The office suite is no longer the sole issue. Most now think of 365 as a single purchase license of office apps, along with communications, video conferencing, email hosting, bookings, planner, a tb of cloud storage per user, etc to add on top, for $12/mo.
Its cheap for what you get, at least if you look purely at the dollars since MS will nickel and dime for every single cost possible.
There isnt a 1:1 in the open source world, its multiple tools that need a managed infrastructure to support. Its easy to see how small businesses can fall into the trap.
All the things you listed have much better offerings for free. The place I work for is small and we only use the email, teams and the docs. The rest is other software because 365 is terrible at everything.
Example : open an existing doc. Go to “save as”. That prompts you for a new file name as expected. Now go to browse so you can select where you want the file to go… Or don’t, just click save and it will ask where to put the file. Then you realize your new filename is gone! You gotta type it twice and the first time doesn’t matter at all you can call it dick first. That’s like kiddy level software development testing that has not been corrected in over 7 years now! Imagine all the wonderful security things we don’t see.
In Spain administrations and companies since years are using LibreOffice and other alternative suites, simply because they save a lot of money with it, apart an easier adaptation for their specific use (FOSS).
Europe has a lot of excelent, oft even better, alternatives to the US Big Tech. Not to use it isn’t a tech problem, but a political and lobby one. There are also more and more computer shops selling devices without OS (FreeDOS by default), installing the needed OS on demand.
I upvoted you, because by and large you are right. As a caveat though some people do have office tied up in automated workflows with scripting in some sort of M$-language. In that case you would have technical hurdles in addition to lobbying and politics.
That is the point, there isn’t a really perfect OS, it always depends of what you need and what you want to do with it. Linux has a lot of advantages, but also some big flaws which made it not so good for some tasks. It’s eg. still not so plug-and-play like Windows for everything, there are too much different distros, not always compatible one with another, apart also some with a deficient maintanance. Due to Windows is the by far most used OS, it has also a way bigger Soft catalogue as any othe OS, even in FOSS and professional apps. Maybe this will change in the future. But on the other hand, as said before, it needs an advanced intervention to turn it in a fast and reasonable private OS.
We were talking office suites, but yeah. Though M$ should have lost the OS wars not against Linux (it was a fledgling OS at the time) but other systems of the day. OS/2 was what a stable win3 should have been. VMS or true64 Unix could do stuff windows server could only dream of.
Yet marketing to pointy haired bosses brought MS the victory, not technical merit.
Well, I mencioned the OS, because I don’t know much users of MS Office on Linux. Certainly for servers the best option is always Linux. OK, UNIX, AFAIK Windows is also based on UNIX, it even has still its paleolitic Finger Protocol, even present and usable in current Windows 11 (I don’t know why, but there it is).
Write in the command line to demostrate it (a simple hello from me):
finger zerush@happynetbox.com
or type simply finger in the console, which listed the syntax options
You can create a own handle using https://happynetbox.com/, this at least permits an communication system when all other fails.
People are forced to use that at work because there’s no option apparently. Open office, libre office… LA LA LA LA…
The office suite is no longer the sole issue. Most now think of 365 as a single purchase license of office apps, along with communications, video conferencing, email hosting, bookings, planner, a tb of cloud storage per user, etc to add on top, for $12/mo.
Its cheap for what you get, at least if you look purely at the dollars since MS will nickel and dime for every single cost possible.
There isnt a 1:1 in the open source world, its multiple tools that need a managed infrastructure to support. Its easy to see how small businesses can fall into the trap.
All the things you listed have much better offerings for free. The place I work for is small and we only use the email, teams and the docs. The rest is other software because 365 is terrible at everything.
Example : open an existing doc. Go to “save as”. That prompts you for a new file name as expected. Now go to browse so you can select where you want the file to go… Or don’t, just click save and it will ask where to put the file. Then you realize your new filename is gone! You gotta type it twice and the first time doesn’t matter at all you can call it dick first. That’s like kiddy level software development testing that has not been corrected in over 7 years now! Imagine all the wonderful security things we don’t see.
Free as in freedom, yes. Free as in beer… Not really. Hosting your own vc infra is not easy and will easily burn through your bandwidth.
Welcome to the “trap” part. This plus the cost of migrating to something else keeps execs who don’t know better on the same path.
Really not much different than Cisco at this point and why its still there despite the horrifying licensing and terrible ai integrations.
In Spain administrations and companies since years are using LibreOffice and other alternative suites, simply because they save a lot of money with it, apart an easier adaptation for their specific use (FOSS).
Europe has a lot of excelent, oft even better, alternatives to the US Big Tech. Not to use it isn’t a tech problem, but a political and lobby one. There are also more and more computer shops selling devices without OS (FreeDOS by default), installing the needed OS on demand.
I upvoted you, because by and large you are right. As a caveat though some people do have office tied up in automated workflows with scripting in some sort of M$-language. In that case you would have technical hurdles in addition to lobbying and politics.
That is the point, there isn’t a really perfect OS, it always depends of what you need and what you want to do with it. Linux has a lot of advantages, but also some big flaws which made it not so good for some tasks. It’s eg. still not so plug-and-play like Windows for everything, there are too much different distros, not always compatible one with another, apart also some with a deficient maintanance. Due to Windows is the by far most used OS, it has also a way bigger Soft catalogue as any othe OS, even in FOSS and professional apps. Maybe this will change in the future. But on the other hand, as said before, it needs an advanced intervention to turn it in a fast and reasonable private OS.
We were talking office suites, but yeah. Though M$ should have lost the OS wars not against Linux (it was a fledgling OS at the time) but other systems of the day. OS/2 was what a stable win3 should have been. VMS or true64 Unix could do stuff windows server could only dream of. Yet marketing to pointy haired bosses brought MS the victory, not technical merit.
Well, I mencioned the OS, because I don’t know much users of MS Office on Linux. Certainly for servers the best option is always Linux. OK, UNIX, AFAIK Windows is also based on UNIX, it even has still its paleolitic Finger Protocol, even present and usable in current Windows 11 (I don’t know why, but there it is).
Write in the command line to demostrate it (a simple hello from me):
finger zerush@happynetbox.comor type simply
fingerin the console, which listed the syntax optionsYou can create a own handle using https://happynetbox.com/, this at least permits an communication system when all other fails.
Open Office? 2008 called, they want their office suite back.