Italian Ministry of Defense moves to LibreOffice

[Trik'Stari]

Ya'll need to get off your "open standards high horse."

 

Having something open or closed isn't the problem. Having a shitty alternative is. I've had many more crashes with LibreOffice, the layout just isn't as good, and it simply doesn't have the vast amount of features that MS Office products have.

 

Whining about closed standards.. as if that's not beneficial to everyone..

How about......

I'm poor.

 

And can't afford it.

[techswede]

Why would you ever wish LibreOffice upon yourself?

I use it daily to write books and stuff. Actually enjoying it quite a bit

 

If the school cut the cost of office 365 they could probably use that money for a proper cafeteria..

[Sauron]

the winxp is actually a worse train wreck than this, because the issue isnt just document compatibility, but the fact their entire application suite was built onto a base, which then was tossed out the window.

 

it'd be AMAZING for the corporate world if windows would release an "XP-2" basicly providing the winXP platform for software compatibility, but with a more modern backend.

 

but no. they dumped it, and forced most companies in the world to completely re-think their infrastructure.

 

Or, you know, they could make it open source and let the companies update it themselves. Or let the community do it.

[patrick3027]

uhm.. why?

 

please explain why a government using an open standard over proprietary stuff is so laughably bad?

And there's a real trend of governments moving away from proprietary stuff, India for example is developing it's own Linux distro to replace Windows: http://www.techworm.net/2015/09/linux-based-boss-to-replace-microsofts-windows-as-os-for-indian-government.html

[manikyath]

I've had many more crashes with LibreOffice,

well... my laptop just plainly refuses to run MS office.

 

its something wrong somewhere, but i cant be bothered figuring it out, because i already have libre on there, and it works just fine for me.

 

(i needed MS excel specificly for a programming class, and i got in the habit of saving after every line of code, because it would crash 10-ish times per hour)

[manikyath]

Or, you know, they could make it open source and let the companies update it themselves. Or let the community do it.

well... theres an "unofficial service pack 4" made by some russian guy...

 

it had to be russia... (nothing against russia, the only arch linux developer i know by name is russian, may or may not be because his key always derps when i do a fresh install...)

[Sauron]

Ya'll need to get off your "open standards high horse."

 

Having something open or closed isn't the problem. Having a shitty alternative is. I've had many more crashes with LibreOffice, the layout just isn't as good, and it simply doesn't have the vast amount of features that MS Office products have.

 

Whining about closed standards.. as if that's not beneficial to everyone..

 

The interface is functional if not perfect, it's stable enough unless you start importing 10mb files, and government offices simply don't need the extra functionality of ms office. These guys are just writing 50 page word documents and plotting some pretty basic data into spreadsheets, they don't need to get fancy with it. If this was the finance minstry you'd be right, but it's not.

[manikyath]

And there's a real trend of governments moving away from proprietary stuff, India for example is developing it's own Linux distro to replace Windows: http://www.techworm.net/2015/09/linux-based-boss-to-replace-microsofts-windows-as-os-for-indian-government.html

thats actually really interesting.

 

as a slight linux fanboy i dont deem linux to be ready for the corporate world, but this may be their way in. we'll see what the future holds.

[patrickjp93]

Ya'll need to get off your "open standards high horse."

 

Having something open or closed isn't the problem. Having a shitty alternative is. I've had many more crashes with LibreOffice, the layout just isn't as good, and it simply doesn't have the vast amount of features that MS Office products have.

 

Whining about closed standards.. as if that's not beneficial to everyone..

Use 5.x and try to say that again. LibreOffice is easily at feature parity with Microsoft. As for layout, every change takes time to get used to, but everything is in a logical place or is a simple google search away.

[patrickjp93]

well... my laptop just plainly refuses to run MS office.

 

its something wrong somewhere, but i cant be bothered figuring it out, because i already have libre on there, and it works just fine for me.

 

(i needed MS excel specificly for a programming class, and i got in the habit of saving after every line of code, because it would crash 10-ish times per hour)

Unless this was an operations research or stochastic modeling class, I'm very worried to find out where you went to school...

[patrickjp93]

the winxp is actually a worse train wreck than this, because the issue isnt just document compatibility, but the fact their entire application suite was built onto a base, which then was tossed out the window.

 

it'd be AMAZING for the corporate world if windows would release an "XP-2" basicly providing the winXP platform for software compatibility, but with a more modern backend.

 

but no. they dumped it, and forced most companies in the world to completely re-think their infrastructure.

Windows XP was a terrible OS for security. We needed 7. What they've done after is what's highly disagreeable for me.

[AlwaysFSX]

How about......

I'm poor.

 

And can't afford it.

Okay, that's fine. But that doesn't make it the "be all end all solution, also it's open so everyone should use it" kind of thing.

 

well... my laptop just plainly refuses to run MS office.

 

its something wrong somewhere, but i cant be bothered figuring it out, because i already have libre on there, and it works just fine for me.

 

(i needed MS excel specificly for a programming class, and i got in the habit of saving after every line of code, because it would crash 10-ish times per hour)

Sounds like a registry problem that I once had.

 

The interface is functional if not perfect, it's stable enough unless you start importing 10mb files, and government offices simply don't need the extra functionality of ms office. These guys are just writing 50 page word documents and plotting some pretty basic data into spreadsheets, they don't need to get fancy with it. If this was the finance minstry you'd be right, but it's not.

But governments do use 10+ MB files. And you'd be surprised who uses what kind of extra functionality with Office. You may not use them all the time, but that one time when you need it then it's actually there.

 

Use 5.x and try to say that again. LibreOffice is easily at feature parity with Microsoft. As for layout, every change takes time to get used to, but everything is in a logical place or is a simple google search away.

I don't remember which version I had used, but I tried it most recently back in June and my statements still stand.

[manikyath]

Unless this was an operations research or stochastic modeling class, I'm very worried to find out where you went to school...

well.. part of the education was to be able to make scripts in excel. (which i've mastered after about 2 hours, the rest of my time in the class was spent on making cookie clicker in excel) but it was kind of meant as a way to introduce students from an entirely different field into the concept of programming.

Windows XP was a terrible OS for security. We needed 7. What they've done after is what's highly disagreeable for me.

thats what i meant with the "xp compatibility with a modern backend"

 

to bring it back to linux: i can run programs from the unix days without much issues, and the rest of my system is up to par with a modern day enviroment.

[manikyath]

Sounds like a registry problem that I once had.

the laptop was a lost cause, after that year i completely wiped and clean installed it.

 

the hardware isnt quite stabile either. (then again, i've seen the stuff governments tend to have to work with, its depressing...)

[Agosto]

Use 5.x and try to say that again. LibreOffice is easily at feature parity with Microsoft. As for layout, every change takes time to get used to, but everything is in a logical place or is a simple google search away.

 

Tried LibreOffice 5.something some months ago

Switched back to the latest still version because of formatting or font issues iirc...

[AlwaysFSX]

the laptop was a lost cause, after that year i completely wiped and clean installed it.

 

the hardware isnt quite stabile either. (then again, i've seen the stuff governments tend to have to work with, its depressing...)

That sounds exactly like my old laptop.

[manikyath]

That sounds exactly like my old laptop.

does yours randomly forget it has an nvidia chip inside as well?

[ZetZet]

Eh, MS Office might not have the best playing with others standards, but it still is the best program to use. I doubt they will save any money doing this since people who come to work places are trained in MS Office and they WILL needs help. Microsoft could have probably provided them licenses at a fraction of a cost if they were trying to make a deal in the first place since this is just anti-advertisement for them, can't imagine they wouldn't cough up some better prices to avoid these kind of articles.

[Hans Christian | Teri]

I use it daily to write books and stuff. Actually enjoying it quite a bit

 

If the school cut the cost of office 365 they could probably use that money for a proper cafeteria..

 

Learn LaTeX and stop wasting your time with half-assed WYSIWYG editors.

[techswede]

Learn LaTeX and stop wasting your time with half-assed WYSIWYG editors.

I'm comfortable with just using libre

 

Also this scared me away from LaTeX

*Shudders*

 

Google images thought i meant something else too..

[Sauron]

But governments do use 10+ MB files. And you'd be surprised who uses what kind of extra functionality with Office. You may not use them all the time, but that one time when you need it then it's actually there.

 

When I say 10mb files, I mean 10mb images for the most part. A 10mb text document never game me any issues. The real crashing always happened (at least in my case) while making presentations and importing huge images. I would think they thought this over at least a little and decided they didn't really need the extra functionality before starting the switch - although frankly knowing my government it wouldn't be completely beyond them to not do that. At least it's the ministry of defence, which is frankly borderline useless at this point in time. I suppose it's the best place to experiment things like this, even if it fails and the department is in chaos for 6 months nobody is going to notice.

[Sauron]

Learn LaTeX and stop wasting your time with half-assed WYSIWYG editors.

 

hell yeah, this guy knows what's up

[Sauron]

Also this scared me away from LaTeX

*Shudders*

 

rofl

[AlwaysFSX]

does yours randomly forget it has an nvidia chip inside as well?

No, it would decide the chipset didn't exist. :lol:

[Swndlr]

I refute those arguments.

 

I am currently using LibreOffice. It has its problems here and there, but I've found it not at all difficult to switch to.

 

Edit: Shit. I forgot that you can't expect people to figure things out on their own. lol

Especially not some damned government workers LOL