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Comment by ChicagoDave | Hacker News Reader

I’d quit my job if I was forced to a Linux desktop and non office365 tools. The loss of productivity in this change is going to be massively disruptive.

It’s not going to go as smoothly as they think it will. I highly doubt their pilot program sniffed out all the complexities.

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If this would be the case: Thank you for creating a job opportunity for more open minded people ;-)

I have nothing against Linux or libreoffice. I just think forcing thousands of workers to drastically alter their work environment is going to be traumatic and I’ll lay odds that in 12 months they switch back or to a hybrid model.

Or what’s just as likely, workers will use personal Windows computers to do their work and shuffle things onto their work computers as needed. People don’t like change.

Having to bring your own equipment to work seems to be such a big thing in America that Americans assume it works the same everywhere. I'm pretty sure German workers wouldn't even dream of using their own computers for work. Not that they even could, because German employers would never let those computers onto their network in the first place.

I haven't seen a particular productivity boost anywhere from regular office + sharepoint and office365.

I also haven't noted a productivity difference between sharepoint (which office 365 really is) and other content management platforms.

Ironically the only place where office 365 offered a boost is in the linux world really. You don't even need a local suite office to open msoffice documents.

Most non-technical people have a pattern of work. They know how to do their job because it’s been repeated over years. This change will alter many of those patterns.

Even the simplest things like text editor or using a command line will be disruptive.

The support staff is going to be overwhelmed.

Why are you talking about using a command line or a text editor? How does it relate to the subject?

Switching from Windows to Linux Desktop?

No need to tell me you haven't touched a linux distribution in the last 2 decades.

I’ve run a Debian server for decades.

But I do use nano and not vim.

I hear there's this nifty new thing called a graphical desktop environment nowadays. Even on Linux.

Haven't those people who have years of experience also gone through years of forced MS Office GUI changes?

and yet thats only ever brought up when defending windows despite the fact that MS is cauing this kind o issues every 3-5 years.

So how is it that people can go from XP->vista->10->11 and not break the bank on retraining or from windows to MacOS but somehow anything else is impossible.

This is not an logically coherent argument against linux it's basically admins being scared of having their decades of investment into wintel ecosystem devalued.

The problem is that because your applications is windows specific your not comparing windows to linux your comparing whatever legacy mess of custom applications that people use to get their job done to whatever your replacing you win32/winforms legacy stuff with(which is something you have to do anyway as that platform is dying).

Do you know how many Excel apps run in windows shops.

Windows isn’t dying anytime soon.

> Do you know how many Excel apps run in windows shops.

Just one, Microsoft Excel.

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