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by thesuitonym 237 days ago
> Libre office in my opinion is one of the reasons Microsoft is so dominant.

Microsoft Office was already dominant long before LibreOffice started. Hell, MSO was already dominant when StarOffice was renamed OpenOffice.org, long before LibreOffice was a thought in anyone's mind.

> Unfortunately, libre office, even though useful, is one of the worst desktop applications to use.

You only feel this way because you're used to MS Office. Ask anyone who's more well versed in Google Workspace and they'll tell you that MS is difficult to use.

2 comments

Yes Microsoft Office was already dominant. Why didn't libre office affect this dominance being 'so good'? It's also free, so it should be interesting to companies, right? Wrong. I recently set up an SME who when saw it ran away and immediately bought a Microsoft license, which means they would rather pay and be spied on than use libre office.

Believe it or not, people like nice things. Microsoft Office looks nice. Libre office looks like a car accident. It's shallow, I know, but this is the response I get every time.

Everyone I know hates it. It is a small sample, true, but it says something. So I think, the fact Microsoft is so strong is to be blamed on the alternatives, or in this case only one alternative.

We need to look at this as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Turn it around. If it would be good, people would jump on it. Especially small companies.

Google workspace is a web app, no? So it being better than desktop is comparing different things. I use it and I like it, especially since I don't need advanced Features Microsoft offers

We have no good alternative. We have an alternative.

If your criteria for a good alternative is people like it the very first time they see it, you'll never find a good alternative.
>Google workspace is a web app, no?

American company, no alternative at all.

Microsoft products are web apps as well.

> You only feel this way because you're used to MS Office.

You are kind of proving the point. You point to a Google product as a good alternative, not to the OSS product. I really want to like LibreOffice and it is a good product for what it is, but it is far from being a great product.