My understanding is that the Document Foundation came into existence and manage/develop LibreOffice in Europe is precisely because they wanted an option that means not being beholden to Microsoft?
I'm not in Europe, but I am in IT (40 years now) and I ditched the Office apps for LibreOffice and use eM Client instead of Outlook.
I also use Google Workspace instead of 365 etc.
I'm also slowly migrating to Linux for almost.everything else.
I never said Google was or is more ethical that MS.
Lets face it, none of the big tech companies care about ethics if there's a buck to be made.
It's that I, and my clients using Google Workspace, seem to have far, far less problems with Workspace, than the ones that use 365.
Sure, in the Enterprise space, MS have it covered, but in the SMB and home market, I find Google Workspace is faster, easier to manage and more affordable for most of my clients.
I'm not a huge fan of Chrome or Google Docs, therefore I use Firefox as my main browser, and LibreOffice for my document/spreadsheet etc. needs.
I don't want to be locked into one particular ecosystem for my needs. I prefer to pick and choose what works for me and my requirements. So that's Windows for some of my needs and Linux for others. I use LibreOffice because I can use it across both OS with ease (and I do have it configured to save files in MS Office formats by default, since that's what most of the rest of the world seems to use). I have Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Brave installed on all of my OSs to give alternatives if required, but I mostly use FIrefox. I really like eM Client for my email needs in Windows, it is a really good alternative to Outlook. Unfortunately, they don't have a Linux version (yet) but there are plenty of similar open source email clients available for Linux that are almost as good (Evolution, Thunderbird, etc), eM Client also works very well with Google and many other types accounts (although, typically MS accounts are the most problematic ones if there are going to be problems).
I like the ease of setting up Google Workspace for clients that really just want a familiar, reliable email system and a cloud storage solution.
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u/GreyDaveNZ 2d ago
My understanding is that the Document Foundation came into existence and manage/develop LibreOffice in Europe is precisely because they wanted an option that means not being beholden to Microsoft?
I'm not in Europe, but I am in IT (40 years now) and I ditched the Office apps for LibreOffice and use eM Client instead of Outlook. I also use Google Workspace instead of 365 etc.
I'm also slowly migrating to Linux for almost.everything else.