A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don’t come close, and feature wise are 20 years behind. Especially since I basically mastered MS office 2007+'s drawing features, which the FOSS alternatives don’t replicate very well.
And of course Microsoft loves to push Office 365. I don’t pay for that and just use desktop office, but Microsoft prefers you don’t know that you can do this.
And I’m going to get shit on by Lemmy big time for this but while Linux is great and has made vast improvements in recent years, I still use Windows, not only because of MS office, but because a lot of games tend to only support Windows. I know that wine and proton exist but they’re not perfect and don’t feel quite the same as running native.
I wish an operating system existed with a hybridized Linux and clone NT kernel (using code from FOSS Wine and ReactOS of course) so that the numerous back catalog of NT software can run similar to as intended while also interacting with Linux programs better and using a shared environment. Since it would probably become vulnerable to viruses for windows as well, maybe? (my programming knowledge is extremely rusty) an antivirus similar to Windows defender is bundled with the operating system. Hopefully if someone makes such an operating system it can be a Windows killer and would switch immediately
A big one for me is Microsoft office (desktop), Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don’t come close,
What, exactly, is missing? MS Office pretty much peaked, feature-wise, in like 2003 (or, arguably, 2007), and LibreOffice is ahead of that. I also find the workflow to be closer to “classic” Office and, to a slightly lesser extent, WordPerfect, which I appreciate.
You can even give LibreOffice the ribbon menu if you want (it’s in preferences somewhere). The default button icons may be rough (though recent versions have improve), but you can even customize those.
File compatibility with official office.
Corp world and gov still needs to send word docs around.
We are 95% there. But formatting gets munted between them
I do that already and have for years…?
.docand.docxwork just fine.Edit: The only issue I’ve had is one place requiring a specific font of all things. Was able to just install a free version of that, and was all set.
Yeah. I always get complaints that formatting is off
MS Office pretty much peaked, feature-wise, in like 2003 (or, arguably, 2007
For me it’s Office 2000. The flat UI is so efficient and yeah, there isn’t any features missing that I’ve encountered. Takes no resources to run and works the same if you’re on Windows 95 or 10. My family members still get me to install it if they get a new computer. It is also free to download from the Intetnet Archive.
I use LibreOffice for the most part because I’m on Linux.
I think Windows 2000 was the last Windows version I actually liked. It went downhill from there until 8 when I finally jumped ship for good. If I recall, Office 2003 was pretty close to Office 2000, just not as “flat”. I’m just more familiar with 2003 since I had it on my own PC and only used Office 2000 in the labs at school (so I could be mistaken).
I did a little reading, and yeah, the core applications remained mostly unchanged from 2000 to XP to 2003. I’m more familiar with 2000 as that’s what I had growing up and that’s probably why I like the flat UI the best.
Personally, I hate the ribbon. I’ve learned where everything is on my corporate Windows computer, but the placement of everything and whether it’s an icon or not still seems arbitrary. I’m glad LibreOffice offers the option, though…
In MS Office 2007, Gradient support on shapes was massively improved (more than 2 points on custom gradients), Blurry shadows and glows were indroduced, 3D bevels and rotation support was added, better effects on photos were introduced and you can remove backgrounds. In office 2019, you can also import and export Drawing objects to SVG
So is your complaint that a text editor can’t do image manipulation very well? Have you considered using an image manipulation software instead?
I gotta say its shocking that powerpoint is your go to for image editing like that. Like, its kind of impressive but wow that seems like a super difficult way to do it.
Gradient support on shapes was massively improved (more than 2 points on custom gradients), 3D bevels and rotation support was added
Can’t say that’s a feature I’ve ever really needed in an office suite, so am unable to confirm or deny LibreOffice can’t do it.
better effects on photos were introduced and you can remove backgrounds
That’s kind of outside the scope of a word processor / office suite. I just use GIMP and import it into the document.
In office 2019, you can also import and export Drawing objects to SVG
LibreOffice Draw (part of the suite) can create, edit, import, and export SVGs. LibreOffice writer can import and use them.
It sounds like you’re just complaining that other office suites don’t have a bunch of out-of-scope, unnecessary features bolted on. Definitely not worthy of condemning them over that.
The features aren’t “unnecessary” if you’re so used to them
Project management. There is one very good but old solution, open project is barely bearable.
I know managers who swore by MS Project (2007 I think?), and I didn’t totally hate it myself. Haven’t really looked for an alternative, but also, haven’t needed to for the most part.
I wonder if it’s just that project management has changed since then, and everything is all Jira/Kanban boards now? I think most of our projects have been laid out in Trello-like software and Git issues/tasks for probably the last 8 or 9 years.
I like being able to create a task with one click, define a dependency to another task and build a complete gantt diagram very fast. Then just add estimates and a plan of who works when to estimate completion. Then just assigne the jobs and track progress relative to the original plan so I can learn to plan more detailed and estimate Better.
Edit: critical path analysis is Paramount.
I heard https://www.onlyoffice.com/ is good, but have no personal experience.
Isnt it unmaintaned?
no
At least not as far as i know
https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2025/02/onlyoffice-docs-8-3-released
But closed source i think
I have tested power point & word of only office. Its nicer to use than what libre office offers, has more effects than word but the thing thats missing is moving objects around.
I think its a solid replacement for word, not entirely feature complete but in exchange some nice features.
It has pricing whick can be an instant no but i think the pricing is fair for what is offered (especcially when compared to word)
but i think some program like calc/excel is missing so you have to get another program!
but i think what other libre programs offer there is nice so no real problem
Libreoffice and other FOSS alternatives just simply don’t come close
I really only use Word and Excel, and I find the FOSS alternatives just fine. I can understand if power-users might find the newer features worthwhile, but for basic word processing and spreadsheets the FOSS options are good enough.
It’s not. Writer will start crashing at 50 pages, it become a pretty much unusable as you add more text.
That’s disappointing. Which one has this issue?
Fwiw, I have used OpenOffice and OnlyOffice. I actually haven’t used LibreOffice specifically.
I have still quite literally found no other tool, even paid products, that can interior-crop the way IrfanView can (select row/column Y in XYZ if the entire image was XYZ, and crop out that inner part and auto-tuck X and Z directly against each other). And it’s had this feature for decades, I think.
Not exactly the same, but similar: when working with sprites for games, I often run into situations where I realize way too late that I need the size of each frame to be slightly larger than what I had been working with it. You’d think that having the ability to resize an image by adding extra padding to each individual frame would be a pretty common feature in image editing software these days, but nope. I ended up writing a small tool specifically for that just so I wouldn’t have to adjust frame by frame ever again.
ImageJ is great for stuff like that. Fiji is probably a better route for less fuss (Fiji Is Just ImageJ, plus some popular plugins)
The thing that used to always piss me off was when you tried to upscale stuff in Photoshop and it looked perfect. Then you bit enter and it anti-aliases the absolute fuck out of it. Like what?!
Writer in Libre Office is fine if you install the correct fonts on Linux. Calc needs some work people that know how to use power pivot in excel use it all the time. So not having that makes the switch hard.
MS Onenote. Nothing comes close to it. With stylus support etc…
I will check it out
Hmm, LibreOffice may not be the prettiest, but it works. For my own documents and presentations I use Typst nowadays. That’s a blazing fast modern typesetting alternative to LaTeX. That being said, I can’t stand WYSIWIG stuff but that might not be everybody’s cup of tea.
I mostly run into stubborn manufacturers like Roland that only release their musical instrument companion apps for Mac/Win and leave Linux Digital Audio Workstations hanging.
Project scheduling programs. Primavera, Microsoft Project, Asta Powerproject. All of them are uniquely awful in their own way, and yet I still have to pay for them in order to work in my field.
I’d love to see a user-friendly, easily-implemented FOSS alternative to the entire Android system.
The options that exist now often can’t get past all the defenses that Android and phone manufacturers put into systems to secure their own data collection/revenue. I have an older Motorola phone that I literally can’t install another operating system on.
We desperately need a stable, user-friendly, and hardware-adaptive replacement for Android. I don’t want that shit on my phones any longer.
My first ever smartphone (in 2015) was a BQ Aquaris 4.5 Ubuntu Edition that came with Ubuntu Phone pre-installed … a lightweight, 4.5" smartphone … there wasn’t much of an app ecosystem at the time but I didn’t miss it because up to that date I used a dumb phone, and the smartphone allowed me to do eMail and use a browser, which was enough for me.
At some point I accidentially dropped it on a hard floor and it broke, and I was quite unhappy that the company didn’t continue that line :(
A manufacturer phone pre-installed with LineageOS would be awesome.
Pixel + GrapheneOS is a dream.
And they’re even working on releasing phones that come with GrapheneOS preinstalled
Ooh, neat.
Who is? Google? Don’t know if I’d be able to trust that
(edit typo)
The GrapheneOS team is working on finding a suitable OEM that would be able to release flagship hardware with security comparable to a Pixel, and GrapheneOS preinstalled.
That’s got me interested
You might be interested in postmarketOS They try to mainline older Android devices. It works pretty well on the PinePhone, too.
As far as I understand, the hardware-adaptive part is difficult to implement because ARM systems do not have automatic hardware detection like x86/x64 PCs do, so the hardware list (tree) has to be known for each device, that hardware is mostly proprietary and requires proprietary drivers. All of which results in Android phones using different per-phone-model kernels.
Its sort of a thing. Pine phones use open source linux. I think the main problem is development of apps to run on a linux phone isn’t popular so its pretty bare bones as a system. Havent used one myself though.
Xodo pdf annotator
It seems all pdf annotators are allergic to letting me have
- The ability to change the text I’ve highlighted without deleting the entire highlight
- Several different highlighter colours and opacities
They seem like really silly requirements, but they make a huge difference to how long it takes me to get through my readings for class.
I’m not sure I follow. LibreOffice is at least as good (if not better) than Offics365 unless maybe if you’re doing advanced shit in Excel, or need specifically coded macros.
Considering Microsoft’s push to make everything into a webwrapped application, I think LibreOffice is only going to be a better and better alternative as time moves on.
For excel stuff, https://www.visidata.org/ is way, way better than excel assuming the data is tabular (which, frankly, it should be anyway). Like it’s not even close.
I mean LO is pretty good, but it is a bit rough to find what you want. At a min its more difficult to format your sheets in LO.
That’s amusing to me. Back around 2010, I used a lot of state legal forms that they only released as PDF files, but not fillable. It was annoying to print them and fill them by hand, and terribly fiddly to use the PDF annotation tool on the computer.
So I just used OpenOffice.org to create almost-pixel-perfect versions of the forms, with fillable text boxes, then exported them as PDF. Word couldn’t do it at the time.
Now, at work, I use Microsoft365 because that’s what everyone uses because of the site license. I wish we’d switch to something else, because Outlook fails so hard at basic email stuff.
With all the political shit going on these days, it baffles me why companies continue to use anything that stores data in cloud servers owned by American companies. I don’t care where the data centres actually are, the parent company is foreign and aside from “trust me bro” I’m not sure what else is preventing them from snooping sensitive information.
Screenreaders.
The one half-decent libre screenreader is Orca, and it only works by hacking X into doing things X was never intended to do. Wayland is much cleaner and more sensible, which means that Orca doesn’t work on it at all. This means blind and visually impaired users are physically unable to use modern Linuxes or BSDs.
And Orca was only half-decent.
Adobe After Effects!! PLEASE DEAR GOD
This is the singular thing still keeping me using Adobe software. If this was replaced then I could be FREEE
I’m curious how DaVinci resolve’s fusion page compares?
I can’t answer that, but the reason I’m typing this from Windows is that getting DiVinci to reliably work in linux has been a pain in my ass.
Oh yes. I can’t comment but I’ve heard that from other sources as well. Bummer
I had it working, upgraded Mint, and it broke. I had already been fighting to get that upgrade done for a couple hours at that point (there were issues), so I was just over it after researching and trying a few things. People have got it working but, as a dude with two jobs, I ain’t got time for that.
Yea of course. As professionals our window to do tech support is limited.
