this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social 136 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I get where you're coming from but I think you're overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it'd be a big deal. Now it's rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.

Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.

I'm less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it's products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That's the real problem - not losing WordPad.

At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it's allowed to get away with abusing it's dominant position to force it's products on consumers.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Does liber office make .docx files and export to pdf?

[–] tool@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Does liber office make .docx files and export to pdf?

It does. It's fine as a replacement for Word, but no one has an answer for Excel. LibreOffice Calc is fine for a basic spreadsheet, but Excel is in a completely different universe than Calc with anything beyond that.

To be fair though, Excel is in a completely different universe than literally any other competing product.

[–] ebits21@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think calc is fine for a lot of use cases. I use it all the time. It is different though.

For advanced stuff I’d rather use Python anyway to be honest.

[–] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Excel has built-in Python support now. I wish I was joking.

[–] ebits21@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Yes… processed on the cloud. Lol.

[–] localme@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you know how both of those compare with Google Sheets?

[–] elscallr@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sheets is capable enough for the average person but a business is always going to want to use Excel because it's the industry standard.

I can't remember the last time I actually needed a spreadsheet for anything other than looking at a bunch of tabular data, but I'm a programmer so I'm not the standard spreadsheet user.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm a programmer so I'm not the standard spreadsheet user.

But then what do you use for database???

[–] KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But then what do you use for database???

Probably a database.

[–] ebits21@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 year ago
[–] elscallr@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

JSON files that get committed to a git repo, obviously. They're in a private repository in GitHub so that takes care of security and resiliency, two birds with one stone.

[–] KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

At first I was certain this was going to be sarcasm.

[–] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you are an accountant, then it’s your beast of burden.

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Accountant here. I prefer libreoffice calc.

[–] localme@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks for your reply!

[–] bemenaker@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nothing compares to excel. There are spreadsheets, and there is excel. The world runs on excel, and for a damn good reason. Also, excel runs the world, literally.

[–] Corran1138@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

So you’re telling me that Excel is very good at stuff?

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

Just use SQL. Even SQLite.

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It wouldn't be as good as everyone says if it didn't.

[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 1 year ago

Yes, and recent versions of MS Word can also read odt, so no need for docx just to work with Word users.

[–] talos@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I built a new PC two months ago and it's the first time I didn't get Office. Libre Office has everything I need and it's free.

[–] boogetyboo@aussie.zone 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I've wondered about free suites like these - how do they make money, do you know?

[–] insomniac@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

They don’t. Libre Office is maintained by a non-profit called The Document Foundation. They’re funded entirely by donations. I think they make enough to have some full time employees.

A lot of open source software is created by individuals or non-profits. The Mozilla foundation makes Firefox, for instance. They make money through donations and also Google pays them a ton of money to be the default search engine.

There are for profit companies that make or contribute to open source software. Such as Red Hat. They tend to make money by selling support for the software.

[–] talos@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't think they make money. It's an open source project where people donate their time as far as I know.

EDIT: I forgot to mention you can donate to the project. Something has to pay for web hosting, I guess.

[–] LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

A bit of donations, a bit of unpaid people contributing just to help others.

[–] ebits21@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Donations. Volunteers.

[–] Sargteapot@lemmy.nz -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Or you know, google docs is a thing which is free and imo works better than word

[–] Kbin_space_program@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google docs is still trash though.

[–] MrSpArkle@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A web browser is not a word processor no matter how much they tart it up. If the thing isn’t saving a file to my local drive that is in a common format It’s not worth putting your effort into.

So many kids are going to grow up not having the concept where data lives and what the failure modes are.

[–] crossal@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

How so? I think you can export in different formats?