Comment by Aurornis
2 days ago
> there is a lot of friction trying work with them in LibreOffice
LibreOffice is always a sticking point, in my experience. I some times get roasted for saying it, but if you want people to have a good experience with Linux, point them toward something online like Google Docs. Yeah it’s not consistent with the ideological purity that some people want, but in my experience non-technical people do much better on Linux when they don’t have to deal with LibreOffice. I won’t even speculate why, it’s just not a good fit for non-technical Linux newcomers.
Sorry I was THAT child in school. While I now definitely have some technical knowledge, 10-year-old me, definitely wasn't that smart.
This is just not true. LibreOffice is way easier to understand as a child, since all the functionality is available and discoverable as a menu/tree structure, as opposed to the toolbar mess of MSOffice. That might be useful for professionals, but when you are a child, the unpredictability of these ribbons is just confusing. I just want to format this thing. Click on it. Search the ribbon for the thing. It's not there. Click slightly differently. Now the ribbon header changed. Click that back. Where is it? Still not there. Shit, how do I do that? Describe it in the browser. I have no clue, how anything is called. When I happen to find something, everything is in some foreign language where I can only say "apple" and "house" in. Also there are tons of advertisements and useless whitespace everywhere.
Screw it, I am just opening Notepad (because Notepad++ is not installed and I will only figure out how to use portable programs from an USB stick in 2.5years) do some drafts and finish it at home with a sane office program. In LibreOffice at home, I can find the functionality I need independent of finding out how I need to click on the item to apply it. Also when I click on something, on the left there is a property window open, which lists all the basic properties I can change.
MSOffice has moat for professionals who already know how to use it. It is not friendly for children who have never used a word processor.
Converting MSOffice documents to LibreOffice is not that hard, especially as a child, since my mates also have not used a word processor for decades, and have not used fancy formatting. And then you come around the corner with a poster designed in Scribus. They are all like: what you can do that? And guess with whom, people want to be in a group for a presentation, and who people will trust when you tell them to please save it in this format?
Out of interest, what's your issue with LibreOffice? The only issue I have with it is when you need to open documents made in MSOffice. Otherwise, it does everything MSOffice does and faster with less cloud/AI crap. Reminds me of MSOffice during XP era when it just worked.
> what's your issue with LibreOffice?
I'm sharing observations about seeing other people, including casual computer users, forced into using LibreOffice. It becomes the software experience they hate the most. They associate Linux with LibreOffice and want it all gone so they can go back to getting work done on mac or Windows like everyone else they know.
Your comment is a good example of the disconnect between average computer users and the LibreOffice fans:
> The only issue I have with it is when you need to open documents made in MSOffice. Otherwise, it does everything MSOffice does and faster with less cloud/AI crap. Reminds me of MSOffice during XP era
Collaborating with other MS Office users is a key part of many people's jobs. Having poor MS Office compatibility isn't just a footnote, it's a showstopper issue that will make these people's jobs harder every single day. Making people's job harder and take more time is a great way to make them hate something.
As for not having cloud features and having an old style XP era interface: These are also points that are only positive for a specific type of computer user wants computing to return the earlier, simpler era of computing they fondly remember. For everyone else, that "cloud crap" is a helpful feature for getting their job done and that XP era interface makes it feel like they're stuck using outdated software. I understand you don't use or like the new features, but average people who use this software in their jobs might actually benefit from the new features and new interface.
I guess I wasn't really thinking about it in the context of jobs since the post was about kids. I was thinking about the kinds of "non-techie" people I often help with computer stuff (often older people). They don't even know what the cloud is, they just want to have a spreadsheet for monthly expenses, make a document or two to print out and an occasional presentation. There are a huge number of these kinds of people but they don't really generate money as a market segment so MSOffice has completely abandoned them. Those people do sometimes need to open a file someone else made in MSOffice but LibreOffice compatibility is good enough for their purposes.
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Good point, but is Google Docs more compatible with MS Office than Libre Office? Can one work fricitonless between a Google Docs user and an MS Word user?
There is also OnlyOffice as an alternative to Google Docs. https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop
It garbles up the formatting when importing / exporting. You can’t collaborate with people on office in a meaningful way.
MSOffice also garbles up the formatting of LibreOffice feels. Actually it also garbles up the formatting of MSOffice documents. I needed to fix the documents of my grandparents. Guess which program just works, and which just makes a mess.
I find it to be just a little bit irritatingly flaky in the UI. Weird glitches, slow sometines for no obvious reason. I don't do anything complicated with it; I can easily believe there are bugs lurking in lesser-used control paths.
The average person in the real world is more likely to encounter documents made in Office, that would be a major barrier to adoption.
Please, it’s a functional copy of Office ’97, which millions (billions?) of people used happily.
The thought of willfully making a child dependent on the biggest advertising company on the planet for their documents is pretty gross, at least when you have the knowledge not to.
> Please, it’s a functional copy of Office ’97, which millions (billions?) of people used happily.
Exactly. The Office '97 is nearly 30 years old. The world has moved on. People like their modern software.
I think LibreOffice appeals to people who think computing should have been frozen in time at some arbitrary point in the past when they were younger, but it feels stale and old to anyone who doesn't have rose-tinted glasses for the Office '97 era.
Most people don't want their software to be turned into some ideological battle. They just want to get their work done and not have to fight the software along the way, so they can get back to enjoying their lives.
There’s nothing “modern” needed from a word processor for 99% of people. You type into the white rectangle, save, and/or print. Three toolbar buttons are needed for that.
An actual useful feature is coediting a document, but has downsides, and can be done without the advertising company involved.
One should learn how to do it with autonomy early, so not dependent their entire lives.
I use LibreOffice for casual home use and can't remember the last time I missed a feature. The graphs are cumbersome to manage I agree.