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My mother-in-law couldn't get her old Word docs to format correctly on her new laptop (Win11 + MS Office365). Rather than fiddle around trying various settings I installed LibreOffice and with it her docs rendered correctly. Made her happy. Libre Writer reminds me of Word2000, which means I don't waste time learning new ways to perform mundane writing tasks.

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Ironically, at $work we do have more success opening old files (pre-2000) with LibreOffice than MsOffice, so yeah.

When I read that $person has installed $opensource_thing for $tech_illiterate_relative I always imagine the “anon uses gimp” greentext.

My mom uses LibreOffice, too. Granted, she doesn't do anything special. Just a few docs for housekeeping. I even forgot about the fact that she is using it. Just recently noticed it again. I would assume she would have had WAY more problems if she would have to use some stupid microsoft account to be able to use word.

My parents evolve backwards when it comes to computer literacy. It seems they especially unlearn all the windows 8+ changes, since a lot of UI philosophy stayed unchanged from 95 to the end of the XP era, so that appears to be burned into their brains forever. Word 2000/XP. They don't really write any documents anymore, but LO might actually be more what they expect today than modern MSO.

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