Linux Discussion

[maflynn]

Have you purchased the full version and, if yes, does it have any advantages over the free one (besides no nagging)?

I've not tried the free one, I went straight to Office 2024 (non-subscription model), but it seems the free one lacks formatting, options, limited dictionaries. It seems a basic office suite (which admittedly is probably fine for most people).

I'll take the plunge and buy the non-sub version, partly to pay the developer for their work, and partly those increased features will be used.

What were they compared to how you used O365?

For me, I largely only use excel, and so the issues are only related to the spreadsheet. For OnlyOffice I found that settings are not remembers, On one spreadsheet I color code the cells a certain color. In excel that color selection remains, so I only need to click the toolbar to color a given cell. OnlyOffice I have to keep selecting the color in the color palette when I open up that spreadsheet.

If I keep the app open for days, and try to edit an opened spreadsheet it doesn't take my input. I have to close it down, and start it back up.

Pivot table oddities, to what I'm used too.

Formatting cells, in excel I hit ctl-1 and I have the ability to make all sorts of adjustements to the cell, in OnlyOffice the formatting doesn't exist in one easy to use area.

These are not show stopping issues, but enough to make me look for alternatives.

 

[Steve Adams]

My intent was to get rid of Office 365, and I was using OnlyOffice but it just didn't measure up to my expectations. Being free/open source I largely sucked it up and dealt with the short comings but Softmaker Office 2024, is much better. I can run it on multiple platforms, and the licesnse allows multiple installs.

Have you tried WPS suite?

 

[Queen6]

LibreOffice here Mac & PC, dumped MS Office over a decade back. Never had issue, was initially concerned with complex spreadsheets however between the community and what's between my ears always solved the problems. LibreOffice evolves at a steady pace, has a good support structure, most of all has never given me reason to question it.

MS problem is bloat and not fixing the core issues. My solution is to take control over the OS, remove the bloat, kill all telemetry, halt the forced feature updates. Simple my $$$$, my systems, my choice. Am only on W11 for gaming & security and those days are closing fast...

Microsoft seemingly refuses to listen to its customers and in my region there's now a significant push to remove Microsoft and its garbage that most simply don't want or need... That's solely on Microsoft.

Q-6

 

[maflynn]

Have you tried WPS suite?

Nah, its not on my radar.

 

[Queen6]

Have you tried WPS suite?

Yes, but need the paid option to get the best out of it. Better than MS Office in some respects. For my needs need an offline solution. LibreOffice works better for me, although at times have had to work really hard at it with complex Spreadsheets. That's not such a bad thing as pushes you to think.

Excel remains the standard; however, this is Microsoft and they are a company that's only focused on profit and now data extraction, not excellence let alone the customer's needs who they only expect to monitise... After with over a decade with LibreOffice I have zero interest in MS office as I don't consider it trustworthy or remotely aligned with the user needs having needless bloat and leaking like a sieve...

Q-6

 

[Queen6]

Nah, its not on my radar.

Basic use is ok, need to push it, need to pay that's their model. LibreOffice was a challenge but is far more powerful than many would think. Engineering couldn't deliver, same old story, sales oversold. At the wire, told the Ops manger a good friend of mine I'd crack it, replied to me you fail your gone, said if don't we all gone...

Cracked it with LibreOffice, called him early in the AM said is populating, all fields are present & accurate. Was time imperative shot the data to the client. Was told should have verified by engineering first, replied engineering couldn't resolve the basic calculations, enough said LOL

Q-6

 

[pshufd]

LibreOffice here Mac & PC, dumped MS Office over a decade back. Never had issue, was initially concerned with complex spreadsheets however between the community and what's between my ears always solved the problems. LibreOffice evolves at a steady pace, has a good support structure, most of all has never given me reason to question it.

MS problem is bloat and not fixing the core issues. My solution is to take control over the OS, remove the bloat, kill all telemetry, halt the forced feature updates. Simple my $$$$, my systems, my choice. Am only on W11 for gaming & security and those days are closing fast...

Microsoft seemingly refuses to listen to its customers and in my region there's now a significant push to remove Microsoft and its garbage that most simply don't want or need... That's solely on Microsoft.

Q-6

My management recommended we go to Open Office at Oracle after we bought Sun Microsystems out. I eventually went with Libre as it was described as more Mac friendly. I've been using it for at least fifteen years and it's my main writing tool when I need more than emacs or Notes and am not doing any math writing (I use LaTeX for that).

 

[maflynn]

You have Oracle to thank for Libra Office. People were getting frustrated at how Oracle was managing OOo, not really working in the open source mindset, tight control, bureaucracy. Etc Major backers of Open Office created the document foundation and forked Libra Office, which is now a more robust and dynamic office suite.

I don't know why Oracle fought everyone so hard, only to give it away to Apache.

 

[pshufd]

You have Oracle to thank for Libra Office. People were getting frustrated at how Oracle was managing OOo, not really working in the open source mindset, tight control, bureaucracy. Etc Major backers of Open Office created the document foundation and forked Libra Office, which is now a more robust and dynamic office suite.

I don't know why Oracle fought everyone so hard, only to give it away to Apache.

Oracle tries to monetize everything.

Same thing happened with MySQL and the MariaDB fork.

It's also why VirtualBox has languished.

 

[Harddrive]

I dual boot an HP laptop with both Windows 11 and Ubuntu 25.10 and I like how Ubuntu seems to just work with all my gear something that did not happen in the past with older versions as for office still using Libre works fine for my use. Don't game on any of my computers but I do load a lot of photos and music.

 

[Steve Adams]

Oracle tries to monetize everything.

Same thing happened with MySQL and the MariaDB fork.

It's also why VirtualBox has languished.

I was just going to say, GREED is why oracle squandered those things.

 

[maflynn]

I was just going to say, GREED is why oracle squandered those things.

I think its more nuanced then that.

Oracle started off as a database company, so I totally can understand mySQL withering on the vine so to speak, though the use of mySQL and Oracle database is two totally different market segments. I've used both, and both have their place in the Information Services.

Oracle bought Sun Microsystems to get into the hardware business and control more of the pipeline. Much like how Apple has done, they want more of the stuff produced in house, Solaris, or the server hardware. I think the Open Source software was not something they cared much about.

I work for a company that relied on Oracle products/services and we've had to use VirtualBox for some of their updates. It's a weird setup, and one that felt forced. That is, they had this product (VirtualBox) and didn't know what to do with it, so they forced an update methodology to use it.

Only Java is being used by them in any meaningful way and to be honest, I hate dealing with Oracle software because of the reliance on Java.

 

[pshufd]

Buying out Sun's hardware business had great benefits on the database side where Oracle could execute database instructions at very low levels in the hardware.

 

[eltoslightfoot]

Buying out Sun's hardware business had great benefits on the database side where Oracle could execute database instructions at very low levels in the hardware.

And in the 90s and 00s, it was very common to have Solaris Unix as the OS on Oracle DBs. I ran two Sunfire servers back in the day for that purpose.

 

[Inhalant]

dabbled in arch, learned a ton about how an OS works when I basically installed it from scratch. Built a neat little music production machine (more of a novelty than a working machine though). and then realized I was in over my head in the long term, was unsure if I was keeping all of the holes in the boat plugged so to speak, if I was updating properly, if my system was secure.. . also missed Logic Pro,... bought my mini m4, happy happy happy now

If I had to I would do fedora. I totally love gnome. Tried hyprland, wasn't my bag, I like a gui

Gnome still feels like macOS from 10 years ago though, Mac OS is just some sleek beautyness. Apple really is just ahead of the game and anybody who argues against it just doesn't really understand

 

[robertosh]

I'm using Fedora for work since couple of years. I think it's mature enough to be my main driver at home and I'm currently building a rig to complement my M2 mini. I like the workflow of Gnome, I think is more welcomed from a macOS user than KDE which is more "Windowish". I find Gnome more limited in terms of customization, maybe not as pretty, but also less buggy than KDE.

Never had any issue with upgrades, went from 40 up to 43 with no issues. Bluetooth works well, in general the experience is smooth even on older hardware. I think the important part is, like in any Linux distro, is to not over-customize the thing and try to rely on the official repositories as much as possible.

 

[Steve Adams]

I'm using Fedora for work since couple of years. I think it's mature enough to be my main driver at home and I'm currently building a rig to complement my M2 mini. I like the workflow of Gnome, I think is more welcomed from a macOS user than KDE which is more "Windowish". I find Gnome more limited in terms of customization, maybe not as pretty, but also less buggy than KDE.

Never had any issue with upgrades, went from 40 up to 43 with no issues. Bluetooth works well, in general the experience is smooth even on older hardware. I think the important part is, like in any Linux distro, is to not over-customize the thing and try to rely on the official repositories as much as possible.

Great, sound advice. I am using Zorin and it works great. I am figuring how to get everything working on it for our businesses we are starting but for the most part we should be able to get it all working.

I do have to get my server running. Need to get off OneDrive ASAP.

 

[LeeW]

Last night, I was helping a friend get all their Steam Windows games running under Ubuntu, Steam now has a Proton compatibility layer. I must say I was quite impressed; all the games we tried worked very well with very little effort. Well, none actually.

 

[maflynn]

Steam now has a Proton compatibility layer.

Welcome to 2018 😛

Proton and wine has been a part of Linux/Steam for quite some time, though I think around 2022 things really exploded in both popularity and high volume of game compatibility when Valve released the steam deck.

 

[LeeW]

Proton and wine has been a part of Linux/Steam for quite some time, though I think around 2022 things really exploded in both popularity and high volume of game compatibility when Valve released the steam deck.

I don't use Linux on a desktop much, despite being a Linux server engineer for 25 years, I find there's nothing worse than Linux on a desktop, command line or nothing, so I don't keep up with these things 🙂

 

[dmr727]

The Steam Deck is what opened my eyes to how good Proton is - I realized that if potato-level hardware could run my whole Steam library (granted at a handheld screen resolution), I should see what it can do with my 4070 desktop.

Suffice to say Windows is no longer part of my life. 😉

 

[salamanderjuice]

The Steam Deck is what opened my eyes to how good Proton is - I realized that if potato-level hardware could run my whole Steam library (granted at a handheld screen resolution), I should see what it can do with my 4070 desktop.

Suffice to say Windows is no longer part of my life. 😉

It's crazy. Even on Android phones/devices it is starting to get good with apps like Gamenative. It's not quite as trouble free as x64 Linux, but a decent portion of stuff works* at fully playable speeds. Still kinda wild in my mind to be running a PC game on a phone, even if it is an older or lighter title.

* It's somewhat device specific, Qualcomm devices seem to fair better.

 

[QuarterSwede]

I'm using Fedora for work since couple of years. I think it's mature enough to be my main driver at home and I'm currently building a rig to complement my M2 mini. I like the workflow of Gnome, I think is more welcomed from a macOS user than KDE which is more "Windowish". I find Gnome more limited in terms of customization, maybe not as pretty, but also less buggy than KDE.

Never had any issue with upgrades, went from 40 up to 43 with no issues. Bluetooth works well, in general the experience is smooth even on older hardware. I think the important part is, like in any Linux distro, is to not over-customize the thing and try to rely on the official repositories as much as possible.

Sage advice here.

I've been messing with Linux for years. I'm a Debian user myself because I learned apt before dnf (probably thanks to Ubuntu. No, it was the Knoppix live CD!). I'll second sticking with a mature and stable Linux distro and window manager.

I'll also second Gnome being a lot more familiar for macOS users. It's not exactly the same but it's pretty darn close. Close enough that there are a bunch of extensions available to make it behave almost exactly like macOS. And another second for not recommending that and keeping it as vanilla as possible for stability reasons. It works extremely well on its own and is pretty minimalistic (clean) without sacrificing day-to-day functionality. I'm personally not a fan of Plasma (too Windows like for my taste) but it is extremely customizable from the get go; doesn't hurt that it's well designed.

 

[Harddrive]

Anyone test drive the beta of 26.04 from what I read seems interesting may have to update the 23rd.

 

[Steve Adams]

I am on my low spec linux laptop now. It runs awesome. it's a core m3, 4gb of ram and a 1tb ssd installed. It does swap some ram at times, but usually runs at 1-1.5 gb used.

Windows 11 on this machine is unusable. pure slop and you have to wait minutes for it to do anything. On Zorin, it's quick and snappy. I am using it as my iPad replacement as it is more comfortable on the lap and does everything I can do on my iPad minus navigation in my truck. I will have that sorted too soon.