• IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    14 days ago

    or just use LibreOffice

    If you work in an office or for an office or are connected to an office … let them pay for it and use the software on their systems.

    It’s also a great excuse to disconnect from the office anyway … if someone calls you after hours to do work … tell them you need to access your computer at the office and won’t do the work until you get back to your desk.

    Otherwise, if there is no requirement from anyone and you’re just doing some word processing yourself at home or doing some basic spreadsheets … just use Open Source Software … there’s plenty of them around.

    • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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      14 days ago

      the catch is when you really need specifically O365 for some reason, e.g. we had to get the O365 download version for my kid’s schooling because that was the specific version the “this is how you do office shit” classes were taught against, the online O365 didn’t cut it

      of course even the teacher was telling the kids “look you should just use libreoffice” lol

      • dustyData@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        Is the school providing the license? because if they’re not, then it is a rough call to require and force parents to pay for a non essential tool. This is why FOSS is such a powerful education ally. It doesn’t cost any of the end users any money. This kind of things is why people still think MS products as the default. MS spent a lot of money in marketing to force education to treat them as such.

        • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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          14 days ago

          you are both correct and fatuous, which is an ideal combination

          assume that in the past 25 years everyone here has heard the gospel of RMS

          • dustyData@lemmy.world
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            14 days ago

            But why the downvote? Just because things suck we should just lie down and take it? We can at least talk about how it sucks and we wish it were different. There’s nothing silly in wanting the world to be better.

            • self@awful.systems
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              14 days ago

              you are, without any sense of shame, evangelizing libreoffice to someone who compiled it straight from git like 12 hours ago because they use it constantly, in a community made entirely out of techies deeply involved with open source projects

              and now you’re complaining that your weak shit got a tiny number of downvotes? cause we didn’t clap like seals at the mere idea of the existence of open source software? fuck right off, thanks

              • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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                14 days ago

                say friend, have you heard about our lord and saviour Richard

                jooooin us nooow and shaaaare the soooooftware

                • self@awful.systems
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                  14 days ago

                  you’ve fucking done it

                  my next movie marathon is gonna be Revolution OS, Battlefield Earth, Antitrust, and then I’m going to go into a coma

                  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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                    14 days ago

                    no no! you have so much to live for! like

                    (#include <CURRENT EVENTS>)

                    never mind, knock yourself out and rise up in vengeance

      • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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        14 days ago

        That’s the thing … most people who are doing work themselves at home and for their own purposes, never need something like O365 … when it comes to schooling it should be the same, unless the school is doing very specific particular thing just to justify using O365, then it shouldn’t be required

        Word processing is very simple … I have an old Underwood typewriter from 1921 … I can write and format a letter using it if I wanted to … it shouldn’t be any more complicated than that.

        Microsoft pushing their software is just a cheap salesman selling snake oil that you don’t need and doesn’t do anything special.

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      13 days ago

      My mom will never grok LibreOffice.

      I tried to switch her for a long time but I gave up when she called me one day to complain that her coworker can’t open a file she saved. Apparently the coworker in question was too, emm, talented to open an .odf

      There are things that are outside of human reach. I can’t even put into words the strife that MSFT caused in my house when they switched Internet Explorer to Edge and thus “broke” her computer.