You can do everything but you will have problems with word documents. There’s online office for better compatability with the caveat of reduced functionality. There’s great compatability with Only Office and WPS Office but its not perfect.
There was a comment recommending Zorin OS and I agree. Its a great distro to switch to from windows. Setup is easy and flathub is included in the software store.
I’d recommend trying Linux on dualboot and see if you can replace windows!
I always install the Noto fonts for things like emojis and asian characters, extra fonts to cover the Cyrillic alphabet, and finally OnePlus’s Slate font, which I fell in love with back in the days when I rocked a OnePlus 7 Pro.
Its fun to open the terminal and learning the language of the computer, even if it disagree with you sometimes. Most times. Also i can do anything, including messing it up irreparably!
i know i’ve wanted something like this for a while. i really didn’t want to have to figure out how to get the existing keyman keyboard layout to work on linux, because fcitx works fine for all my other input needs, and i already knew how fcitx worked as i made an addon to get on-screen keyboards to work with it a while back…
as i know not many people would dare venture in the world of fcitx addons, due to the quite horrendous state the documentation is in… so if i wasn’t gonna do it, likely no-one else was, so i did it! and shared it with everyone, because the worse that could happen is that someone helps me make it better!
First off, I love Linux. It’s my daily driver and I wouldn’t want to use anything else.
But in my past career I was the CIO at a very large firm. Lawyers need Microsoft Office and Windows. If you hire a good assistant or paralegal with word processing experience, they are going to need Microsoft Word. LibreOffice is good, but it’s not a replacement in this scenario. Good word processors are like wizards and will save you hours. It’s not worth it to make them learn something else.
Then there’s drafting software, templating, practice-specific tools, etc. Anything geared for legal is going to run on Windows. What are you using for time entry? What about accounting?
Not to mention, you have some information security obligations under the model rules and you don’t want to mess with that. Although Linux has security advantages over Windows, you still have to take measures to secure it. Maybe that’s easy enough for you to do on your own laptop, but your practice will grow to at least a few staff and an associate. Somebody has to do IT because you’re sure as hell not going to waste billable hours on it.
I had to use Windows in that old gig and it really wasn’t bad. It’s stable, reliable, easy to support. Everyone you hire will have used it before. It’s an unpopular opinion around here, but it’s a quality operating system that’s affordable. I guarantee your cost of ownership will be lower on Windows in your particular situation.
Counter point, Ubuntu specifically has so many old posts and answers that aren’t necessary in modern systems, deprecated, or straight up no longer correct. Also a lot of recommendations that can screw up a system in strange ways. I feel like many issues (ie. Bluetooth, USB, Wifi) are due to people stumbling on old posts with configs and tools that have changed and blindly applying them
Frankly, that’s the reason – the original reason, and the most important – to use Free Software. With very few exceptions, the origin story of every Free Software project was somebody getting fed up with a piece of proprietary software either abusing them or just not doing what they wanted it to do. In fact, the entire Free Software movement itself was invented in the first place because Richard Stallman got fed up with Xerox’s bullshit back in the day!
So yeah, there you go: that’s the only reason you need, and you already knew it.
Linux is stable if you use a distro that’s known to be stable, example: Linux mint. This is one of the “just works” distros. There are a couple, but I highly recommend mint. Linux can do all of what you need done, from documents, PDFs to viewing all kinds of videos. I’ve never once run into any issue doing any of that. You have libreoffice and onlyoffice that have amazing compatibility with MS office. If anything, you can use the MS office suite online and call it a day. Hell, you can use Google’s office suite, too. PDFs? Zero worries. Videos are good, too. We do have VLC which basically plays anything you throw at it. However, since you have a business and want to make sure things always work, I do recommend that you keep at least one windows machine in the office for just in case. I don’t have a business, but I’ve always had this one laptop that runs windows. I debloated the shit out of it. Blocked all of the telemetry using Microsoft’s own firewall and it’s sitting there for just in case.
Edit: forgot to mention that you are always welcome to come here and ask if you needed help. I find the Lemmy Linux community to be extremely helpful. Everyone jumps in to help every time I had a question.
zorin os is an out of the box distro that will have all the applications from the start and maximum windows look, feel, and compatibility. https://zorin.com/os/
Video formats? There literally are VLC, ffmpeg and MPV. Every normal format works on every Distro.
Get most apps from Flathub.org, use any Distro you want but I recommend Fedora Kinoite.
Word documents for sure, PDF editing actually too. PDF editing is cursed in itself, but Okular + PDF arranger + Firefox + sometimes GIMP (for actually censoring) work.
Have a look at Stirling PDF, a project combining all of these effords. Its not yet a fully graphical desktop app but this command will work on Fedora Kinoite:
IMO, the best distro is going to be whatever you’re most comfortable with (given it’s still getting updates blah blah blah). Some might be easier in the get go but if they do wonky things (compared to what you’re used to) an update might really screw you up and leave you in a situation where you’re doing a lot of research.
For the most part, you can make any distro do whatever you want, but if you understand one much better than the rest, use that.
zorin is sorta the opposite of what you ask. its a distro that seeks to emulate windows and its functionality. then also it makes it as out of the box as possible. so it has pretty much any application you need preinstalled including wind along with play on linux so you can install windows things pretty easily.
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