Fucking heroes 👏
Microsoft Office is a parasite holding people hostage with extortionate subscription fees
I can vouch for libre office. It’s so much better than it was I now don’t miss PowerPoint or word, and I really don’t miss Microsoft
As some one who lives in Excel, IMHO Calc is 80% of the way there - and that’s no easy task! Excel has been the primary tool of capitalism for decades now, it’s one of the most polished pieces of software ever (and yes I’m aware how annoying it can be sometimes lol)
Controversial take: that missing 20% is a deal breaker for my use cases. I’m still in awe of the volunteer developer network, but Calc has fallen short of being an Excel replacement for me.
I feel you, but I always find a way to make Calc work. I might spend a day or five searching for an answer. But there is always a way.
The lack of Tables support is rough, for one.
I was just using LibreOffice Calc to build some spreadsheets with formulas and everything. I’ve got no complaints.
These people are heroes
Thank you for making it possible to do my school work Windows-free, LibreOffice team 🙏
Bless these people. Donate to LibreOffice if you use it and can afford it.
Not to mention: This software must be as boring for most coders to work on as it is essential for all of us to have. Let’s be honest it’s not the sexiest kind of project.
I’m glad we have a volunteer community that can get excited about maintaining and improving office software for people around the globe. There’s a rare intersection of discipline, passion, and skill at play there. :)
Wow I’ve never heard about LibreOffice before. This is great!
I’m honestly surprised you use lemmy, but never heard about LibreOffice. There are so many cool softwares that are probably waiting for you to find them out.
Oh if that helps, I joined Lemmy just recently about 2 weeks ago. I’m surely finding interesting and unique things on here!
welcome and it is good news that lemmy cather to everyone :)
If you want to find alternative tools i can recommend using https://alternativeto.net/ it recommend tools that are alternative to other.
you can sort by paid, free, proprietary, etc
As some tools can be quite ubiquitous and/or you can have different use case, please check different alternatives.
Whatever your need, you will be surprised how many tools exist.
a nice one is firefox instead of chrome,edge, opera or safari. It is open source, do not collect your data, is light on ressource and if you add the extension “ublock origin” you have a truly ad free web browsing experience. (adblocker do not work anymore on browser and adblock have been bought by a marketing giant)
Nobody made fun of anyone though…
Nope, but someone was one of the lucky 10,000
Such a great app and great group of people. Thank you for sharing.
Real life heros and model citizens of the world I wanna live in.
Never had a bad experience with this software
Nor have I. I’ve also not paid to use office once.
My struggle, which is admittedly my own and I just need to practice, is that my hands have reflexive memory on how to get the the end of a column, how to freeze the top row, how to sort…I just do that all by the keyboard and I haven’t been successful is re-training my hands. I 100% love these people though, they should have a shrine or something
My only bad experience with this software is users moaning that it’s not excel and word. And users using word/writer as a layout tool, without using the layout tools in that software: tab tab tab space space space space align left: why does nothing line up 😔
Building alternatives can feel like hurling pebbles at goliath, but it is truly a substastial contribution that hacks at the roots of billionaire control.
Yeah, but David killed Goliath with a slingshot and a pebble
They don’t have a revenue stream?
Yes - but only if people donate. So donate!
YOU can donate to them 🫵
In case a dev of LibreOffice reads this: I love you. Heroes <3
Second this, of all the very worthy free software contributors out there these people are surely doing some of the most practical work for day-to-day software freedom for many users.
sigmas
Absolute gigachads
I love them!! LibreOffice rules so much. I’m so happy it exists! Thank you to these heroes of FOSS. 🫡
I used to consider LibreOffice Calc an “alternative” to excel and Google sheets, because I just had so much experience using them.
So while I liked LibreOffice, it was more on an ideological level. I used the other spreadsheet software much more often at work.
But then I just “forced” myself to use Calc exclusively and pretty quickly got used to how it works, until there was no friction at all.
Didn’t really think much of it until someone at work sent me a link to an online excel spreadsheet and it felt clunky as hell compared to what I was used to. I couldn’t figure out how to do the simplest thing, had to look everything up, and just felt frustrated by the whole experience.
Anyway, it’s funny how my old alternative became now my main. Kind of reminds me of my journey from Windows to Linux, really.
I like and trust them more than alternatives (and keep their software available on my systems) though I’m using OnlyOffice a little more, at least for my presentations. Technically MS PowerPoint has more features than both, but I don’t really need them (and they fuck with compatibility and are resource heavy). Plus, my Linux made presentations load properly on my students’ Macs PCs and ipads, as well as in browser on the LMS (Canvas).
My feelings are, LibreOffice feels more like MS Office circa mid aughts, while OnlyOffice is more like modern MS Office and Google Suite, at least as far as the ribbon menu and default themes are concerned. I’m sure I can get LibreOffice to theme just as well but the default aren’t… great.
OnlyOffice is sketchy.
If you are doing presentations I would highly recommend trying none of the above.
I only use markdown or one of the presentation ready things like marp or reveal.js.
So much better and it’s just plain text or html.
You can manage presentations in git, find and replace just works, they look miles better and you can even do some neat tricks like having your students connect to a webpage and follow along on their own computers.
PowerPoint was and is a bad idea for presentations.
Well… I don’t really have that option because of slide sharing and whatnot, the system requires pptx format, even for professors. Technically I’m not even supposed to use non-MS software, lol.
But I think you’re right. It’s getting to be a headache messing with OnlyOffice w/ master slides. Libre might end up being my only option simply because of its ability to work within my pptx centric work.
While it’s still early days, you might want to take a look at EuroOffice, a OnlyOffice fork to avoid their sketchiness and supported by a great number of organizations.
Thanks, I’ll take a look. First day of the semester is tomorrow so I need to get this finished, haha.
Yeah a bit too close to look into this, but good luck!
That’s crazy that it’s because of slide sharing, when doing it this way makes it so much easier to share!
Doesn’t suprise me though, they always make the worst decisions.
Hehe, yes, that and one drive shoved down our throats because they pay for it all. I can’t even get them to approve my Linux system to receive school email, have to do browser Outlook.
I’ll still consider these options if I’m ever back in doing academic research and going to conferences, though.
Been using it for years. I don’t do much with it, mostly using Calc, but it’s great to have.
Fortunately, their work is appreciated and used around the world. I like libreoffice very much, there is no looking back.
