[rimliu]

The answer to your question is in your comment. When you consistently have to pick commercial software over floss because of the usability, it makes sense to skip that step and go to the commercial software right away.

[fsflover]

The problem with your reasoning is that often free software is better in usability.

[ryanianian]

Familiarity and momentum makes even convoluted and unusable software feel more usable (pointing finger at MSOffice).

[fsflover]

This is exactly why we need to teach students with free software.

[ryanianian]

Agreed. But chicken and egg: most big-cos still use the MS suite. If they only know floss suites they'll feel lost at work.

[ghaff]

It's not the role of most universities to teach a specific word processing program--or even a specific programming language, etc.

And even if someone has only used Libre Office in school, I'd say the school has done a pretty piss poor job in general if the grad can't pick up MS Word (or GSuite etc.) pretty quickly. Companies change the apps they use for specific purposes all the time and employees need to be able to adjust.

[michaelbrave]

I would say "it depends". Photoshop is easier to use than Gimp. But I would choose any Unix over Windows for development any day.

[rimliu]

So would I. But my point was less about infrastructure software but the end user stuff: graphic editors, text processors, video editors, etc.

[rimliu]

Can you name three products?