I remember when Microsoft first attempted to prevent the standardisation of Open Document Format (used by LibreOffice and others) and then bullied its way into getting approval for own OOXML standard. Already back then, supporters of FOSS warned that Microsoft would use the overly complicated OOXML to maintain its stranglehold on users of Office-like software.:
Whenever applicable and possible, standards should build upon previous standardisation efforts and not depend on proprietary, vendor-specific technologies. Albeit, MS-OOXML neglects various standards and uses its own vendor-specific formats instead. This puts a substantial burden on all vendors to fully implement MS-OOXML. It seems questionable how any third party could ever implement them equally well, especially when a standard comes with 6000 pages of specifications without serving its minimalistic purpose.
Yeah, the issue is not “Microsoft’s usage of the XML format”. The issue is that they blatantly bought their format’s standardization, and then intentionally released an implementation that substantially deviated from the specs, making sure that MSO was the only “compatible” implementation.
Shit, I’ve been right about microsoft for thirty-plus years and it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference.
They are. A. MONOPOLY. They have never “fought fair”, and it wouldn’t ever occur to them to do so. Their heart is all BOGU.
Wasn’t there even a Simpsons episode about it?
“Buy him out, boys!”
“Buy him out, boys.”
Das Bus
Season 9 / Episode 14 (19:10)
“You don’t think we got rich by writing checks?!? Ahahahaha”
The only reason Apple still exists is because Microsoft didn’t want to get broken up, so they invested in Apple to stay competitive for 150 million in 1997.
I dunno. I mean that’s true, but it’s also the case that Gates stole a lot from Jobs and they knew each other pretty well so it was also like a friendly loan.
Tbf Gates took the boos he got at AppleWorld or whatever it was then pretty well.
That’s not entirely true. It’s true that Microsoft invested in Apple, but it’s not true that they were about to get broken up and that Microsoft money saved them.
I think the point about convenience is more about familiarity than Windows being inherently easier. Speaking as someone who switched from Linux to Windows previously, I found the change very difficult as a lot of the FOSS software I was using didn’t have Windows versions. I had a nightmare trying to read one of my LUKS-encrypted drives on Windows. I was practically using WSL for everything. That’s not that Windows is inherently harder than Linux; it’s just that I was used to Linux and the FOSS ecosystem, just as some are used to Windows and their proprietary ecosystem.
If your hardware isn’t working properly, you have to find drivers that run on Linux; if the developer never made Linux-compatible drivers, you have to figure something else out.
Most drivers come pre-installed with the Linux kernel or your distro—I never had to manually install any drivers for my current hardware. Compared to Windows where you will have to go out of your way to install graphics drivers for NVIDIA or AMD depending on your graphics card, if you want to make the most out of your card’s capabilities.
Installers made for Windows don’t need any special TLC; you double-click them and they work.
See, I think if you’ve used Linux for any length of time you’d quickly find the system of package managers way easier than the system of having to hunt down an .exe on the internet, guess whether or not it’s a legit copy or if it’s malware, and manually manage updates for all the different software you have installed.
I agree that people stay on Windows out of convenience, but it’s not convenience as in Windows is inherently easier, but it’s convenience as in you’re used to the way things work on Windows. Because in my perspective, things do “just work” on Linux, and that’s because I’m used to the way things work here.
I’ve been on and off into linux for years, but finally decided to go full in on my main. Now using windows is HORRIBLY unintuitive. Its really gone downhill. Xp was peak.
This is the first computer where I built it with Linux in mind, and man is it a mostly seamless experience. While I also have a soft spot for XP, I would honestly say 7 was peak. Everything was more or less exactly what it said it was. I do IT, and man, is it frustrating trying to navigate both control Panel, and the settings app.
Sometimes when you click on an icon or a link in control panel, it brings you to settings, so you have to type it into the address bar to get where you want in control panel.
I did like 7 a lot too.
The new win 11 ui is utter shit. This is why I like linux, they aren’t going to completely change the damn settings application completely and even if they do, you can grab another distro that didn’t. Plus win11 randomly removing all your right click context menu options. What the actual fuck. First couple days on my shit work pc was me undoing everything win11 did.
Lmao, the context menu back to the old one is also the very first thing I changed on my work PC, Along with removing start button search. But for the rest, I completely agree, nothing is going to change without MY input
Also curious, have you found a good windows explorer replacement? The shortcuts now not actually representing your user folder drives me nuts. I’m currently trying onecommander out, just wondering if you had a suggestion for something different though.
Have you found a good
windows explorerfile explorerI never used this personally (I’m currently a mike mac) but i hear good things about filepilot tech
Agreed on your last point. That’s when programs still had proper tool bars and keyboards shortcuts, before the “ribbon” shit started to fuck over everyone’s muscle memory.
It would have made sense for MS to start with “finger painting UI” and then work towards the power user UI - but the other way round makes zero sense to my poor brain.
The first time I updated some 50 programs by running a single update command, I wondered why it hasn’t been the standard since the start.
As a recent linux convert I found printer drivers and setups to be a pain and getting java runtime working was a process but everything else was about a days worth and it just works. Hell, even hitting the windows key on the keyboard and typing the ms name for stuff pops up the relevant linux program. If you didn’t know you were looking at something different, it wouldn’t be obvious for the most part.
You have to install nvidia still whether you chose to do it manually or rpm. If you did none of this you’re staring at nou and if you never had more than one screen you probably didn’t even notice. And if you never ever had to do anything more complex than documents or watch movies( which you couldn’t do without installing some codecs) you’re probably untouched by it.
Additionally some (complex) software won’t run unless you also install something other than Wayland. This isn’t stuff you’d have to consider on windows. in fact sessions are not even a thing on windows you have to think about when it comes to software or graphics.
And then there’s permissions…
So just pointing out not all drivers have been installed. You do have to customize the build to needs which isn’t so much the case on windows.
That said : it’s not a big pain in the ass once you figure out installing is just like the same command over and over again and there’s no going and downloading from a website or clicking install or clicking through a wizard. ( other than the initial ‘y’)
Overall I found the Linux install process a giant relief over windows.
it’s just a bit to realize first time doing it and would prefer we be transparent about this and not over sell Linux as if it’s some sort of magic coconut oil. Be realistic : yes there’s some learning moments. No, it’s not that bad. Personally I thought it was worth it and less painful than what up I had to do with windows.
EG: I no longer have to keep a folder of ‘favourite software’ in case I had to reinstall windows/get a new computer
I just had to keep a backup list of ‘sudo dnf install’ commands and it just conveniently sits on the non boot drive that is accessible for copy pasting after a fresh install which is really quite nice.
Thank you for being rational here. It drives me bonkers how many people try to act like Linux is “just as easy” as windows. Like, yeah, to some degree it’s getting used to the differences, but there are definitely considerations and complexities that you simply don’t have to worry about with a windows machine.
As a relatively recent convert, I can say it was easier than I was expecting, but it was not “just as easy” as installing windows. It took more time to set up all the extra bits I needed/wanted, and I’m still not fully set up the way I’d like to be.
Same and I’m sure we will get there. Seems with the help tutorials online someone somewhere has found a trick for almost every consideration on Linux. Im 95% of the way there. Dunno where I’d be without those tutorials.
I’m still happy I took a plunge. It was a real plunge though. Lucky for me I’ve worked with Linux (only on the job) so it was likely easier for me to convert than someone who probably never has touched Linux. I cannot imagine the sheer terror of having to step back and learn on a whole brand new OS after being embedded in a different OS the entire time up until now.
My old mother, who is completely disinterested in technology, has used a Linux desktop for a decade now without major issues.
If you aren’t a power user the differences between it and Windows are minor. You have windows, icons, menu bars, x closes the application, the box makes it big, right-click to open a menu, left-click to select, it’s all the same stuff. Besides, most of your time is spend in a browser anyway.
Yeah things break some times, but no more than in Windows. Being on a very default Ubuntu installation she can just search for her problems online and blindly run some random console command that probably fixes it, just like on Windows.
Hardware is easier because drivers are generally just magically there. Software is easier because it’s mostly in a repository which automatically installs dependencies and updates and doesn’t come with malware.
By far the biggest problem has been documents and executables that can only be opened in Windows. Mostly PDF forms (fuck you Adobe).
Moved to LibreOffice. No regrets. Thank you, Microsoft!
does libre office do scripting? (like VBA?)
LibreOffice Basic, JavaScript, Python. But the macros wouldn’t necessarily be compatible with Excel.
My only issue with Libre Office is that they are not available on mobile phones. I want to use spread sheets to make calculations and projections on my finances if I can’t use my computer at a given moment.
https://github.com/opendocument-app/OpenDocument.droid
I’ve used this a couple times. Seemed okay
I understand your desire, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna use any spreadsheet software on my phone. I can think of few worse platforms for excel. Even my iPad Pro is a nightmare if I don’t have my Magic Keyboard and a mouse. I’ll crack out a laptop or talk through it with gpt.
The problem: our desire for convenience
Bring on the downvotes, but: When it comes to tools like computers, convenience is synonymous with productivity. People aren’t unreasonably demanding to have their hands held, they want to get stuff done. We need to stop acting like
convenienceproductivity is just one of many concerns. It is the primary concern.Freedom is nice but to most people it’s only important if it helps us do the things we want to do.
I find dealing with Micros~1 a giant pain in the ass. It’s always getting in the way of productivity with pointless rearranging of menus all the time, constantly trying to get me to use One Drive, shoving AI into every corner of everything.
I’m trying to make a spreadsheet to figure out and share budgets, instead I’m spending my time hunting for that menu that disappeared and figuring out how to disable copilot because I’m legally not allowed to share client data with third parties.
Micros~1
I see what you did there. 😆
This an incredibly tech-brained answer. “Sure, lots of OSS is difficult to install, breaks frequently, and lacks key features, but did you know Microsoft sometimes moves a menu item?”
I love OSS and I want it to succeed but “an item moved” isn’t in the same ballpark as the barriers to OSS adoption.
This is probably the stupidest hill to die in I have ever seen. Of all the things to defend MS for you try to justify their destruction of the pull down menu!?
They broke 30+ years of standard GUI just to keep breaking and changing their stupid ass ribbon bar.
I don’t really care for Macs but god damn does their universal PDM system work great.
The amount of times I have had to click through and memorize their dumb as fuck ribbon bar just to have them change it again the next version is ridiculous.
I started the name calling by saying “tech brained” so I apologize and I’ll ease off on that.
With that said, I have to strongly disagree with you. I use MS Office, LibreOffice, and Google Docs regularly, and IMO the ribbon was a huge improvement for word processors and spreadsheets over traditional drop-down menus. Drop-Down menus have their place but for document editing they are not ideal.
You are going to die on that hill. You sir have some serious screws loose and I will never take anything you say seriously again.
Oh no, some crank who can’t understand that other people have preferences won’t take me seriously. This is a major loss. I am so owned. This definitely isn’t emblematic of the problem with the OSS community.
You also act like an idiot. Now you are a victim as well. The big bad OSS community!? Do you even listen to the shit that is pouring out of your mouth.
Lacks key features? Like collecting telemetry data? A subscription model? Not for me.
And talk about shit failing our IT department spends way more time fixing MS bullshit than maintaining Linux machines. We use Fedora at the office and that is extremely stable and very secure.
When IT has to fix a Linux machine it"s because of an actual hardware failure
Over 1 billion people use Microsoft products, but let’s all listen to @lefaucet@slrpnk.net 's anecdote about his IT dept. I genuinely believe your anecdote, but it’s irrelevant. And until OSS evangelists (of which I am one!) realize that other people exist and have different preferences and experiences, MS will keep winning.
Not relevant? Hah! Found the M$ bot I guess
In addition to that, with great respect to the hard working developers on LibreOffice, at least some of what seems like “unnecessary complexity” in Microsoft’s format is most likely just requirements LibreOffice isn’t solving or haven’t even encountered yet. You don’t get to Office’s size without having to deal with the most insane batshit crazy backcompat or compatibility issues.
Yes, exactly that! That convenience == productivity connection is exactly why I am a Linux Mint fan!
Convenience has value, so a lot of people will give their “free” information, attention, and control to commercial entities in exchange for it. Enshittification ensues and many of us are conditioned to beware of things that are simple to use because it REALLY just means you’ve been locked out of 95% of the options.
When a good FOSS project can bring convenience and productivity to more people around the world with NO strings attached, that is an incredibly good thing. It’s like, humanity actually working together just for the sake of the greater good, but doing it on the internet because governments can suck at it.
Damn, I need to find a good open source project to help out this winter when I’m forced to stop my oudoor “engineer turned farmer” hobbies for the season.
Edit: probably something Jellyfin related. Can’t believe I forgot to mention that!
The problem: our desire for convenience
This hits it right on the money. As nice as open source and open standards are, at the end of the day none of that matters to the 99% that want/need to do X as fast and painlessly as possible.
To people like my wife MS Office/LibreOffice/Google Docs are all the same thing in the category of productivity suite. And one of those does not meet her where she lives in day to day life. And it doesn’t because there is no money in doing so for LibreOffice. And there is no benefit to her to seek out LibreOffice for her uses.
Hell, just take a look around at the number of people that preach about the evils of Microsoft, Google, or whoever but love them an iPhone and Macbook. As bad as Microsoft and Google can be for screwing over the user with vendor lock-in they don’t hold a candle to Apple. But they get the money despite there being “better” options technically and philosophically for nearly everything they make, but Apple knows all of that pales in importance to 99% of potential customers compared to being convenient.
The piece on using the tech is a bit much. We cannot get by without a smartphone in modern life and they essentially do not exist outside of apple and google.
Sure they do, but all of the alternatives are not nearly as convenient. But you can absolutely get by without an iPhone or Android phone with Play services.
The example actually proves the point more strongly than LibreOffice vs MS Office does by the increased level of effort it requires of the user to go out of their way to not actively support the bad things Apple and Google do.
afaik our digital identification system does not work well outside of iOS or Android (most of the time, not at all - since it breaks on updates and they update basically daily). so we’re stuck with their duopoly. because digital id is mandatory.
Once upon a time they did support linux on desktop but then ubuntu went and decided to make a phone and linux support was mysteriously discontinued a week after.
our digital identification system
which one?
BankID
Ok show me a phone that is readily available that has the ability to log into banking apps etc.
Are you being dense on purpose? I said you could absolutely do it, but it was far more inconvenient.
So you repkied to me qualifying that it is an effective duopoly by saying that there are other companies which is what is implied in what I said?
Who is dense when you can’t understand the practicalities of real life and how business interact with our lives. You can get a linux phone, which is probably below .5% of market share and then sandbox android to use these apps…which is in itself necessitating the use of a google product.
I could walk into the bank also or not talk to people but effectively there are two manufacturers with a duopoly on consumer mobile communications enviromments.
“There are ways” is some cop out bullshit.
I’ve heard this comment about OpenXML (the xml format of the office documents) before, and i’m a bit on the fence about it.
It’s of course indeed ridiculously complex, but so is office. Microsoft both adds a shit ton of functionality to their documents, and keeps an impressive amount of backwards compatibility.
In the past i heard complaints about part of the OpenXML spec that also allows older binary data in there for backwards compatibility reasons, which of course means for OSS implementations that they don’t just have to implement this spec, but also the older spec that came before to be truly compatible with everything a modern office version can open.
But on the other hand, if i look at it from the side of Microsoft, they opened up their format, they’ve got a gazillion functionalities, should they remove functionality to appease the open source developers? If so which? Should they stop being backwards compatible with documents of decades ago to appease the open source developers? If so how long should they support? Are you going to tell their customers?
Office is an immense program with an immense amount of legacy features, backwards compatibility, …
It’s incredibly complex by nature. And might they have made the format more complex to dissuade competition? Could be. However, in this instance Occam’s razor pushes me more to “write a huge program over a timespan of many decades, with thousands upon thousands of programmers working on it, and you’ll indeed most likely end up with something very complex…”
The one thing you have to give Microsoft is backwards compatibility. They make hot garbage, but God damn if you can’t run that garbage from 10 years ago.
Although 10 years ago isn’t that long in computer terms any more. Those are machines that can still run Windows 10 without issue. It’s an older computer, but still perfectly usable these days.
I haven’t done the experiment, I’m curious to know if you can take a random binary compiled for Linux 10 years ago run on the latest version of popular distros. See in which ones it runs.
Depends on it and its dependencies, probably. A lot of the core utilities are generally unchanged enough that they should still work despite being a decade old.
Office Open XML was only standardized in order to combat the threat posed by Open Document as organisations were starting to mandate use of standardized formats.
You write as if Microsoft did this because they wanted interoperability, when in reality they only begrudgingly accept that some must be allowed in order to avoid losing control of the market.
The real solution would have been to never approve the OOXML standard and not legitimize Microsoft’s attempt to make their proprietary format appear open.
I honestly don’t understand why I would ever write up or share a Microsoft document.
As for word, it’s just fucking rich text format. It’s obvious they’re manipulating the format to lock down users with less computer knowledge. Otherwise, why is it so fucking complicated?
Markdown accomplishes 90% of what a word doc does and it is legible with or without rendering.
EDIT: If I want data in or out of a spreadsheet program, I’m using CSV.
All of the “special features” of office docs wind up being security nightmares, unusable junk, or both.
I honestly don’t understand why I would ever write up or share a Microsoft document.
Corporate execs literally cum over MS’s next big thing. A lot of companies use MS-based infrastructure and applications.
My work just issued me a Surface 7 a few weeks ago (RIP my former Thinkpad T15 G2), and while it’s nice, the fucking copilot key is driving me absolutely insane. I can’t disable it unless I turn on “Fn Lock” which switches it’s function to open up the Context menu (i.e. right-click menu). HOWEVER, if I do that, then the F1-F12 keys’ volume, brightness, and home/end/pgup/pgdn functions are disabled. I’m convinced this was an intentional decision by MS.
I’d imagine you can run some kind of custom script to disable or reassign the key, similar to what ahk does.
I actually put in an IT ticket over it today right after I made that comment, because I accidentally hit that goddamn key again while typing up an email.
IT came back with - and I shit you not - “Open the Microsoft store and install Microsoft PowerToys”
For context, this company takes security extremely seriously. Just a few months before I started, they had recovered from a major ransomware attack, due to some moron that downloaded an attachment from the wrong email. They don’t even allow flash drives, except for Apricorn encrypted drives, but those you have to sign out directly from IT and the serial number is tracked. Plus the usual KnowBe4 simulations, regular training, etc…
So IT coming back with that response was a pretty big surprise to me 😅
Corporate execs literally cum over MS’s next big thing. A lot of companies use MS-based infrastructure and applications.
Yeah, I mean I’m in that boat myself. But I have the option of SharePoint or Confluence at work and despite the fact that it also sucks, I’m choosing Confluence ten out of ten times.
I get that some people try to do actual work in these docs, but it strikes me as junk every time I encounter it.
When in save for myself I like rtf or markdown. But when I need on my work it’s normally something from a template or something already on the server that is using Microsoft format, when your employer decide this for you, there isn’t any choice.
My understanding is that Proton Docs web editor is a markdown editor and I’ve seen people complain about the limitations there but I’m not a power user to compare with. Don’t know how well collaborative annotation/suggestions/replace would work with markdown. Fully out of my knowledge base but interested in learning what office text document abilities can’t be done in markdown. There’s still ODF for whatever markdown can’t do
There’s a phrase that gets passed around the tech scene: “Linux is only free if your time has no value.” Because, yes, Linux and other open-source apps are free to download and use. In a world driven by money, you’d expect the free version to overtake the paid one. The problem is, the paid option…just works.
Sure, until the paid option does something anti-competitive or gets too expensive or shuts down entirely, and you have to switch to a different paid option, sometimes burning dozens of hours in switching time (and/or hundreds of hours of work through lost or corrupted data) in the process. Not to mention the transition costs of just figuring out the new thing. Why not just switch to something that won’t go away, or be changed under your feet?
The problem is that it needs that initial time investment to get it working the way you want it.
Maybe I’m just enough of a tinkerer in any situation that I’ve put pretty much the same amount of time into fiddling with my Linux settings as I did with my last Windows computer.
If your hardware isn’t working properly, you have to find drivers that run on Linux; if the developer never made Linux-compatible drivers, you have to figure something else out.
People have been talking about this for my entire life, but in the past year of my switch to Linux, it has literally never happened once. I downloaded a new, open-source driver for my drawing tablet because it had some extra features that I wanted, but even it worked out of the box. I’ve never experienced this incompatibility. Honestly I’ve never even had trouble with software I wanted not being available for my distro.
Am I doing Linux wrong?
Windows doesn’t have this problem.
LOL.
Installers made for Windows don’t need any special TLC;
ROFL!
you double-click them and they work.
OH wait they’re serious?!
Once they’re installed, they work. If you need to install a driver, it works. You open a document in Office, it works.
Sure, if you don’t run into a permissions issue. And if the system registry doesn’t get corrupted. And if you’re not on an ARM machine. And if your TPM is the right version. And if you’re on the right subversion of Windows. And if a previous install didn’t leave some remnant of itself behind. And if you don’t want to do anything with an Apple device at all. And if sometimes you have the right fonts installed?
Honestly, I think I’ve had fewer problems installing Linux applications than Windows applications, but I can’t attest to that. I think I can be pretty confident in saying that they’re mostly equivalent. Both of them are pretty mature platforms with fairly minimal hiccups, in my experience.
And if something doesn’t work, we can yell at Microsoft until they publish a fix that makes it work again.
That’s a weird way of spelling “until they ignore it for six months and then lock the support thread for inactivity.”
Microsoft has gotten us into a state where we don’t need to think, tinker, or troubleshoot our software. We just double-click the icon and wait for it to “just work.” If it doesn’t, it’s someone else’s issue to solve, and we flood social media and support emails until the issue is resolved.
Here I have to agree with the article, because whatever the reality of installing applications on Windows, this is the fiction they’ve sold us. Apple, too. All operating systems have troubles, and all vendors try to downplay them and fix the stuff that causes problems for most of their users. Linux is just honest about the fact that they can’t make everything a perfectly smooth experience for everyone.
The “windows just works” claim is stupid. Especially the statement the author makes on how you just double click an icon and it just works everytime and if ever there is an issue, someone else will eventually fix it.
I’mma just going to sit over here in the corner with my AbbiWord and Gnumeric…
If the XML standard is overly complex, does that mean it’ll be a bigger pain for MS employees to maintain? Sounds like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
Iirc the openXML standard was open sourced due to some anti trust stuff brewing. They then expanded on the standard with proprietary addons that give LibreOffice/Google Docs trouble.
hey LibreOffice when are you gonna make the keyboard shortcuts in LibreOffice Calc match the keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Excel?
microsoft is a dirty bastard
