People who need MS Office because once you have to collaborate with others Open/Libre/OnlyOffice won’t cut it. If one lives in a bubble and doesn’t to collaborate with others then native Linux apps might work and might even deliver a decent workflow. Once collaboration with Windows/Mac users is required then it’s game over – the “alternatives” aren’t just up to it.
Windows licenses are cheap and things work out of the box. Software runs fine, all vendors support whatever you’re trying to do and you’re productive from day zero. Sure, there are annoyances from time to time, but they’re way fewer and simpler to deal with than the hoops you’ve to go through to get a minimal and viable/productive Linux desktop experience.
It all comes down to a question of how much time (days? months?) you want to spend fixing things on Linux that simply work out of the box under Windows for a minimal fee. Buy a Windows license and spend the time you would’ve spent dealing with Linux issues doing your actual job and you’ll, most likely, get a better ROI.
Linux desktop is great, I love it but I don’t sugar coat it nor I’m delusional like most posting about it.
People who need MS Office because once you have to collaborate with others Open/Libre/OnlyOffice won’t cut it;
I use office almost daily, Libreoffice is fine for local editing and office online works if I have to collaborate.
People that just installed a password manager (KeePassXC) and a browser (Firefox/Ungoogled) via flatpak only to find out that the KeePassXC app can’t communicate with the browser extension because people are “beating around the bush” on GitHub instead of fixing the issue;
I simply installed the Bitwarden extension in Firefox and it worked flawlessly. I’m not quite sure why you would want a desktop app for a password manager (never needed this even on windows), but if you do, basically distro ships a regular Firefox package which will work just as on windows.
Anyone who wants a simple Virtual Machine and has to go thought cumbersome installation procedures like this one just to get error messages saying virtualization isn’t enable when, in fact, it is… or trying to use GNOME Boxes and have a sub-par virtualization experience;
4 commands doesn’t seem that cumbersome, it can quite literally be done in 30 seconds. Add to this the fact that it will be updated together with all other apps managed by you package manager, which is incomparably faster compared to windows update (or even most apps’ integrated self-updater)
My experience with gnome boxes was also one of the most hassle-free one ever when working with virtualisation. Worked without advanced setup on a very low-end laptop (i3 4th gen, 4gb DDR3), so I’m not quite sure what would be “sub-par”.
Designers because Adobe apps won’t run properly without having a dedicated GPU, passthrough and a some hacky way to get the image back into your main system that will cause noticeable delays;
Adobe doesn’t have a monopoly on design software. I’m not an artist though, so it could be true that the Linux alternatives aren’t full replacements. I would like to point out that, IIRC, Linus Media Group (a company with 100+ employees) uses macs for Adobe apps; windows would constantly crash, so even here the author’s conclusion (just buy a windows key) doesn’t hold up.
Gamers because of the reasons above plus a flat 5-15% performance hit;
In my experience running games though proton, this is more like a 5% difference in either direction. Native games generally run significantly better for me. Though I will admit this can depend on specific hardware and games (and proton has improved a lot over the years).
People that run old software / games because not even those will run properly on Wine;
Wine is actually starting to support an API which Microsoft has deprecated (www.phoronix.com/news/Wine-8.16-Released). These apps might only work on Linux in the future, not on windows anymore. I will admit that I’m not much of a retro gamer, and other API’s might be a different story.
Developers and sysadmins, because not everyone is using Docker and Github actions to deploy applications to some proprietary cloud solution. Finding a properly working FTP/SFTP/FTPS desktop client (similar WinSCP or Cyberduck) is an impossible task as the ones that exist fail even at basic tasks like dragging and dropping a file.
Want to start using a new language? Just apt install the new interpreter/compiler and start right away. Want to use sftp? Just type sftp into your terminal. Also, most regular file managers just support these protocols out of the box; not having to install a separate app to use these protocols sounds like a Linux win to me. Furthermore, when developing software intended for server use, linux is simply superior due to its similarity to the environment the software will eventually run on.
Just to make it clear, I understand that Linux is not perfect for everyone. But this article appears almost wilfully ignorant to multiple facts. It almost sounds like the author tried Linux for 2 hours, had a single issue they couldn’t resolve during that time (probably nvidia related, which is nvidia’s fault), and decided to give up and write salty articles instead of seeking help.
I use office almost daily, Libreoffice is fine for local editing and office online works if I have to collaborate.
So you’re essentially making the point of the article “office online works if I have to collaborate” implied that LibreOffice really isn’t up for collaboration.
Yes, libreoffice doesn’t really work for live collaboration. But office online is a good solution for that collaboration, and it works in any browser (including Firefox on Linux). Therefore, the author’s conclusion (you need windows to collaborate on word docs) is still wrong.
I personally also believe that WYSIWYG editors are highly overrated: markdown is significantly better for note-taking and similar small documents, and reports would often be better off with LaTeX or something similar. But I understand why the “4 commands is too much hassle to install VirtualBox” crowd might prefer word.
Yes, libreoffice doesn’t really work for live collaboration. But office online is a good solution for that collaboration (…) Therefore, the author’s conclusion (you need windows to collaborate on word docs) is still wrong.
The author isn’t wrong neither he’s right as the actual answer is: it depends. We don’t even have to go as far as “live collaboration” if you’ve to do serious work in MS Office apps just emailing a document to a co-worker that uses LibreOffice can end up badly. LibreOffice works, yes, until you find your custom TOC broken, macros not working, embedded content from other documents not there… images scattered around or even paragraphs ending on a different page just because the MS version of some font is slightly different from what comes with LibreOffice but different enough to totally trash your document. Even Office online has issues with some of the things I described, let alone LibreOffice and this is precisely why people in big companies buy MS Office.
Let me show you even on a very simple document I just made how wrong you are. I created the following document in MS Word and then proceeded to open it in LibreOffice just look at the comments:
So… LibreOffice can’t even ensure that the most basic formatting and features are displayed and saved properly. So much for “it works fine”.
I personally also believe that WYSIWYG editors are highly overrated: markdown is significantly better for note-taking and similar small documents, and reports would often be better off with LaTeX or something similar.
Let me guess you’re someone who works in IT and never had a typical “office job” that includes spending 90% of your time writing reports and pushing spreadsheets around. This is why you don’t get it, you’re not the typical user of MS Office and you don’t share the same use cases the OP, the article author and myself share.
Yes, some minor formatting changes occur when opening a docx file in libreoffice. Hardly sounds like a deal breaker to me. And yes, you do get a pop-up when saving to docx in libreoffice (with the toggle to disable the pop-ups right there in the message). Microsoft office does the exact same thing when saving to an odt file though: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/7c7c3a1b-df3b-48c5-aeca-8e0f2b766ba9.png
Once again, if you have to collaborate with office-users (and you cannot deal with the horror of having a different amount of space between the items), just use office online. How many times do I have to repeat myself?
Let me guess you’re someone who works in IT and never had a typical “office job” that includes spending 90% of your time writing reports and pushing spreadsheets around.
No, I do not work in IT, nor do I aspire to work in IT. I’m just a regular PC-user, who just so happens to have other opinions than you do. HOW DARE I?!?
Wouldn’t IT-workers of all people know what the more optimized editors are?
This is why you don’t get it, you’re not the typical user of MS Office and you don’t share the same use cases the OP, the article author and myself share.
The article you shared was talking about gaming, the adobe creative suite, virtual machines, electrical engineers, labs, architects and sysadmins/developers. Please don’t try to claim that the article author and OP ever had “the same use cases”.
I guess you are finally correct though, I’m indeed not the typical user of MS Office (thank god). The typical user pays $70 a year just to edit word docs, while calling the family tech support each time they try to add a horizontal page in word. If your use case is being trapped into a proprietary office solution, where you have to provide a reason before microsoft allows you to shut down your onedrive, where all your documents are saved in a mythical “cloud”, then I am glad that our use-cases differ.
I hope you see the irony of you using markdown in a comment describing why I am “out of touch” for using markdown.
If you want to use windows, that’s fine. But please don’t share such blatantly ignorant articles, and don’t try to defend them when multiple people point out why it is wrong about so many things.
I probably won’t reply to your next reaction (should there be any) unless you come up with some actual arguments, instead of “the line spacing is broken, you’re out of touch, not me”.
And how many times do I have to tell you that Office Online doesn’t have all the features of Office Desktop? It isn’t even close.
When LibreOffice can’t even make sure text ends up on the same place (as on the screenshot) it isn’t good for collaboration with MS Office users.
Why is it so hard for you look at the screenshot and admit that it isn’t as good as you’ve been saying?
using markdown in a comment describing why I am “out of touch” for using markdown.
No, you’re not “out of touch” for using markdown, you’re “out of touch” for implying that markdown can be a solution for the typical MS Office user as you did.
I don’t tend to use word documents much anymore, but from what I’ve heard, of the 2 main open source document viewers Only Office probably has the most compatibility with word, and iirc it recently added PDF support
If all the apps are in React Native I feel like they are gonna have a bad time. If you’re not careful React Native apps have bad performance, and Fire TVs don’t have a lot of performance to spare.
You are right. I was happy with linux mint, and before that MX Linux. This is all just bike shedding. I spend a lot of time setting things up Hell, I spend too much time just downloading crap because I have not bothered to make a script that would automate installation of the apps I use.
Debian based, arch based, rhel based are all somewhat different and have different package managers (with flatpak, appimage and snap that might be less important nowadays though)
Nobara comes with all the stuff for gaming, not everyone who uses Linux knows exactly what they need to install themselves
NixOS is fantastic and drastically different from all the others
NixOS, silverblue, vanilla are all immutable which makes a massive difference
Also not everyone wants to install their own DE, so if they want something like cinnamon, pantheon, KDE they need a distro that comes with it preinstalled
I have the opposite problem on Windows, my computer stops running whenever it goes to sleep. I think it’s Nvidia-related, but I’m not entirely sure how to track it down. The errors I get are not very helpful.
Where’s the fun in paying someone else to do it all for you?
MergerFS+SnapRAID will give you a very similar set of features/flexibility compared to UNRAID storage. OpenMediaVault has native MergerFS+SnapRAID support and can also do ZFS - I would look at that for a comparable alternative. Otherwise, I’m very fond of a Proxmox host with a TrueNAS VM for ZFS pool management, or just managing the ZFS pool with the Proxmox host itself through this cockpit extension.
I was really excited about peppermint so I switched my old laptop from Kubuntu. but peppermint feels more sluggish than KDE and now I’m not sure what I did wrong :(
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