this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don't come close, and feature wise are 20 years behind. Especially since I basically mastered MS office 2007+'s drawing features, which the FOSS alternatives don't replicate very well.

And of course Microsoft loves to push Office 365. I don't pay for that and just use desktop office, but Microsoft prefers you don't know that you can do this.

And I'm going to get shit on by Lemmy big time for this but while Linux is great and has made vast improvements in recent years, I still use Windows, not only because of MS office, but because a lot of games tend to only support Windows. I know that wine and proton exist but they're not perfect and don't feel quite the same as running native.

I wish an operating system existed with a hybridized Linux and clone NT kernel (using code from FOSS Wine and ReactOS of course) so that the numerous back catalog of NT software can run similar to as intended while also interacting with Linux programs better and using a shared environment. Since it would probably become vulnerable to viruses for windows as well, maybe? (my programming knowledge is extremely rusty) an antivirus similar to Windows defender is bundled with the operating system. Hopefully if someone makes such an operating system it can be a Windows killer and would switch immediately

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Ticktick and obsidian. Ticktick is an awesome to do, habit, and calendar app with nothing like it. Obsidian is the best note taking app.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Writer in Libre Office is fine if you install the correct fonts on Linux. Calc needs some work people that know how to use power pivot in excel use it all the time. So not having that makes the switch hard.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I dearly miss Playnite on Linux. Having Games from a lot of different sources, only Lutris supports more than Steam/Epic/GoG, and it's missing a lot of features from Playnite and it's plugins. Managing my Gamelibrary without it sucks.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 4 days ago (9 children)

3D CAD software. There are a few options out there (FreeCAD, LibreCAD, etc) and Blender is a thing that exists for more artistic 3D modeling. But they simply don't hold a candle to the features and capabilities of the paid packages, which typically have costs in the 4-to-5-digit range. And I'm not talking the crazy high-end simulation options - those I understand, they're hard - but basic modeling features.

Hell, I'd even settle for a CAD package that had some solid basic features and had a reasonable purchase cost. Unfortunately the few providers have the industry by the throat, and so your options are "free but terrible" and "you need a mortgage to use this".

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Hmm, LibreOffice may not be the prettiest, but it works. For my own documents and presentations I use Typst nowadays. That's a blazing fast modern typesetting alternative to LaTeX. That being said, I can't stand WYSIWIG stuff but that might not be everybody's cup of tea.

I mostly run into stubborn manufacturers like Roland that only release their musical instrument companion apps for Mac/Win and leave Linux Digital Audio Workstations hanging.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Project management. There is one very good but old solution, open project is barely bearable.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I know managers who swore by MS Project (2007 I think?), and I didn't totally hate it myself. Haven't really looked for an alternative, but also, haven't needed to for the most part.

I wonder if it's just that project management has changed since then, and everything is all Jira/Kanban boards now? I think most of our projects have been laid out in Trello-like software and Git issues/tasks for probably the last 8 or 9 years.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Business Accounting software under FOSS is abysmal. Poor quality, poor documentation, poor functionality, limited locale support and limited local support.

CAM software under FOSS is limited to three axis at best, but most is two and a half axis.

Office functionality is covered with LibreOffice. Your assertion that it's 20 years behind is in my experience not based in fact.

Source: I've been using FOSS for over a quarter of a century.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I’m with you on the “FOSS office alternatives are shit”, but unfortunately MS office is also shit. Google is the closest I have found to a good office suite but even that is becoming a bit chaotic and awkward. LyX is a promising word processor but also pretty awkward to use in its own way. I’ve got nothing, there.

As far as gaming, this sound less kind than intended but you deserve any shit you get for saying Linux gaming is bad these days. Apart from a few AAA games with anti-cheat where the devs just don’t want to, basically every game just works without any extra effort. Even obscure indie games. I can’t think of the last game I wanted to play that didn’t run on Linux, and often it is better under proton than Windows or native.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

I made the jump recently, and although there are clear issues, I don't see any reason to use windows as my primary gaming OS anymore. Some games still require some fiddling with proton versions, extra command line arguments, environment variables, etc. That is bad for the average user that just wants to click play and play. Also, I noticed that at least on my setup (alienware laptop with nvidia gpu), some games have clear performance issues compared to windows, mainly some UE games. But it's not so bad to make me want to boot windows again.

And just some extra two cents: I'm still keeping a windows partition for those games that simply cannot run on linux, and it's possible to keep your main library on the linux partition (I'm using btreefs) and use that same library on windows. You just have to install a driver on windows, and it works beautifully. Haven't had any issues so far.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 days ago (2 children)

huh, i much prefer libreoffice to msoffice, i can't even think of a reason why anyone could prefer msoffice.

Im a but gobsmacked at the notion.

what do you use the drawing for?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

memeoffice.

didn't think msoffice would be the easiest platform to build memes/diagrams on.

I actually didn't even know office could build something that complicated.

thanks

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The only one I really miss is an NFC payments app, but a local LLM for Android that's FOSS would be cool too - PocketPal is free, but not open source or on F-Droid.

Also LibreOffice for desktop is great, but on mobile there aren't any easy to use ones in the same way Google Docs is, I've tried LibreOffice for Android and Collabora

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Pretty sure I've seen folk run a terminal emulator and ollama on android

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I meant a more graphical way, but yes, that would work

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 children)

A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don't come close,

What, exactly, is missing? MS Office pretty much peaked, feature-wise, in like 2003 (or, arguably, 2007), and LibreOffice is ahead of that. I also find the workflow to be closer to "classic" Office and, to a slightly lesser extent, WordPerfect, which I appreciate.

You can even give LibreOffice the ribbon menu if you want (it's in preferences somewhere). The default button icons may be rough (though recent versions have improve), but you can even customize those.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

MS Office pretty much peaked, feature-wise, in like 2003 (or, arguably, 2007

For me it's Office 2000. The flat UI is so efficient and yeah, there isn't any features missing that I've encountered. Takes no resources to run and works the same if you're on Windows 95 or 10. My family members still get me to install it if they get a new computer. It is also free to download from the Intetnet Archive.

I use LibreOffice for the most part because I'm on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think Windows 2000 was the last Windows version I actually liked. It went downhill from there until 8 when I finally jumped ship for good. If I recall, Office 2003 was pretty close to Office 2000, just not as "flat". I'm just more familiar with 2003 since I had it on my own PC and only used Office 2000 in the labs at school (so I could be mistaken).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I did a little reading, and yeah, the core applications remained mostly unchanged from 2000 to XP to 2003. I'm more familiar with 2000 as that's what I had growing up and that's probably why I like the flat UI the best.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

In MS Office 2007, Gradient support on shapes was massively improved (more than 2 points on custom gradients), Blurry shadows and glows were indroduced, 3D bevels and rotation support was added, better effects on photos were introduced and you can remove backgrounds. In office 2019, you can also import and export Drawing objects to SVG

These maps were made Entirely in PowerPoint 2019

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Gradient support on shapes was massively improved (more than 2 points on custom gradients), 3D bevels and rotation support was added

Can't say that's a feature I've ever really needed in an office suite, so am unable to confirm or deny LibreOffice can't do it.

better effects on photos were introduced and you can remove backgrounds

That's kind of outside the scope of a word processor / office suite. I just use GIMP and import it into the document.

In office 2019, you can also import and export Drawing objects to SVG

LibreOffice Draw (part of the suite) can create, edit, import, and export SVGs. LibreOffice writer can import and use them.

It sounds like you're just complaining that other office suites don't have a bunch of out-of-scope, unnecessary features bolted on. Definitely not worthy of condemning them over that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

The features aren't "unnecessary" if you're so used to them

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