Comment by meetingthrower 8 hours ago
MS Office is hardly "niche professional software." I hate it, and recognize that I can use the online services, but the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this application and I can't easily do it on Linux.
If you're working in a corporate environment, this may not be viable. LibreOffice is great software, but it's not 100% compatible. Things may look slightly different, get lost or otherwise cause problems. I've really tried, but at the end of the day I occasionally do need to use actual Microsoft Office.
How do I join a live editing session of an Excel file with several people using regular Excel with LibreOffice?
I can't.
Or the same with PowerPoint.
I can't.
In a modern workspace it's not just local software running solely on just your local machine emailing around files or clobbering changes in some corporate file share.
I don’t do corporate work on my home computer? I don’t know who’s suggesting corporate IT departments should convert everyone to Linux. “Work computer” and “home computer” are entirely separate use cases.
(Also a ton of MS Office work is being done through the web interfaces now anyway. I find the web versions pretty terrible but people seem to put up with them.)
I am also forced to use "productivity" software from MS, but I make do with the web versions on Linux at work. I hate it all, but it's okay. I am playing the long term game of trying to get my whole org to Linux. It helps that I can influence technical decisions, slow but steady process.
> the reality is that I have to send, receive, and work in this application
Why? You can edit MS Office documents fine in LibreOffice and other similar software.