The business customers might want to know that databases are a lot cheaper on Linux, especially for small business.
Literally spoke to an automation company the other week that told me "we have to delete a bunch of stuff every time the database gets near 10GB or we'll have to pay Microsoft".
Plus there's no license cost for linux itself either.
This stuff might not be viable for hundreds of employees in a business where MS is already entrenched, but for a small business it absolutely is a better deal.
Probably an unpopular thing to say here, but in my experience pushing non-tech people to use libreoffice as part of a Linux transition is a fast track to getting them to hate Linux.
Using Google Docs has been much more welcoming in my experience. Something about libreoffice doesn’t resonate with a lot of non-tech people.
> LibreOffice is a UI time capsule..more archaeology than productivity.
I agree. Seeing the comments here claiming the outdated UI is a good thing, actually, brings up one of the big problems with a lot of open source and/or Linux soecific software: The resistance to UI change is huge among die-hard users so the projects tend to get stuck in whatever UI language they had a decade ago when they started
When I introduce people to open source versions of different software I find myself starting with “The UI has a steep learning curve, but…”.
It would be so much easier if we could give people apps that were targeted at familiar UI patterns of today, even if it angers a vocal minority who want every UI to look like it came out of the 90s or early 2000s when they first discovered their love of computers.
Oh, worse: stuck in whatever weird, half-baked UI decisions that were made because someone had a great idea that they did not test at all, or because they hated the industry standard approach that everyone else uses. It's no secret that Blender adoption exploded when they added normal menus, and then made right-click select an optional function, and then finally added an auto Maya-like interface option.
But that's one instance where we lucked out. Not just because they fixed it, but also because the thing that needed to be fixed was in users' face and obvious.
I'll grant that it's personal preference and OP should do what his customers prefer, but what you said is a good thing. UIs have sucked for some time now, so something which deliberately uses an older style is generally far superior.
My understanding is that the issue is the way OO/LO and the OS work together to handle file writes, which will not be changed because Linux distros do it right and Windows does it wrong and too bad that I was trying to use OO on a Windows PC. But I can't get a straight answer, and even if I were to, it wouldn't fix the bug - because the bug would be that I was using Windows. And now that I know that this is something that happens, I don't have any real guarantee that tomorrow the problem won't be the particular distro that I use, or whatever weird personal ax-to-grind led to the design decision that would now be giving me a headache. And that probably goes doubly for your average Windows user who doesn't really know what they're getting into.
Obviously, Google's support situation isn't any better. They've also had their share of catastrophic data loss fun-times. I genuinely don't know what the answer is.
As an example, I recently submitted a manuscript following standard format [0] with libreoffice. Nothing difficult, just basic professional functionality.
The only way to do it involved editing global default page styles (because custom page styles can't be used for title pages?) and other advanced features. Fair enough, at least it was possible. It's a shame the export process didn't preserve the formatting and screwed up page numbering.
I had to fix the manuscript in gdocs instead, where it was easy.
FWIW I'm not trying to interrogate you, I'm just trying to understand your perspective. From mine I just checked their checklist [1] and it's unclear to me what on that list you're suggesting required advanced features in Libre Office to achieve.
[1] - https://www.shunn.net/format/2024/01/a_brief_manuscript_form...
Libreoffice only allows either headers on all pages of a specific style, or no headers. So, how to apply a different style to just the first page? It supports that with the title page concept. But that menu only allows you to select either the Default and First Page styles, not custom styles you've added, so you have to modify the global defaults.
Then there's the numbering. LO requires headers to be the same across all pages, up to left/right distinction. That means you can't manually number. If you want to use the shunn "name/title/number" format you have to write "name/title/" and then enable the checkbox, accepting the slightly uneven spacing.
This is probably half a dozen menus altogether, which I consider advanced. It also confused the page numbering and tried to label the title page as the last page.
Another issue is that shunn's requires multiple alignments within a single line. This isn't directly supported in a reasonable way, but the same workarounds are required in MS word and gdocs so it's not like LO is especially deficient.
Smart quotes also don't work on copy-pasted text, only by a primitive typo correction system when typing. That's more of a personal process issue, since I was copying out of the markdown I do my actual editing in.
Exactly.
Just work in the finance or insurance industry for a year, and you will see how it is part of the daily workflow to use very obscure, advanced Excel feature combined with VBA. If a proposed Microsoft Office alternative cannot handle this, it's not suitable.
I personally observe that a lot of nerds who barely use Excel in their daily workflow patronising that ... (in particular LibreOffice) is an alternative to Microsoft Office. Better first learn how the actual powerusers' workflows (in particular for Excel in the finance and insurance industry) actually look like.
Most people using Excel/Sheets/Word/Docs are not power users. Pretty much all home use is covered by OpenOffice and that is the majority by user count.
I have Libre Calc installed because I am on mint at home and even if it could do everything excel could do, I don't know how to do things the same way. Neither do most people. The personal experience and network effect is insurmountable for other software.
1. Got barcode reader and scanned some barcodes from books
2. Looked up these from online API
3. Wrote result in ISBN;Name;Year to output
4. Tried to copy result to Google Sheets
5. No import from custom CSV? (Excel has very good tooling)
6. Actually to split I had to use =SPLIT() and then copy paste results in weird way to actually be able to use first column...
Is this really better? Or good enough...
Examples: [1] I selected a range of cells recently, by clicking and dragging, and when I let go of the mouse button, all of the selected cells shifted up and to the right by one cell, and CTRL-Z didn't undo it! [2] I have a workbook and when i duplicate a sheet with a chart, the chart is blank, so i have to delete it and re-insert a new one. [3] Sometimes the left-hand X-axis is cut in half, and I have no idea why, but if I create a new doc it goes away. I really, really want to promote LO, but it is very buggy. I can deal with it but I don't think others would.
Oh, another nifty feature of gnumeric: if you save it in its uncompressed format, it's literally .xml (good both for version control and for scripting certain kinds of things)
I run firefox+UBO+privacy badger on my machines, and the only sites I've had to disable my privacy extensions in the last few years for were work related, B2B SaaS apps. A few years ago I pushed UBO to user machines (Chrome on win10) at work, and had a ton of user issues. I finally had to disable it, it wasn't a net benefit to us. It's not just a 'turn it on and leave it alone' thing, and people don't always think or remember to try toggling it off and reloading the page when they encounter issues.
That said, it's insane to me to be paying MS for a database with a 10GB limit, but I've seen their price lists. I've also worked with small businesses that don't have in-house IT, and they just end up overpaying for crappy service for many of those things.
I hope this win11 migration causes more MSPs and consultants to move small businesses over to linux though, MS has been predatory on pricing for business customers for far too long and with as much work has migrated to a browser there will be way less issues switching than there were years ago.
It's really easy to just say it's the LUsers fault and make pebkac jokes, and I definitely enjoy BOFH style humor, but honestly not everyone will remember the 30 seconds of training to go into this menu and toggle off an extension if netsuite throws a cryptic error or won't behave properly. I find it's better to have some empathy for other people, not everyone thinks like a computer and connecting 'I have this error message full of gibberish about API calls' and 'the IT guy mentioned 2 months ago that if a site isn't loading, I need to turn off this thing'.
Never had one and I have been using uBlockOrigin for a decade. If a SaaS doesn't work with it, report it to them or skip it (if not already vendor locked on it).
It's time for change. VMware have tossed themselves off into limbo and MS seem hell bent on alienating a vast swathe of humanity with W11's requirements - weirdest A/B test ever.
I'm working on some bigger clients ...
IMO, if they need Office, they should just use Windows.
IMO, if a user's needs can be met with a Chromebook, Linux + a browser + email + Zoom/or whatever would suit them well.
I think you're going to have a hard sell if they rely on Office or other Windows-only software, and although well meaning, it might be doing them a disservice if they can't run the software they're accustomed to.
I think this is even more true in the era of LLMs, because on the rare difference somebody might get hung up on - there's no longer real need for support. LLMs absolutely excel at questions like 'In MS Office I can do [x] to achieve [y]. How do I do that in Libre Office?'
For example, to be that supplier that whose documents never quite look quite right or who always struggles with the docusign /PDF /email /spreadsheet /whatever whatever.
For an SMB, fitting in with the de facto IT herd that is represented by your customers and partners is essential for survival. Sure, some SMBs do decide to buck the trend and move over, but it's hard and not for the faint hearted.
Time will tell if this problem solves itself as 365 becomes a pure web app and Windows becomes an RDP-like Cloud PC.
The irony of Bill Gates vision of a Personal computer where you run what you like and not what the mainframe gives your terminal becoming Windows where you consume what you are told to is not lost on me.
Linux machines don't normally include Arial due to the license, and only PDF/A includes the fonts used in the document.
Which, as companies switch away from using Microsoft products, are now the people using Microsoft Office.
Everybody can open a PDF. Do you want to be the ones having problems sending Office documents to companies that have already stopped using it?
You have to open and edit documents you get from outside of the office. Clients regularly send me spreadsheets that don't work in Libreoffice, for example.
Why wait for mass survellience and remote attesention when u can have it today!!! :D
Create a 'showroom', virtual through network screen sharing or physical if possible. Demo machines where you can let customers get a bit of immediate experience with GNOME, Xfce and possibly something more. You can walk them through checking their email, creating a document and doing a bit of web browsing.
Don't front 'Linux', it's a tainted word that is of no use to typical public sector and small to medium business people, preferably don't mention it. Instead talk about your solutions being secure, cheap, enterprise grade, customisable, long term supported, things like that.
The Linux choice matrix is confusing even for programmers. Like I can understand the pieces in theory, but in practice with hardware, user-installed software, varying degrees of compatibility between components, and updates...
Ever.
Forever.
A device can be woken up at silly o'clock and "apt update && apt upgrade && apt autoremove && shutdown -r now" can be run via cron.
apt as deployed by Debian itself has options for automatic updates (via cron), which is the better option. Have a look under /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/
apt full-upgrade -V --auto-remove --purge
It can't. The device is in my room and making noise when on. If that device wakes up and wakes me up, it's either getting a force shutdown (breaking the update) or getting in the trash. Plus the device is generally left in suspend mode, so shutting it down would interrupt my workflow.
I avoid snap myself because I use apt, but apt is a hard sell and arguably not ideal as well. E.g. I added Spotify repos which in theory could break other packages. In practice this doesn't happen (probably due to Ubuntu essentially freezing major versions for packages in their releases).
if you promote, facillitate, provide resources for installation free of charge, thats probably fine. providing a system for sale, with linux pre-installed, may require, at least some attribution.
Linux - the kernel is GPL 2 - that means you can use it to your heart's content. If you make changes, it would be nice if you shared them, please do.
A Linux distro will generally have a similar license. Again the idea is that positive changes that you make are made available to everyone.
That is the idea of the GNU Public License: If you take our freely available stuff and add to it, you should make your changes public too.
Seems fair!
the idea that positive changes are made available to everyone, is not yet broadly salient. at least now, poster is probably aware of that condition.
you seem to be up on GPL2 , what happens when someone packages distros on disk or stick, and sells them for profit ? thats something to be aware of as well.
On my motorcycle, there’s an option to view the software licenses used on the bike. The GPL is in there somewhere. So are a lot of other things.
And, no, during checkout at the dealer, we didn’t spend any time talking about software licenses.
As a bundler you’re obligated to provide the licenses. You’re not obliged to point them out, highlight them, point folks to links, or archives, or explain how they work or what rights users may have.
They just have to be available.
Assuming that someone has customers, they have a viable business model, that's what happens.
That was, in fact, the business model of most Linux distros before we were all terminally online.
Don't be shy. Tell us what you're concerned about and why you think that's an issue.
Are you implying some sort of illegality or breach of license?
So I have to decided to promote Linux over Windows for computers I build for customers. If you have any suggestions on how I can make this promotion, better let me know.