Hacker News Reader

Comment by Andrew_nenakhov | Hacker News Reader

This speaks only that you are so used to MSOffice that you don't want to study different app, not that it is really better.

When I switched to OpenOffice.org in 2006 it took me some time to switch, and you know what? I have found that OOo was way more stable, predictable and logical in how things are done. It was also really free as in freedom, and I could run it on any OS of my choice. Now, I know LibreOffice like the back of my hand and it's wonderful.

People who used MS Office all their life usually do this: launch LibreOffice,see different interface, and like "nah... I don't want any changes, I'd rather keep myself and the world vendorlocked into proprietary software".

View on HN

> _"nah... I don't want any changes, I'd rather keep myself and the world vendorlocked into proprietary software"_

People don't have a problem changing if the change doesn't break their work(flows). The fact that Internet Explorer is pretty much dead proves it - everyone switched to Chrome although is different.

MS Office document format support is simply not good enough on any alternative (of which Libre Office is the only serious contender).

I have tried to switch to Libre Office on multiple occasions over the years, but every time I gave up after couple of weeks of frustration, because I couldn't collaborate on shared documents. Either the stuff I created in Libre Office looked different when others open it in MS Office, or I was breaking the documents for other people.

I don't consider MS Office to be better - it's simply that the alternatives are not compatible.

> MS Office document format support is simply not good enough on any alternative

This is a key fault in your logic. You SHOULD NOT judge the alternative by how it supports the document format that is specifically created in such a way to block competition from effectively supporting it. The company that did it also corrupted the international standards organization to get it an official 'standard' status.

But the truth is, you don't really need MS Office document format support at all. The company I've founded in 2007 never ever sent out any document in MS Office format, never owned any copy of MS Office, and we survived since then just fine.

If you want an electronic spreadsheet, use an open, documented and well supported standard - OpenDocument, and get on with it. Oh, and it is supported just fine on Ubunut 20.04 that we discuss here, as is on a Mac and Windows. The only thing it lacks is a proper online collaborative editor, that's true.

> The company I've founded in 2007 never ever sent out any document in MS Office format, never owned any copy of MS Office, and we survived since then just fine.

It's great that it worked out for you, but that's just not the case in the most business environments I have been dealing with. When a person sends out a document to a customer, and it turns out that customer didn't see the content as intended, alternatives get deleted and MS Office gets reintroduced.

Just to be clear, I'm not a proponent of MS Office. As a matter of fact I run on Mac and Linux and don't have much touching points with Windows, but MS Office is simply a necessity in most business environments.

> but MS Office is simply a necessity in most business environments.

My experience says otherwise. Most businesses can replace it with alternatives without too many difficulties. Definitely 95% of SMB can, I have led many transition projects myself, where companies moved 90% of their computers to Ubuntu and 100% of their computers to OpenOffice.org / LibreOffice

Reply on news.ycombinator.com