Windows 11 looks like the perfect reason to give UNIX-based systems another try. Literally the only thing that's kept me hooked to Windows are the Office apps. They're baked into so many of my workflows, from creating simple graphics to doing my personal finances, and of course plenty of legacy documents that I'd like to continue being able to use. They're really Windows-native I've found, even the official versions for iOS seem to be missing some features (last time I checked was in the past year, and I couldn't find some paragraph-level formatting options I wanted in Word, eg). Google Docs seem like a different product, they apparently have great APIs, but the "click-based" features are no match. It's been ages since I tried LibreOffice, but it was no match back then either.
I'm thinking, either I need to get used to different workflows or just try virtualization. I heard Figma is great for presentations, anything that Excel can do where the alternatives are lacking is probably better done in R/Python anyway, but for Word I don't see an alternative. No way I'll use LaTeX for all my writing, and anything Markdown-based just won't cut it formatting-wise. Or just use something like Wine I guess. Anyone facing a similar situation?
Long-time Windows user here that made the jump from Windows 11+WSL to Linux a few months ago. After test driving a few distros, I settled on CachyOS (an Arch-based distro)[1].
Performance wise it's smooth as heck, and Geekbench scores show it performing better than Win11 across the board. The default install uses KDE Plasma for its desktop, which is a perfect fit for Windows users like myself in terms of UX/UI.
For an alternative to MS Office, I've been using OnlyOffice[2] with no compatibility issues yet (though I am only a casual user and not a hardcore Word/Excel user).
I reinstalled Win11 last week to confirm whether or not I was experiencing bias, and there was noticeable feeling of "lag" when using Win11 compared to CachyOS (this test was with the latest Win drivers and patches on relatively recent Thinkpad hardware). I went back to Cachy with no hesitation after that.
> Yes, every dependency onlyoffice uses is outdated. They even use v8 8.9 that doesn't include any security patches. They also uses outdated CEF binary downloaded from an http url and doesn't check its integrity at all. Even worse, that CEF binary might be closed source as suggested by dbermond in https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors/issues/1664
> I would advise anyone who uses onlyoffice to avoid opening any untrusted documents with it. It appears that onlyoffice upstream doesn't care about security at all. See https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors/issues/1664 for more details
Ahaha, I've become that person I guess. I only mentioned Arch as I've always used Ubuntu when using Linux desktop VMs, and even test drove Kubuntu before trying out Cachy. Apart from some brief time getting used to pacman as a package manager instead of apt, I haven't encountered any other items that felt different to Ubuntu.
Can't recommend this enough, I was letting a few games with anticheat keep my personal use on Windows and I decided to jettison those and make the plunge and couldnt be happier.
I went with Mint instead of an arch-based distro, but my experience has been really great even dealing with Geforce drivers.
I use the 365 suite in a web browser if I need to work on it , no issues.
+1 for only office. When I was a data analyst I made this custom graph in Excel that rendered some lines as speedometers. It calculated the rotation based on the input numbers to align them in the right position. LibreOffice could not handle it (and I don't blame them). I was shocked when I opened the file in OnlyOffice and it worked!
I run Linux on my work machine and my office is full Windows/MacOS shop.I've so far been able to get away with using either office web apps for things like Teams, Outlook, Excel and Word and I also have a Window 11 VM that has all the desktop versions of the same apps.
I would say that 99.9% of the time I can get away with using the web app versions, even for things like Teams meetings it works really well. Once in a blue moon I will have a document that I can't open in the web versions so I fire up the VM and open it on there.
There are definitely some annoyances around this workflow but IMHO the annoyances pale in comparison to the annoyance of having to use Windows or MacOS every day.
When I see people waking up now I wonder what's taken them so long. I could see this 15 years ago and jumped off Windows at that point. Been using Linux ever since. It's become so easy since then I've intentionally made my life more difficult by switching to Gentoo about 5 years ago. I'm so glad none of my work is locked into the products of rent seeking companies like Microsoft. It was easier for me because 15 years I didn't already have a body of work and an investment into any tools, but I still think it's something you'll be glad you did in another 15 years.
How the documents look is everything. That’s what separates desktop publishing like Word from Notepad. The documents have to look the same and have to print the same. Legal cases depend on it. Academic submissions depend on it (Nature Communications template is not latex, it is word). This is not something that can be omitted.
Ah, but, “pdfs aren’t editable” and “pdfs cost more money to view”. People absolutely do use Word when they want documents to look the same, and will complain when the documents look different.
That's the conventional short-term wisdom, but you'll find just about any rule is bendable to breakable when market conditions change, folks get scared, or they simply decide to.
There's no document formatting that can't be copied elsewhere. Start with new documents and convert the old ones (to pdf or whatever) at some point.
Since Windows XP that is is going to be the year of Linux migration following the Windows exodus after each Windows version is announced, and here we are.
Even Valve can't get the folks targeting Android to port their NDK powered games into SteamDeck, they have to translate Windows/DirectX instead.
It's probably worth trying LibreOffice again if your last install was a couple of years ago. They take document compatibility bugs pretty seriously and fix a bunch with every release.
That's probably the easiest step to take next, before looking at virtualization or a full Linux install with Wine.
Calc is... bad. It's slow and I've run into bugs in formulas; would rather use google sheets, which are a different kind of bad, but better than calc. No issues with writer, haven't used anything else.
I can vouch that the OnlyOffice flatpak is worth at least giving a try. Just sending sth important without requiring Microsoft office at all, feels so good. Granted I have a docx template and generated the initial version with pandoc, so I'm not doing any formatting or anything, just back and forth over editing.
Office is moving web based. OWA is first class now, with Outlook New being a thin wrapper around it with some natives. Also their mockups all use macs primarily so “go figure”
There is a long, long road ahead for that to happen. Excel has to not only radically change itself, but so does Power BI. The 3rd party ecosystem has slowly changed from COM add-ins to the JS-based Add-ins, but even then there are many 3rd parties that continue to go the COM route, hence the very long deprecation road for 'legacy' Outlook in the enterprise.
I am curious what made you give up? The EOL of Windows 7 is precipitated my switch.
I went down the fun path of running Windows on Linux with a pass-through VM for a while but found that most of what I was trying to do worked well in Linux.
Of course, I don't do any development or work on my own computer. Work computer is now 11 and I dislike it but honestly the IT lockdown drives more ire than the Microsoft redesign
I've used windows for 30+ years, and I'm getting a Mac this year. I seriously considered Linux on a Thinkpad and even test-drove Debian on my older X1 Carbon. I tried, but too many things didn't quite work. I'd get stuck on the login screen for no apparent reason. VMware modules were a pain to build and sign. Something (might have been VMware modules) caused it to freeze. Hidpi support isn't ready. And nothing was really polished.
As someone who has used OSX for .. 21 years now and is slowly, but surely moving off: the grass is not greener on the other side.
Bugs aplenty, a user interface which has seriously deteriorated over the last decade bundled with an ever-increasing user hostility and tendency to lock you out of your system.
One example: you can no longer manage which applications may run as daemons/background tasks. Any application can register itself with the OS to do so, and your only recourse is a little tiny switch in the system preferences.
Only, in the case of Google Chrome this does not work; the application constantly re-registers itself, overriding the setting. I can no longer prevent Chrome from doing whatever the hell it wants to do, and — adding insult to injury — every time it does, I get a persistent notification from macOS that it is now doing what ever the hell it wants to do. About a dozen times a day.
Sounds like my 6th Gen X1, only I replaced the battery last fall. I also noticed the display glitches sometimes when I open it, and the USB-C ports have connection issues sometimes.
Give Linux a try. After seeing how ad-centered Windows 11 has become, I made the decision to wipe my drive and go full Linux, and I couldn't be happier. Is it perfect? No. Is it better for my workflow and caters to my more advanced usage? A big resounding yes.
It cannot replace Microsoft Office, but it's getting close. Most people don't use the full functionality of Microsoft Office, so LibreOffice and Google's online suite are good enough, but I still keep a remote Windows Virtual Machine (VM) around for those time I need Windows-specific stuff and RDP into the VM. I look forward to the day Microsoft finally wakes up and ports Microsoft Office to Linux.
I'm working on a cross-platform native-first, offline-first replacement for Excel and PowerPoint, so hopefully it can help you and others make the switch.
I, too, spent far too long trapped in Windows because I couldn't get away from MS Office
For me it is only Excel. I am not even a power user, but its strongest features is its integration with powerquery. In many use cases it is perfectly enough to quickly analyze some data and it is still friendly enough to give non-tech workers possibilities to refresh the newest data available.
Apart from that every other part of the MS ecosystem is replaceable. If there would be a solution for corporate IT account management, Windows could be replaced without much friction.
Office is moving to the cloud, so the current dying breed of desktop apps should be covered by WINE, eventually. Or cave in and use O365, like I do for work - the irony is that Microsoft's insistence on O365 has completely defeated the purpose of their OS.
I mean... Office also just runs just fine on a Mac. But I agree, Linux is the way to go. VMs are not so bad, but you can also use Steam's Proton to run most Windows software just fine, I would be surprised if people don't just run Office from Steam's flavor of Wine, since the game support is phenomenal.
I'm thinking, either I need to get used to different workflows or just try virtualization. I heard Figma is great for presentations, anything that Excel can do where the alternatives are lacking is probably better done in R/Python anyway, but for Word I don't see an alternative. No way I'll use LaTeX for all my writing, and anything Markdown-based just won't cut it formatting-wise. Or just use something like Wine I guess. Anyone facing a similar situation?