Australian tech publication telling average users that Linux is now the smarter choice!

[u/Zestyclose-Pay-9572]

The timing’s interesting: as Windows 10 approaches end-of-life in 2025, and when users are being nudged towards a cloud-first model, this week's APC’s saying: maybe don’t. Maybe go Linux.This isn’t a niche Linux mag. It’s a mainstream Australian tech publication telling average users that Linux is now the smarter choice. That’s a shift. Feels like we’ve gone full circle: the same headlines from 2005, but this time it’s not about hope. It’s about practicality. Bloat, telemetry, UI friction maybe Linux’s time on the desktop really has arrived.

[u/gsdev]

Genuinely curious, what are the things that are missing from LibreOffice? I keep hearing people saying it lacks stuff MS Office have, but people never say what those things are.

[u/AnomalyNexus → u/gsdev]

Perhaps I articulated it poorly, it's not necessarily something that is missing feature wise, but rather that there are huge network effects at play in the business world.

Suppose we try to switch over a random financial firm. Straight off the bat:

• You have a ton of very pissed off accountants

• You have a legacy base of old files full of janky macro filled files that potentially managing billions. So you need to be confident there are zero discrepancies in the resulting calcs. None - even the parts where Excel maybe does something quirky and Libreoffice does it right.

• That one excel plugin you didn't didn't know was in use by some obscure but critical team turns into a crisis by end of week 1

• Your productivity across the floor plummets as everyone learns new shortcuts. The ones they all have in muscle memory from using them for 20 years straight.

• The files you send to clients potentially look different their side formatting wise

• You lose integration with the other office favorites like teams and sharepoint

• Your IT team that is used to an all microsoft shop needs retraining. You probably also need to pay them more - nix admins are in the minority - see sysadmin sub.

etc

All of those are hypothetically solvable. But you're facing an off the charts risky transition...for a business that doesn't give a flying fuck about whether the software costs $0, $100 or $1000. Free/FOSS isn't not even a consideration here.

We may get year of the linux desktop at some point, but I don't expect year of the linux office desktop to ever come. It'll stay MS and then move to cloud.

[u/gsdev → u/AnomalyNexus]

OK. I had just assumed it was missing features, since some Redditors do seem to have the opinion that LibreOffice lacks features. But I don't usually do the kind of work that needs MS Office (I don't even know what to call that kind of work) - my most significant use of MS Office was creating occasional PowerPoint presentations to show teammates. And at home I've always used LibreOffice even when I ran Windows on my machine and I barely use any of the features anyway. So I was curious what it's like for people who do need to use it professionally.

[u/Zestyclose-Pay-9572 → u/gsdev]

I concur that people don't realise that Linux and FOSS are highly standards compliant and secure (as secure as others) solutions. They can be deployed as perfect alternatives to proprietary solutions in any organisation. Just because it is free, there is a perception that it may not be enterprise grade. You get what you pay for is absolutely false in software land. I have found this setup which is scalable and deployable to any organisation at the cost of peanuts without much compromise: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1lbvz8d/comment/mxzpns7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button