JesterRaiin @ jesterraiin @lemmy.world

Posts

11

Comments

474

Joined

2 yr. ago

Same.

FOSS is crucial to the survival of freedom in IT (broad sense) - whoever claims otherwise, doesn't understand what is going on all around him.

But it doesn't mean that Linux/FOSS is allowed to stay blind and deaf and resist evolution, especially if it wants to become something more than a set of tools for network administrators...

I worked in environments where MS Office and Star/Open/Apache/Libre Office was used, and Tbird was installed in addition to whatever Windows email client. I'm not even discussing other pieces of software, these are enough to make a point, I think. There was hardly a person who prefered the alternatives. These tools were perceived as slow, unreliable, uncooperative and the lack of compatibility, document-wise, only strengthened these opinions.

As for "posts scaring people away..." Do you seriously think that whatever people write in the Internet is enough to convince big corps, governments and other massive groups of recipients? Come on...

I disagree with your take on corpo environment. If what you're saying would be true, then it'd be far more profitable for corpo to hire a bunch of Linux-oriented technicians and thus save costs of IT layer. But corpos don't do that. You're suggesting a paradox - a body that relies on cost-cutting and making everything as profitable as possible, that also is ok with wasting money on something that's allegedly easy to replace.

Again: you're doing what Linux/FOSS community usualy does. Instead of acknowledging the points and asking "what can be done to make this work", you're saying that your choice is better, good enough to work no matter what environment, what userbase is there, all consequences and the contradictory evidence be damned. It's users that need to change their ways, certainly not Linux/FOSS.

This might work as Apple's strategy, but it won't as hell work in case of Linux/FOSS. 😉

I'm sorry, dude, but now these are emotions talking through you, not actual valid points., especially since it's obvious that your knowledge about MS dates back to 2010, I assume? It had evolved. Massively. So much it became hard to compete with, even if you take the "money vs free model" argument into consideration.

You didn't like it, but the fact is that I am now sitting in a corpo office, part of a body spanning across countries and continents, where what you don't like and think bad, works well enough that nobody complains. It's very rich corpo. It can afford a legion of experienced Linux technicians and sysadmins, and yet it prefers to pay money, serious money for licences in subscription mode. Think about it for a moment - corpos squeeze money of everything. They are greedy, to the point that they wouldn't spare a cent to save a dying man. And yet they prefer to pay for MS.

Once again: Linux/FOSS needs to start to listen to what users actually want. Scornful "this is better, use this" won't do.

Until it changes, "20xx - the year of Linux". 😉

Ask them to leave the keys to their house with you, and give you the alarm codes. 🤫

Literally the only thing MS Office has that LibreOffice does not, is MS Access

Not quite. 😉

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/office365-plans-and-pricing

E3 plan is the norm in more complicated workspaces now. Exchange, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, Sharepoint are commonly used in such an environment, followed by Forms (HR department loves these and rightly so), Onedrive and PowerBI. Viva (formerly Yammer) makes waves now. Teams entered the market aggressively during Pandemics and it had evolved almost as fast as Android. It can now connect to great many deal of applications thus expanding the possible workflow and collaboration.

The ribbon being the productivity killer you're talking about is a non-existent issue, since typical office workers rarely venture further than the main set of icons + they have the most useful shortcuts pinned to the quick access toolbar.

In every environment where people have been using both pieces of software (MS Office and Star/Open/Apache/Libre), the former was preferred for its ease of use.

Again: Linux/FOSS movements tends to produce the mindset that is hard to convince that there's something wrong about anything it does, while listening to people's - common people, instead of experienced power users - complains, and following tested and appreciated standards should be preferred.

I haven't seen an enterprise, where Excel wasn't present.

...and I am in IT since late 90s.

I agree, but there's one thing, that needs to be perceived from different perspective: Linux Office suites > ARE < awful.

They look ugly. They overcomplicate certain, simple tasks. They aren't as compatible with MS' documents as they need to be. The only exceptions to it are WPS Office, but since it joined the dark side (ads(, it can no longer be suggested, and OnlyOffice - possibly one of the most recent entries to the list of possible MS' Office alternatives.

Yes, yes, I know "I can do in Libre everything MS packet can do, and more".

...but the problem is that it's not you who will need to work with it. People in business need a tool that gets the job done, is well supported and doesn't get in the way. Libre, unfortunately does - everyone who tried to apply an unorthodox page numbering to a document knows that it's too complicated for non tech-savvy user.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

There's only one brithday song and it goes like this: Awkwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard, ok, can we just, uh, stop? Ok, cool.

Yes.

Wtf are you talking about? There's only one birthday song.

Not really.

Sports is the thing that would be blocked the most, since it's b&w - either you're into it, or not at all, and there are great many deal of branches of it.

What alternative you're ok with?

Noprob.

From what I gather, there were similar projects in the past attempted by great many deal of bodies and organizations. Some were quite successful. For example,CERN used and supported CENTOS-based computers and allowed Windows machines but on the "you care of this crap on your own" basis.

As far as I can tell, the most important challenges were:

• hardware compatibility (it's easy to bypass, but it isn't cheap)
• support (you can't rely on "Google it" approach when serious business is involved, there absolutely has to be experienced technician team available on-site)
• Linux/FOSS office applications are shit and pain in the ass to work with (unless the movement at large won't acknowledge this problem, nothing will change - Linux won't enter mainstream)
• government and other official organizations force document filetypes and build official apps that won't run good in Linux - funnily enough they won't even work well on Windows machines all the time (this is really hard to bypass)

It is worth mentioning that the same phenomenon was listed in The Book of Damned by Charles Fort (1st edition 1919), as sort of recurring event.

Take it as you want.

What is “Debian, instead of Ubuntu” supposed to imply?

That we're discussing the topic older than a decade ago, when things were wildly different to how they are now.

source

I don't store bookmarks for that old events. Feel free to consult Google for that...

https://www.govtech.com/archive/german-government-goes-linux.html

Buy yourself a cookie!

Spot on.

Windows cut off plenty of actually solid devices and forced users to buy newer, but definitely worse equipment. At least that's how it was when printers, scanners and multi-function devices are discussed. Especially INK printers.

Damn, that was, like, an extortion...

I agree, but the question wasn't about the percentage of cases, but about the possible reason to choice Ubuntu over Debian...

Yeah.

Those people seem to migrate from Reddit, but still carry it in their hearts and minds. 😑

I'm not sure how things were really, since across the years the message has changed.

In the initial "we failed, let's revert to Win" times, Debian was named. I remember those times and news well, since I made a bunch of flamewars on both Debian and Ubuntu forums concerning the choice, especially since I myself had similar - hardware compatibility - issues in our corporate environment and I perceive the choice of distro as equally puzzling and idiotic.

Should anyways have started with 5 years of requiering new hardware to be linux compatible.

Exactly.

Or, they should check what hardware they need to replace on the spot and how much it'd cost.