” argument doesn’t hold any water anymore.
  
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- racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Then i don’t know what you’re doing with your computer, but every time i use linux, all those things that are “awesome and just work on linux” somehow still have lots of annoying gotchas that waste too much of my time.
  
  I’ve got some nice linux servers running that i’m really happy with. But once you go for the linux desktop, it’s just a world of pain compared to windows, no matter how you look at it. I’m more than experienced enough to get it running in the end, but claiming that linux “just works” is delusional…
  
  Just the fact of how the ecosystem is fractured (which is also mentioned in the article here, with running a debian package on fedora), is already something that’ll make it too complicated for a lot of people to handle. And even the things “that just work”, just don’t. For example, i’ve got a steamdeck like device now, with bazzite (steamos like OS). Yes, it’s amazing at running windows games in linux. I heard so many people say how with proton “running windows games on linux just works”. If you stick to the ultra popular games, it for sure does. Go to a game that’s a bit older or lesser known, and no it isn’t. Make time to figure out settings to get it to run, tinker with controller mappings, and in the end, it might just still not work. And pretty much everything on linux feels that way, the initial impression is decent. If you stay on the safe path, it’ll work pretty well. Do something a bit less common: you’re on your own.
  
  And that’s its commonly accepted for trolls to blame the user, and be like “it’s free, so accept it the way it is” when someone dares to ask questions or … even… (do i dare say it?)… complain… Doesn’t make for the most constructive environment…
  
  Linux has achieved many great things, but the linux desktop sure has its use if you’re willing to spend your time on it, but acting as if it’s a better experience than the windows desktop is just delusional. There’s no other way to put it.
  
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  - TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I didn’t say Linux just works. I’m just fighting back against the preconceived idea that it’s just a total mess. I have myself ran into issues with linux. But also, I’ve run into many issues with windows too.
    
    The difference is that when people encounter issues with windows, it’s like well too bad, need to find someone who can fix it. But when they encounter an issue with Linux, it’s like linux sucks, let me get back to Windows as if it didn’t suck at least as much.
    
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- vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  the windows just works argument actually refers to the fact that it’s consistent.
  
  If you have a problem with the desktop, nobody needs to ask you which de you use, or which parts you have substituted out. You have a graphics problem, nobody asks if wayland or x11. You have a problem with audio, nobody asks you whether you have pipewire-pulse installed and to use pipewire. Shit’s the same everywhere.
  
  I say this as an arch linux user. The choice we all love, is actually a detriment to the average non-power user.
  
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  - sqgl@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Apple has even fewer choices and therefore greater consistency.
    
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- Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not so much the user experience, but I’m not aware of any software that doesn’t work with Microsoft, except for ones developed by Apple.
  
  With the latest version of Windows, it’s not even a question as to whether a given piece of software will run.
  
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  - sqgl@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Networking your home computers still does not work smoothly. It often stops for no good reason until you reboot everything.
    
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- Brkdncr@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Every single time I try out Linux it’s been a shitshow. Stuff doesn’t work, drive encryption requires multiple passwords to boot up. Updates that fail.
  
  Windows just works. Only apple is more consistent.
  
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  - dropped_packet@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I have never seen an encryption implementation that required two passwords to decrypt the disk.
    
    Is it possible the first one decrypted the disk and the second password was for your user account?
    
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- embed_me@programming.dev ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Linux works better than windows for most apps/system stuff.
  
  But there are certain classes of apps which are not up to par with whatever is available on windows. An office suite is one of them, I just use the Google suite (mostly sheets) in a browser, it works better for me.
  
  I agree with the developers point about lock-in but sadly I don’t have enough time at work to work with libre calc over proprietary alternatives (I have tried it truly but the performance and user experience is just not good enough for someone already past deadlines)
  
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- AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Put any person who has zero computer experience in front of a windows computer or Linux computer and I doubt they would say the windows computer just works and the Linux one doesn’t.
  
  In my experience, usually with Linux they have less problems and it’s easier to use. Until they need an application that only works on Windows.
  
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  - TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think this is an issue where you are talking about people coming from windlws trying to do windows things on linux like run windows software. Of course you can in some cases run windows software on Linux but it is not a fair comparison to blame Linux for not being able to run windows software. Linux has it’s own suite of software and that is often better suited.
    
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  - T156@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    In my experience, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag. There are some things that work in Linux, and some things that don’t, even after a bit of fiddling. My desktop’s front panel is completely unusable on Linux, for example.
    
    Windows is at least widespread enough that it’s far more likely that parts will work on it at least to some degree. And sure enough, the front panel works fine there.
    
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Taalnazi@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Moved to LibreOffice. No regrets.

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- skeezix@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  does libre office do scripting? (like VBA?)
  
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  - olympicyes@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    LibreOffice Basic, JavaScript, Python. But the macros wouldn’t necessarily be compatible with Excel.
    
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SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
hey LibreOffice when are you gonna make the keyboard shortcuts in LibreOffice Calc match the keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Excel?

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- supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Wait, isn’t this just a matter of generating a config text file that you could set keybindings with that would specify all the custom keybindings necessary to give a basic degree of commonality in keybindings for a newbie?
  
  Coming from emacs the idea that a program as complex as the Libreoffice suite wouldn’t have a generalized modular way to shift between different keybindings styles is a bit odd to me. Isn’t it just a matter of exposing the keybindings in a text file config format that could easily be imported/loaded into your Libreoffice program?
  
  I don’t have any skin in this game, but I do think that it is worth emphasizing how useful it is to accomodate people who want radically different keyboard shortcut styles, or rather how obviously common sense it is to prioritize this in development. Keep a main keybinding style, specify a config format and then let the weirdos fiddle with alternate keybindings on the side.
  
  Keyboard shortcuts can be dealbreakers especially for someone stressed out and overwhelmed who is having trouble getting momentum in a new software, thus for an open source project this is a natural target for software development focus because it is possibly one of the simplest, most effective and broadly applicable way to expand the usefulness of Libreoffice tools to a bigger audience (who will eventually become contributors or support the community in some way themselves).
  
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  - SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    There’s the rub. The last time I checked, there was no way to package keybindings in a modular way, which is a massive oversight in my opinion for a project meant to replace that which millions of office workers have years of muscle memory engrained
    
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- Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Probably never
  
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Saleh@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The thing with “just works” in monopolies is that it eventually stops working. I already have terrible excel bugs all the time on my work computer. Left clicking a cell sometimes just selects half a dozen adjancent cells. You vlick something and all of a sudden the rendering just goes completely haywire… You have two larger tables open and it just crashes…

Things will only get worse from this, until the global economy will loose trillions to being stuck with Microsoft.

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- pycorax@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You’re right but at the end of the day, the average person is content with having their stuff just work for now and that’s a reasonable expectation isn’t it? If it ain’t broke, people aren’t going to go out of their way to protect themselves from a what-if that they may feel is going to maybe mildly inconvenience them when it happens regardless of what it actually is, since they may be ignorant of the true state of how things might be.
  
  And in the end, some are just gonna accept that inconvenience from stuff not working completely rather than switch. People have been saying to switch away from Chrome for years and now even with ad-blocking being nerfed, people are still on it.
  
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- kadup@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  The thing with “just works” in monopolies is that it eventually stops working
  
  This gets accelerated when the company starts changing the product just for the sake of having to change something to meet some OKR, or because they need to find a way to incorporate the newest marketing buzz (cloud, AI, etc).
  
  The Office suite was simple to use and performant. Nowadays I watched a college professor struggle for 8 minutes trying to figure out how to save a file locally rather than saving it to OneDrive, because they redesigned everything around that. It also takes an obnoxiously long time to launch, it keeps popping up some Copilot button in inconvenient places too.
  
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- stringere@sh.itjust.works ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  16 digit numbers
  
  Still
  
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MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Anyone who thinks this is new, please read this, this and this.

And there’s also this. It’s a topic since shortly after the standardization of the Open Document Format 2006. MS then feared to lose whole governments as customers, so they (pseudo)standardized their own format, with a whole bunch of traps (in the format) and abuses of market power.

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flop_leash_973@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

The problem: our desire for convenience

This hits it right on the money. As nice as open source and open standards are, at the end of the day none of that matters to the 99% that want/need to do X as fast and painlessly as possible.

To people like my wife MS Office/LibreOffice/Google Docs are all the same thing in the category of productivity suite. And one of those does not meet her where she lives in day to day life. And it doesn’t because there is no money in doing so for LibreOffice. And there is no benefit to her to seek out LibreOffice for her uses.

Hell, just take a look around at the number of people that preach about the evils of Microsoft, Google, or whoever but love them an iPhone and Macbook. As bad as Microsoft and Google can be for screwing over the user with vendor lock-in they don’t hold a candle to Apple. But they get the money despite there being “better” options technically and philosophically for nearly everything they make, but Apple knows all of that pales in importance compared to being convenient.

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- Wiz@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  want/need to do X as fast and painlessly as possible.
  
  Yes, but money is a pain point. Free software eliminated that pain.
  
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- Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The piece on using the tech is a bit much. We cannot get by without a smartphone in modern life and they essentially do not exist outside of apple and google.
  
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  - flop_leash_973@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure they do, but all of the alternatives are not nearly as convenient. But you can absolutely get by without an iPhone or Android phone with Play services.
    
    The example actually proves the point more strongly than LibreOffice vs MS Office does by the increased level of effort it requires of the user to go out of their way to not actively support the bad things Apple and Google do.
    
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aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I honestly don’t understand why I would ever write up or share a Microsoft document.

It’s just fucking rich text format. It’s obvious they’re manipulating the format to lock down users with less computer knowledge. Otherwise, why is it so fucking complicated?

Markdown accomplishes 95% of what a word doc does and it is legible with or without rendering.

All of the “special features” of office docs wind up being security nightmares, unusable junk, or both.

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- commander@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  My understanding is that Proton Docs web editor is a markdown editor and I’ve seen people complain about the limitations there but I’m not a power user to compare with. Don’t know how well collaborative annotation/suggestions/replace would work with markdown. Fully out of my knowledge base but interested in learning what office text document abilities can’t be done in markdown
  
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- DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  When in save for myself I like rtf or markdown. But when I need on my work it’s normally something from a template or something already on the server that is using Microsoft format, when your employer decide this for you, there isn’t any choice.
  
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  - corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No, there’s not often a choice.
    
    But I include and discuss a 4% penalty when making wage calculations in an interview.
    
    Even though Office, OneDrive, Teams, Ansible, Jira and Confluence are different toxic apps/websites, it’s still the same “shit tool stack” penalty, one hit.
    
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homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Shit, I’ve been right about microsoft for thirty-plus years and it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference.

They are. A. MONOPOLY. They have never “fought fair”, and it wouldn’t ever occur to them to do so. Their heart is all BOGU.

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ilinamorato@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

There’s a phrase that gets passed around the tech scene: “Linux is only free if your time has no value.” Because, yes, Linux and other open-source apps are free to download and use. In a world driven by money, you’d expect the free version to overtake the paid one. The problem is, the paid option…just works.

Sure, until the paid option does something anti-competitive or gets too expensive or shuts down entirely, and you have to switch to a different paid option, sometimes burning dozens of hours in switching time (and/or hundreds of hours of work through lost or corrupted data) in the process. Not to mention the transition costs of just figuring out the new thing. Why not just switch to something that won’t go away, or be changed under your feet?

The problem is that it needs that initial time investment to get it working the way you want it.

Maybe I’m just enough of a tinkerer in any situation that I’ve put pretty much the same amount of time into fiddling with my Linux settings as I did with my last Windows computer.

If your hardware isn’t working properly, you have to find drivers that run on Linux; if the developer never made Linux-compatible drivers, you have to figure something else out.

People have been talking about this for my entire life, but in the past year of my switch to Linux, it has literally never happened once. I downloaded a new, open-source driver for my drawing tablet because it had some extra features that I wanted, but even it worked out of the box. I’ve never experienced this incompatibility. Honestly I’ve never even had trouble with software I wanted not being available for my distro.

Am I doing Linux wrong?

Windows doesn’t have this problem.

LOL.

Installers made for Windows don’t need any special TLC;

ROFL!

you double-click them and they work.

OH wait they’re serious?!

Once they’re installed, they work. If you need to install a driver, it works. You open a document in Office, it works.

Sure, if you don’t run into a permissions issue. And if the system registry doesn’t get corrupted. And if you’re not on an ARM machine. And if your TPM is the right version. And if you’re on the right subversion of Windows. And if a previous install didn’t leave some remnant of itself behind. And if you don’t want to do anything with an Apple device at all. And if sometimes you have the right fonts installed?

Honestly, I think I’ve had fewer problems installing Linux applications than Windows applications, but I can’t attest to that. I think I can be pretty confident in saying that they’re mostly equivalent. Both of them are pretty mature platforms with fairly minimal hiccups, in my experience.

And if something doesn’t work, we can yell at Microsoft until they publish a fix that makes it work again.

That’s a weird way of spelling “until they ignore it for six months and then lock the support thread for inactivity.”

Microsoft has gotten us into a state where we don’t need to think, tinker, or troubleshoot our software. We just double-click the icon and wait for it to “just work.” If it doesn’t, it’s someone else’s issue to solve, and we flood social media and support emails until the issue is resolved.

Here I have to agree with the article, because whatever the reality of installing applications on Windows, this is the fiction they’ve sold us. Apple, too. All operating systems have troubles, and all vendors try to downplay them and fix the stuff that causes problems for most of their users. Linux is just honest about the fact that they can’t make everything a perfectly smooth experience for everyone.

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Dewege@feddit.org ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Also they already start shortening the live cycle of the non subscription office licenses, calling it „Modern-Lifecycle-Policy“. Up to now you hat 7-10 years of update support. But this year Office 2016 and 2019 phase out, next year already Office 2021! And Office 2024 only has support til 2029. Thats from today only 4 years (at the same price!)

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communism@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think the point about convenience is more about familiarity than Windows being inherently easier. Speaking as someone who switched from Linux to Windows previously, I found the change very difficult as a lot of the FOSS software I was using didn’t have Windows versions. I had a nightmare trying to read one of my LUKS-encrypted drives on Windows. I was practically using WSL for everything. That’s not that Windows is inherently harder than Linux; it’s just that I was used to Linux and the FOSS ecosystem, just as some are used to Windows and their proprietary ecosystem.

If your hardware isn’t working properly, you have to find drivers that run on Linux; if the developer never made Linux-compatible drivers, you have to figure something else out.

Most drivers come pre-installed with the Linux kernel or your distro—I never had to manually install any drivers for my current hardware. Compared to Windows where you will have to go out of your way to install graphics drivers for NVIDIA or AMD depending on your graphics card, if you want to make the most out of your card’s capabilities.

Installers made for Windows don’t need any special TLC; you double-click them and they work.

See, I think if you’ve used Linux for any length of time you’d quickly find the system of package managers way easier than the system of having to hunt down an .exe on the internet, guess whether or not it’s a legit copy or if it’s malware, and manually manage updates for all the different software you have installed.

I agree that people stay on Windows out of convenience, but it’s not convenience as in Windows is inherently easier, but it’s convenience as in you’re used to the way things work on Windows. Because in my perspective, things do “just work” on Linux, and that’s because I’m used to the way things work here.

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squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I remember when Microsoft first attempted to prevent the standardisation of Open Document Format (used by LibreOffice and others) and then bullied its way into getting approval for own OOXML standard. Already back then, supporters of FOSS warned that Microsoft would use the overly complicated OOXML to maintain its stranglehold on users of Office-like software.:

Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies. Albeit, MS-OOXML neglects various standards and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well, especially when a standard comes with 6000 pages of specifications without serving its minimalistic purpose.

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Drusenija@aussie.zone ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The comment about convenience trumping almost everything else reminded me of this old post (wasn’t originally on The Urban Dictionary but they have it now under the definition of Linux).

If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines

When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, “You had to do what with the seat?”

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