I think most of the complaints are that Microsoft Office doesn't work. Which is true. The web version of Microsoft Office is honestly kinda terrible.
And no, people don't want to use a product that does the same thing as Microsoft Office, they want to use a product called "Microsoft Office". No, it's not logical, and doesn't make any sense at all but it's how people are.
The only sense it makes is that M$ hasn't followed the spec, and so things done in office display fine in say libreOffice, but not the other way around. So if your company is willing to transition, but everyone you deal with outside the company is still on Office, there's a bit of a communication issue. That's M$'s biggest strength, homogenous work environments.
It is not intended to be used for machine-to-machine communication.
YAML is not supported by a lot of enterprise software (example: Azure pipelines supports it but Power Automate does not). JSON, XML, CSV, or failing that Text are the safe bets. We use a few options for reading or building presentation layers quickly. Ultimately the idea is to move data around in a way that is friendly to our current and future applications.
It's absolutely trivial to convert either format to json if necessary. The real killer for me with json is the lack of comments. Human-maintained files absolutely need comments.
Pretty sure it is "illegal" I mean didn't they get dragged through court in what the 90s 00s? Specifically for anti-competative monopolistic actions. Illegal was in quotes there because nothing really changed.
AD is easy top set up in Linux with a samba4 docker container. For instance: https://github.com/Fmstrat/samba-domain. Even HSS a script to easily join debian based machines.
For Linux user management you can just use an LDAP solution like FreeIPA. You can even tailor sudoer rules based on security groups, so like you can allow someone to reboot the server but not actually make configuration changes to system config files and what-not. It'll also handle CA and PKI with smart card support and of course DNS. It has a web interface as well.
I’ve done workstation maintenance in a previous job. Every part of the Linux centralized management was worse than Windows. We did it to support our coworker’s wishes, but SSSD constantly shits the bed, and having to code (config management) to write some pretty simple rules like default printers is super annoying compared to the Active Directory built ins.
I don't know, I like using Fleet Commander with FreeIPA (where it stores the profile). You just spin up the template VM for whatever like-clients on the network you want to make default profiles for and make the changes, shut it down, checkbox the changes (the configurations and stuff) that you approve and let it apply the profiles across the network. Easier than depending on Puppet or Ansible playbooks IMO.
I have had issues with SSSD as well though and it had to do with Kerberos tickets but I can't remember what I did to fix it. We'd have to manually use kinit on each machine when it'd basically fall off the realm. I want to say it was a DNS issue but it was so long ago, I just don't remember.
We used to use Centrify for Linux and Solaris and it was easy using Access Manager to basically handle AD users and computers with Active Directory and had some GPO support (you could push config writes with GPOs for example and organize it all via OUs for example) but it would get a little wonky between trusts in the forest sometimes (in regards to zone management in Centrify) and they kept getting more expensive. Maybe they've fixed that stuff now but it was really simple to use and you could basically manage a lot through the AD and create group profiles in the Access Manager. I think the last straw was wanting to force us to license the entire suite regardless of whether we were using it or not. Personally, I never liked it because it wouldn't use SSSD or kclient/nsswitch and if some service tried to join the realm/domain, it'd join using the same computer accounts and basically break the account since Centrify used its own client, so you'd specifically need to join the computer accounts via Centrify as a different name. It wasn't detrimental or anything -- just annoying that it was a problem at all. Also, sometimes the user cache database saved in specific users' appdata that use Access Manager would corrupt from time to time and you'd need to manually delete it to use Access Manager. I'd hope they fixed that by now too though.
All and all, I'm not saying Active Directory isn't an excellent product because it is and I'm not saying that there is a 1:1 solution for Linux but I'm saying it that in my experience it isn't terrible either with FreeIPA and products you can use with it. I definitely hated other 389 solutions prior to FreeIPA though.
Micro$oft office is being teached in college for my friend and I, having libreoffice, tried doing the exact same thing in it. Not only everything was possible, but also its more convenient in LibreOffice. There are many annoyances in m$ office like auto formatting which cannot be disabled and auto prediction which fills in the details of next cited person from previous (like hell what, how should two people must have same bio?) and now you have to edit all that out by replacing the autofilled ones. LibreOffice on the other hand has much better UX
(Talking about Excel vs Calc and also Word vs Writer)
I mean maybe that specific advanced feature is not in libreoffice, but there are much more good things in it that is worth considering using it.
I use libreoffice and onlyoffice daily for academic works, with a few works published out there. I even use more features than the average office user, and I have to listen to people claiming that they can't use any of those, because they're inferior. I even have to listen to people saying that libreoffice isn't suited for doing any SERIOUS WORK, and I'm like "What? My work isn't serious?".
But tne other user got a point. People want to see the name and the ms office logo. They will reject any alternative just because is isn't ms office, no matter how good and sufficient they are.
I installed a Windows 11 update. Office no longer worked. Office refused to re-install despite trying a huge number of things. It literally refuses to install. Tried their help tool which even does removal of old references in the system. Failed 5 times.
Tried using the web version for a simple thing. First localization struggle which doesn’t carry across sessions. Excel column formatted to number. Then to currency. Then to general. Autosum shows #Div!0 still.
Tried seeing if the AI could help. Have to re-login. (Using Mozilla this whole time btw). After re-login, ai tool says stop using private mode. I’m not…
Literally trying to do the simplest autosum on about 25 lines and it can’t function.
Installed LibreOffice. No problem with ‘Excel’.
I’m really not exaggerating. I saw online a similar issue and the guy had to reinstall the entire OS to get office to work again 🤨
OnlyOffice is pretty nice for homegamers I think. I just don't need or want a full up heavyweight office suite anymore. And I've gotten to the point where I remove LibreOffice and replace it with OnlyOffice every time.
So do it, just do it. You know you want to........
You know, i made my dad try OnlyOffice and he loved it except for the fact that not all shortcuts worked. Years of experience with excel shortcuts didn't translate in exactly the way he wanted. Which makes sense ig but i think that would give it away
Have you tried excel ? Its WAY AHEAD of any excel like thing available as office in wild. Just example vlookup , Power tables , vba are no whwre near in any of the products.
Libre Office has a mobile app. The one called LibreOffice viewer is only a file viewer but works perfectly if you only look at documents, it is developed by the same foundation that develops LibreOffice. If you want to edit, Collabora is the name of the app, it is based on LibreOffice and is officially approved by The Document Foundation. It is developed by one of their certified collaborators. Both are available on Android and iOS.
Yep I don't even play that many games but I watch a lot of movies/TV. HDR works great in mpv. Couple of tweaks in your mpv.conf and you're off to the races.
But they layer so many unwanted services and bloatware on top that it makes it hard to use. Being forced to be online to log in and forced use of OneDrive confuses new users just as much
Why would you skip online login? It protects your laptop from being stolen, it syncs settings between devices, etc. Do you skip online logins for Android and iOS phones too? Of course you don't!
It sounds like you've read about but not used windows for a while tbh. The going online thing is true, but its not exactly confusing. Not sure what you mean by onedrive, I uninstalled it years ago.
I installed Windows on a device yesterday. I had to switch to the command prompt and type in "OOBE\BYPASSNRO" in order to just not connect it to the internet and skip the Microsoft sign in prompt. And that seems to work for the most part. Sending diagnostic data is still required and not optional but ah well.
A few days ago on another friend's setup, he didn't know that this option existed (who does really), so he signed up for a Microsoft account, logged in and his Documents and other folders were automatically getting synced to OneDrive. Now, for you and me, we understand that just uninstalling OneDrive should fix that or even just disable that feature itself. But this is opt-out and not opt-in. And he doesn't really understand it's getting synced, he simply sees that there's oddly increased data usage. This is the kind of person who will have recall enabled without ever realising it exists or even using it, but will still have it as a potential security issue waiting to happen on his setup.
It's all the opt-ins that Microsoft does. Everything defaults to "yes, do that worst thing possible". And you and me will probably switch it off, but we're not the average person. The average person doesn't understand or care.
Linux Mint and Zorin OS work out of the box for most users. Usually the most complicated part is just the installation process (which can be an absolute pain if the starting system has Intel RST, Secure Boot and Fast Boot all enabled). Of course, more advanced users always can run the risk of breaking something (I accidentally broke my system irreparably at one point when I did a dumb and formatted my Swap for some reason and had to reinstall) but that's also true of Windows.
Okay, zorin os , not complicated part is not true.
On any Linux 1., try to find where is program main executable is 2. Put that at startup, so thatbsoftwre starts at login 3. Connect HDD and ensure that it's available in ALL programs , without touching terminal.
These things are trivial in windows.
Linux or the v n zonrin works out of box if you just want to surf Internet.
Isn't surfing the web the main use case for a large portion of the PC/Laptop user base? Pretty sure for wide swaths of people, "executable", "startup program" and "HDD" have no meaning. Not saying that's "right" or "wrong", just that that's my observation. You could make the argument that they might as well switch to Chromebook, and in fact, many do.
For intermediate users, there's a graphical startup program menu for selecting startup apps, at least in Mint Cinnamon. Usually programs for me won't be able to access my HDD only if I did an even more advanced thing and made a docker instance without permissions - other than that, I've been able to connect programs like Steam (Flatpack) to my external HDD without issue. But maybe that's just Mint, idk.
Xournal lets you paint on a document, which I guess isn't what they need when they talk about legal stuff. Digitally signing a document is still one of the rare cases where I boot up my windows vm. It's so annoying that there's practically no way to do that in Linux as my company's processes rely on it.
Wait digital signature is not easy on linux? What kind of digital signing is this? I thought it was possible with GPG and also with gui apps. Maybe I'm thinking about some other digital signing??
If it was valid, do you really think people would be talking about it being a problem here? Please use your head a little.
Also, two entitely different meanings of the word signing being used here. Signing as in signing a bill vs. Cryptographic signing. Adobe has some weird "halfway" thing that's more than painting the sig on the image, but isn't gpg.
Hooray for proprietary shit becoming accepted for legal use! Yuck.
When I worked with a lot of legal documents, we just used DocuSign mostly. Have you attempted that on Linux? Not sure what it's like these days, also curious if it's because it's a web application if it works the same.
My love for Linux remains unrequited because my work in video and photography ties me to Adobe. I’ve dabbled with dual-booting, and though Linux’s allure is undeniable, the inconvenience of constantly switching between operating systems is unbearable. The idea of mastering DaVinci Resolve and an alternative photo editor has crossed my mind, but deadlines loom, and time to learn new software is scarce. The anxiety of not knowing if I can accomplish my tasks with unfamiliar programs is overwhelming. Ironically, my disdain for Adobe rivals my contempt for Musk and Trump, making it all the more disheartening to feel ensnared by Adobe’s ecosystem when tantalising alternatives are just out of reach.
Yeah maybe like in 1995... If you're having this kind of issue in the present day, you'd have to be shooting yourself in the foot very very intentionally. (An example is a broken custom Arch or Gentoo setup, which you shouldn't be using anyway unless you know exactly what you're doing.)
I've been regularly trying whatever Linux distro is supposed to be good on and off every other year, and there was always something that made me go 'that should be working right out the box' and then spend too much time fixing it.
If you're not able to connect to a NAS for some reason, that's almost definitely on you or your friend in this case. But even that aside, expecting a one to one transition has always felt odd to me... You don't switch from an Android device to an iOS device or vice versa with the expectation of everything working one to one. You usually understand that there's a lot of differences involved.
There's ofc things like VR that I will admit Linux is quite far behind in, but for general use, Linux is problem-free for the most part these days. And you definitely don't end up having an unbootable system pretty much ever unless you intentionally fuck it up. Like yeah, Linux lets me uninstall the kernel or bootloader if i choose to do that (it will try to warn me ofc) and that would render the system unbootable. But that would be me being irredeemably stupid, not the operating system's fault. Hell, some distros like Tumbleweed even come with a better snapshotting setup than both Windows and macOS, making it pretty much impossible to fuck it up that badly.
this is the other thing linux communities are well-known for: blaming the user for not being good enough.
i think the last time my linux failed to boot there was a power outage...but the machine was a laptop. before that it was running an update (fedora/nobara). before that it was installing void ("installation complete" -> reboot ->grub recovery). before that it was running an update (pop_os). Before that it was running an update (manjaro, this was during a brief moment when it was very popular and linux folks claimed it was user friendly and suitable for moderate users). I've managed to recover from most of those cases listed above, but with the exception of manjaro that was 2023+2024 right there.
I said your friend is an idiot, not you. And even in his case, i only really blamed him for literally intentionally messing shit up. Should I remind you that you're the one who said that story? Congrats on winning your argument against a strawman i guess?
The second paragraph of your answer just tells me you have never had an idea of what you're doing. And that would be totally fine if you didn't blame it on Linux as a whole, btw. But you do just that.
Why would you use everything except the most obvious distro choices? Manjaro is literally famous for terrible practices, always has been. 5 minutes of research would tell you that much. You try nobara but not vanilla fedora?? You try pop_os but not Linux Mint? You try Void for some reason?? Fkin Void? You're clearly not really ready to tinker and you want stuff to just work, so just go with something obviously and famously stable and out of the box like Linux Mint. It's really that simple... You complicate shit for yourself and then complain about how you've had terrible experiences. Ofc you've had them because you never really bothered to try and keep it simple for yourself.
I always choose the practical solution over anything else. And there are real problems in Linux right now, like fractional scaling on GNOME, VR, HDR being hit or miss, anticheat not working, etc. So i don't force anybody onto Linux. But pretending we're still in 1995 is just malicious coming from you.
If you're just lost about shit, people in the Linux community are generally ready to help. Hell, if you describe your use cases well, literally everybody would help you as much as they can. But coming on here and using a wild (and probably fake) story to flame something for no real reason and then expecting a positive response is kind of weird, don't you think?
Edit: sorry, wrong user i guess. You all haters kind of blend in and look the same lol.
I won't bother responding to your hate fueled rage post except to say those are all highly recommended distros, except Manjaro which I've already stated was hot at the time. Void for example is the no-contest top rated distro right now. When the "best" Linux has to offer won't get past grub from their install wizard, that's not an incompetence issue.
Look man, irrespective of who i originally intended to reply to, you responded to me by saying I was simply blaming the user. Which clearly wasn't the case. If you think his initial anecdote at all is realistic, then you haven't really used any well established distro in a while. Accessing an SMB share especially is very very straightforward right now if nothing else.
Void is a distro that doesn't use systemd. That alone would put it out of the contest, let alone being the top-rated distro... It's fine to not understand why that is, but again, you could have just asked on any community. Again man, stop complicating stuff for yourself... And I never said you're incompetent, you're probably really good at this stuff, I feel like you just haven't taken the time to read through and understand. And again, even that would be fine, just don't blame Linux in its entirety. Linux is too broad to be blamed in its entirety.
If you go by hype alone, NixOS is probably the most popular distro right now, doesn't mean I'm going to recommend it to you.
Use an actually well-established distribution like Fedora, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Ubuntu or Linux mint. Use Plasma if you can. Use Flatpaks for packages where possible and use the native repository otherwise. It's pretty much that easy these days. I even use the Steam flatpak for gaming nowadays. Grass is pretty green over here now, and I'm saying that as someone who does still use Windows. I use Windows both at work and for certain games. So it's not like I'm out of touch either.
Sorry if that post felt rage fueled by the way, didn't mean it that way and wasn't in rage either. I'm just bad with conveying stuff, especially with English not being my first language :)
My Nas is a standard truenas scale installation with standard SMB shares that all my windows computers pick up instantly without any or extremely limited fiddling.
I'm not some nooblet that doesn't know shit, tyvm. I've been using computers for decades.
I don't expect a one to one translation between using windows and Linux, but I do expect basic functionalities to be, well, functional out if the box.
I am wondering how many people give up because their exact program isn't on there.
I get having to use Adobe software if you are an industry professional, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who don't want to change because qbittorrent is not the same as utorrent. Or peazip is different than 7zip.
I'm somewhat of a creator myself and I mostly use creative software that has Linux versions (will move to Linux once Win 10's support expires and/or I somehow get enough money for a new PC), and they're legit better than Adobe software for my usecase. Photoshop is nearly unusable for digital painting (it's more of a photo-editing software with some drawing capabilities), Krita is pretty good, and my only pet peewee was that some of the brush compositing modes had confusing names and were hidden deep inside the menu, but then I found "greater", which can somewhat mimic the behavior of the default CSP brushes.
Also can someone recommend me a guitar amp modeller (preferably an open-source one), that is available on Linux, so I won't suffer from both the demo of Guitar Rig came with my Arturia Minifuse, or with trying to get one running in Wine with all their complicated copy protection schemes?
Both qbittorrent and 7zip are FOSS projects that are perfectly available on Linux. There's actually very few software packages that aren't also on Linux, but they have a strong pull. Like AutoCad, Photoshop, video editors, DAWs, etc. Is specialized niche software, not everyday software that usually stop people. Also, they are unfamiliar with a workflow to do certain things on Linux's DEs.
I'm probably an outlier lol, I installed the Windows version of 7zip (via wine) alongside the native Linux version just to have a GUI for setting the compression parameters if I'm creating a new archive from the file manager
Many pirated games installer doesn't work under wine (like from xatab, RG Mechanic, Razor, etc) unless you download pre-installed games like from IGG Games or you just download pirated gog games
Buggy glitching games work under wine (i don't know why that happened)
Many mod organizer & tools (MO, VORTEX, NMM, etc) doesn't work unless you download old version or download some sketchy dll files from sketchy website to make those programs works well
Sometimes after running games under wine my system crashes like unable to restart/shutdown or failed to open some programs like dolphin, terminal, etc (maybe bc my system running on wayland)
No Photoshop, After Effects, or Microsoft Office (yes....i know linux has similar programs but those suck & my workplace has standard)
Hard to fine tuning some apps unless you wanna do some dirty work in YAML or XML or CONF files
Mod organizer 2 leastest exe work with wine (I used Lutris) I have yet to find a games installers that didn't work with wine (I download my games from fit girl repacks)
I think it comes down to 2 main reasons, and some members of the libreoffice suite definitely do a better job than others.
Comparability with MS Office, it's really difficult to use these programs when you can't reliably collaborate with people using the de-facto standard office software. Impress is exceptionally bad at this.
User interface clunkines, the ribbon ui Microsoft uses in modern office versions is really nice, and makes finding the actions you need really easy. This is coming from someone who used office 03 and 07, it's not just a learning thing, it's a better design.
These issues are definitely a bigger deal on some parts of the suite than others. I've found Calc to be a solid replacement for Excel, but when I'm making spreadsheets I'm not fiddling with complex formatting at all. Impress is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It has horrible comparability with PowerPoint, and I need to get things looking just right when I make a presentation. It's difficult to find even basic formatting options. I could probably solve the usability issues by reading a few tutorials, but the comparability issues hold me back from putting the time in, since I have no idea how a presentation will look when someone loads it in PowerPoint anyway.
playing around with Impress i can get pretty good slides without any issues(yet). I think your problem is only with portability. I guess that will remain unsolved for a long time.
Yes the PowerPoint ui is much better. It takes more space but it's much easier to find features you might not use as frequently.
I haven't done much switching between calc and excel. Formatting issues come up when making or editing a document in libreoffice and opening it in MS office. Especially with impress, the position and sizes of objects will be very different between the two programs. This makes opening a presentation from impress with PowerPoint on a different computer impractical.
I like Libreoffice ui better. There are different ui modes too if you want to experiment. I selected tabbed compact since I like compact UI, there are other modes which takes more space and have more features visible probably. Anyway UI might be about preferences but at least there are different UI modes. If you hate all of them, its okay.
Almost all your problems sounds like problems when mixing MS office. Do you face other problems that is not a compatibility issue with MS?
Nothing that isn't subjective, but the comparability issues are a complete dealbreaker, because interoperability is so necessary. This is definitely something that can be fixed since Google Slides is no where near as bad about this.
Xatab's work fine. I only had one pirate installer in hundreds of games that i couldn't get to work. You sometimes need vcrun (newest is vcrun2022) from winetricks to get it working.
Mod organizers usually have a linux version or at least work in wine. What hurts is wabbajack hasn't and doesn't work.
Edit: nevermind. The one that didn't work at all was the installer of 'Network Addon Mod' for SimCity4k.
The first one I've never encountered, but I also never heard about those (only razor). Fit girl always works (the one with Amelie). I've tried others and also worked.
It could be those installers have dependencies that are not in your base bottle?
Vortex works quite well for me, the only game that is not working correctly is BG3 because of the third party tool to mod the game requires .NET 8 and even if I install it with ProtonTricks/WineTricks the tool doesn't recognize it. With the game receiving official mod support I think the issue will be fixed.
You can get both on Linux. KDE Plasma 6 with Wayland supports HDR, and you can even run some Adobe apps through Wine (Photoshop on Linux, Illustrator on Linux).
I agree that they are effective programs for getting work done. There are some drawbacks in a professional setting though, the biggest being the data scraping that has been introduced. It's hard to explain to clients that any licensing of their images has been violated before it has even been applied. Either Adobe are going to get away with exactly the kind of IP infringements that they are so against when it comes to their own work, or they're lining up a buggerload of legal problems for themselves further down the line.
Then there's the price-gouging that they've gotten into with their online subscription model and instability on some hardware.
How to trust them?
For people starting a new business in a creative industry I don't think Adobe is the obvious choice that it once was.
My personal grievances are using a laptop with ubuntu. No wireless casting of display to tv, no good smart phone as a mouse/keyboard control, the screen is sometimes sideways for no reason.
But Linux and stuff is interesting still. I'm just not ready for it as a daily driver.
KDE connecting infuriates the hell out of me. It's so close to being good. The features aren't at parity between the different platforms. It is absolutely awful at finding and pairing your phone. I have three different networks I connect to on a regular basis. I don't want to run static IPs on every network nor do all the clients support static IP. If you do use static IPs you better only need that one because it can't choose from a list. Wanted to scan a different subnet than you're on for your mobile device tough luck. I want to use it, I have it installed. I've said it IGMP hints. It's just not written well.
All that said, if you have an ISP bog standard router and one network that plays nice with it, it definitely works as a keyboard and mouse remote...
I'm currently using Plasma Wayland on Arch with the 1080p monitor built into my laptop and an external 4K monitor right next to it at 175%, and it works flawlessly. When a window is half on one monitor and half on the other it actually looks how it's supposed to. I can drag a window back and forth between the monitors and watch it rescale itself to run at that monitor's native resolution. Some apps, you don't even see the transition. The current scale is passed through to the applications, so text looks nice and sharp.
Plasma 6.1 will release soon with some further improvements. But Plasma 6 with Wayland basically solved all my issues already. My setup is fractional scaling with "Apply scaling themselves" for Legacy Applications (X11) and Adaptive sync set to Automatic. Works better than my Windows setup so far
Fractional Scaling on Plasma's Wayland session specifically is good now. GNOME on Wayland forces blurry scaling on every Xwayland app with no way to opt out.
