"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free." - Linus Torvalds
"If free software is like Libre Office, I would rather pay for Microsoft Office. "

For people who think/find that open source solutions are always better than commercial/paid/proprietary ones, you are not going to like this rant.

I'm starting to get really fucking fed up with people always, whenever I see someone (including myself) mentioning that an open source solution which is an alternative to a closed source one, saying that it's shit.
I've had countless encounters on here (also irl) where someone mentions that an open source solution (GIMP or Libre Office for example) is shit by default while they've maybe (or probably?) not even used it themselves.
Also people going "you can't even compare those two as for what they can do/features/functions". I'm definitely not saying that those open solutions are perfect. But to call them worthless or shit and/or to say that you literally 'cannot compare them' or that the open solution just doesn't work as a *FACT* is fucking bullshit.

Let's take GIMP for example, the use case of a friend of mine:

- He works both with macOS and Linux Mint, he *needs* a design/photo editing tool which is cross platform. (or at least one which works on macOS+Linux)
- He does not mind paying for software but he prefers to use software which is free as in freedom because he also likes to tinker with the software (a lot of people find this argument bullshit, I noticed on here. Why is that? It's a valid reason. Maybe not for you but we're not talking about you right now).
- He likes Photoshop but due to Linux incompatibility and the fact that he can't tinker around with the code, it's not an option for him.
- He'd gladly go for paid software but GIMP fills all his design/photo editing needs (also the more advanced ones but don't ask them to me because I have no fucking clue how that shit works)
- GIMP *just works* for him, he never has trouble with it.

Let's take Libre Office, my own use case:

- It *NEEDS* to work on Linux, which Libre does.
- It *HAS* to be open source, ethic/moral thingy; Libre Office is open source.
- It doesn't need to work complete magic but it needs proper basic document and 'excel' sheet functionalities which is the case with Libre and it works *for me*.
- I don't mind paying for it, will probably donate in the future (seeding the macOS+windows+linux versions fulltime at the moment)

See, for our use cases, it works very well. So why go into "it's no match for proprietary alternatives" mode right away? It actually is, as you see in the examples above.

Please stop saying that those solutions *don't work* or *are shit* because they do work and are useful for me and loads of people around the world.
Do they have *ALL* the features which their proprietary alternatives have? Maybe, maybe not, maybe they're missing some and maybe they even have some features which the proprietary alternatives don't have, I haven't checked out every feature.

I'm not saying that it works for you, for the record, I'm just saying that just because for you it is a fact that they're bad/shit/hardly working, doesn't mean they are for others.

As most of you already know, I'm a writer. I've noticed the similarities between writing and programming:

1. Tabs vs spaces.

2. Both typically spend all their time with a single project.

3. Coffee... (Unless you're a tea lover like me.)

4. Both typically have no life.

5. Debugging is hell for programmers and editing/revising is hell for writers.

6. Strict clients for programming and strict editors for writing.

7. Semicolons... They're useful but everyone despises them.

8: Emotions. Programmers are angry at their code. (Why won't you work?) and writers feel depressed about their writing. (Why did you die?)

9. War of the programs. For programmers: Vim vs VScode vs Atom vs Sublime and etc. For writers: MS word vs Google docs vs Libre office and etc.

10. Online forums. Stack overflow and Writer's digest.

11. Typing... Typing... All day long.

These are only a few similarities. I've noticed a lot more than this.

So I had to use office and image editing tools on Linux today.
Holy mother fucking god are these things awful. Gimp, pinta, gnome paint, libre office, open office... they seem like a project some guy threw together a weekend in his bedroom. The UX is shite and makes 0 sense. They crash and lag all over the place. For fuck sake!
Also... Gimp, libre office and open office. If you want to make an alternative to a well known product (Photoshop and MS Office in this example) then just fucking copy the god damn UI as much as you can. No-one is going to go learn your fucking half ass product, people only use this shit because it's free and available on Linux.
I swear, I seriously considered sending the images to my phone and just fucking edit them there because it would have been so much easier than using this pile of shit.
Fuck!!!

I hate libre office and every other office suite on linux.

There, I said it.

It is the cancer of linux. I had a presentation today ant it just kept crashing. It changed all my master slides.

It drives me SOOOOO crazy.
(PS. HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT TO EMBED FONTS INTO A PPTX. I MEAN COMEON!

Libre Office on Windows feels dirty but good, kinda like anal

I have been very inactive in these last couple of months but I really need to rant right now:

I am working on a project, which is also part of a contest, with a few of my friends. I asked one of them to write a bit of code and some documentation about it, here's the result:

He wrote half a page of text with plenty of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors but here comes the even worse part:
Instead of just leaving the code in its own file he copied it into the word (libre office writer) file as well. Now I have got 3 pages of non-indented code with a few comments flying around here and there, weird variable names and a lot of commented out pieces of code.

Bloody hell I feel like I am the only one in this team taking this contest serious.

' "productivity" software':
trying to format a document in Word / Libre Office,
text defaults to some condensed serif font,
any at-sign, "http" or "www" automatically generates a hyperlink in an ink-blue color,
formatting and alignment of lines or paragraphs causes unrelated other elements to change unless you make sure to use tables, tables, and nested tables everywhere like it's Netscape 2003

Holy shit seriously: Fuck MSOffice. Fuck it right in the eyehole.

As desktop software, it's just brutally terrible. On my work mac, it's just sweaty garbage. The latest insult is that on the most recent update, msword stole the default file association from preview.

Libre isn't terrific, but at least it's closed when you close it. For that reason alone, it's orgasmic by comparison.

Because there's justice in the world, my job is not a document-centered one, so I have no real use at all for an office app, let alone the specific macros and formulae that the msoffice versions of these apps provide, so I couldn't give less of a shit about losing functionality.

The headline and main thrust of this rant is "fuck msoffice so hard that it dies of eye-fucking."

I suspected that our storage appliances were prematurely pulling disks out of their pools because of heavy I/O from triggered maintenance we've been asked to automate. So I built an application that pulls entries from the event consoles in each site, from queries it makes to their APIs. It then correlates various kinds of data, reformats them for general consumption, and produces a CSV.

From this point, I am completely useless. I was able to make some graphs with gnumeric, libre calc, and (after scraping out all the identifying info) Google sheets, but the sad truth is that I'm just really bad at desktop office document apps. I wound up just sending the CSV to my boss so he can make it pretty.

I want to try something new: Code with libre office.

Used libre office today, gotta say, loved the experience

How are people writing documents/reports? Markdown/Latex in your fav editor and export to PDF? Word? Pages? Libre Office?

I use Markdown, via VSCode, Bear, iA Writer, Marked and then push to PDF. If I have to, then export to DOCX.

all those muggles making presentations in power point pff - at least use libre office...

But I use a web page as presentation 😎

Why the fuck didn't I use LaTeX sooner, even though I knew for years of its existence...
Bye Word and Libre Office and Open Office!

Now I CODE my docs in vscode!

Why can't Libre office have the same layout with Ms office... I'm sick of dual boot or vm 😔

Has to be writing.

Not exactly a better dev, per se, but close enough.

I used to read books and imagine all sorts of possible scenarios to different events. One day, after replaying the Mass Effect series, I began to think about alternate ways to end it. Opened Libre Office and started hammering away. 10 minutes later, I had an outline. Never actually finished that story, but the spark was there.

I began noting down outlines and creating structures for interesting games and books; that soon carried over to my work. Before and after every meeting with my boss, I'd have outlined how the meeting was going to go, and how it actually went. Gave me a sense of order.

This in turn helped me be a better manager (I work with a team of 9), and I tell you guys, it couldn't have come at a better time. I had been promoted quite suddenly, and had been fucking up quite a bit at the start.
I had my shit in order. My team was happier and more efficient. My boss was happy. I was given bigger goals and tighter deadlines. I fucking loved it.

All this, from writing some fanfiction. (there, I said it!)

P. S: I stared at this for a solid minute, still not sure how it all came together.

What's the best way to run MS Office from Linux? Cloud based, native with wine/play on linux, or a native suite? I don't want to run a VM just for office.

I've tried Libre Office but it doesn't format well for my college professors, and office online works but it's not as quick plus you need the online connection.

Would something like WPS Office be my best option if I wanted a native solution that looked and felt like office with the best level of compatibility?

I normally have my Windows desktop and my Kubuntu laptop, but I’m on “holiday”, and I only brought my laptop. “I can write a simple research proposal on it, right?”, I thought. Ahahahaha, no. Turns out Libre Office and Mendeley are fucking useless on Linux. I had to give up and use my mum’s prehistoric Windows 7 laptop... Also Snap is “great” in theory (basically a Linux setup.exe, rendering packages pointless), but nothing I’ve tried worked so far. Docker can’t figure its permissions out, Chromium cursors break, and Mendeley doesn’t even detect Libre Office as installed. What a fucking shit show. I love Linux for dev, but no fucking surprise that no sane human being uses it for everyday tasks.

Some background to get us started...
Just took over the position as IT Specialist for our local county commission back in December after the previous employee left.

Before leaving she deleted all of her emails for the past 9 years.

Included in her emails were the details for certain program licensing the county had purchased not the least of which was 200 Office 2010 professional keys.

Getting into the office this morning my boss says "Hey got a problem for you, we've exceeded the license count for Microsoft office, and the vendor we purchased from is no longer in business."

My first response was Ok, lets go with open, or libre office. Problem solved. (I'm piece by piece upgrading our infrastructure to a more dependable OS you know, Linux.) I knew the open office suggestion wasn't going to fly so I promptly got on the phone with our friends @ Microsoft.

They were as helpful as you can expect when provided with only our MAK # and sent me back to try digging around for details 9 years old with our purchasing department. Who happens to be too damn busy to concern themselves with what the IT department needs this morning.

That will be remembered the next time the internet "Quits" working as they so often like to claim when then cant get an item to add to a cart in amazon.

Sure people just because your chosen shit browser (Edge) doesnt like to play well with js all the time the internet must be broken...

MOTHERFUCKING LIBREOFFICE WRITER I WANT TO PUNCH MY SCREEN STOP MAKING UP FUCKING LINEBREAKS AND PAGE BREAKS AND BREAKING MY FUCKING INDEXES I WANT TO KILL ALL YOUR DEVELOPERS

I installed a linux distribution it's called Zorin, i installed the latest one (Zorin Core 17) for a client since Windows 7 was giving him a headache, it was a very old machine with 4GB RAM with a celeron cpu if i remember, i suggest i will install linux and you won't have more issues with wifi and the printer he said okay, I installed everything, printer was recognized immediately Libre office was installed wifi is connected, security updates are done

After 2 days, he sent me a voice message telling me hey what is this zorin? Zorin everywhere, it's like if I'm using someone else program,I have nothing to do with the espionage things, I want windows back, i was crying he made me laugh for a week, i enjoyed listening to his voice messages on WhatsApp, whenever i get upset i listen to him and get excited hahahahhaha espionage? Do you think he let it go? Every 2 days i receive a voice message complaining about Zorin and how i was spying on him hahaha I explained over and over how secure linux is and how Microsoft knows everything he does on his machine, after giving me a headache i sent a friend and he installed ms 7 back and i never heard of him again

Uploading an xslx file to office365 to download it as an ods file only to be able to convert it to a csv file via libre office.

Direct conversion attempts with other tools would either fail converting the xslx file or break cells' values (ssconvert, soffice --headless -c, gnumeric).

One of those things where I fail to understand why it has to be so complicated.

I am back with one fresh and hot

my school doesnt allow libre office
the most ACTUAL security they have is windows defender and all the rest is restrictions smh

What is the best free Office software for general odds and sods (mostly using Word, sometimes simple spreadsheets)?
Libre Office, Open Office, Free Office?

I tried Office 365 online - it's great but I want to be able to click on a file anywhere on my computer, and not have to upload it to onedrive first.

Thanking you.

When you work in a hotel and your coleuges can't open exel files and you show them libre office and they all look at you as a computer god.

I failed IT twice...

So can you guys name one Linux distro that doesn't come preloaded with bloat, i mean Linux is better than windows since you have control, but i don't want to have fire fox out of the box i don't want fkin libre office can't we have a distro like arch but we don't have to go through the lengthy installation process. Maybe throw in the drivers and a bare bone DE of choice and that's it