Austria's military just ditched Microsoft for open-source LibreOffice

It's not because it's better. If you just need a basic excel/doc alternative, maybe.

As soon as you need some more complex excel calculations, LibreOffice falls flat.

Good luck getting formatting to look correct in a .doc file opened by Microsoft Office 99% of the time.

They work very much on compatibility, as that is required by and paid for by governments.

But same applies for M365. Good look opening a docx from Microsoft Word in their web app.

Librecalc is fine and I would argue most people don't use the arcs advanced features of MS Excel.

The reason it's incompatible with MS Office is because MS doesn't use a consistent standard or the iso standard. Theyve done this as a counter measure to alternatives.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera...

OMG, the usual FUD. Cannot here that anymore.

If one depends on opening old MS documents, MS Office often fails while LibreOffice (LO) does the job -- been there, done that; e.g. book manuscripts of old professors who close to never migrate to newer versions, old calculations in Excel, etc. Formatting isn't even the prime issue there. MS Office utterly fails -- for me that's _peak incompetence_: flooding the world with a overly complex format, that they cannot reliabily open themselves.

So, depending on the context LO _might_ be an issue, or it totally is the opposite: the go-to solution to a serious problem.

The advantage of migrating the whole organization is that it's no longer your problem if a .doc file looks slightly different for someone outside your organization. As long as it works internally.

As soon as you cross different organization IT systems, documents don't look the same anyways: e.g. local office vs Microsoft 365 online.

The solution is just not to use Excel and Office at all. I've been free of Microsoft's crap for multiple decades now and I interface with companies that are my customers so technically they get to dictate terms. The military is in the opposite position: they get to dictate terms to their suppliers. So they arguably have an easier time of it.

As for 'more complex calculations': yes, Excel can do some nifty tricks. So what, in the end, calculations get done, in a spreadsheet or in some other way, the military is mostly logistics, there isn't a problem there that can't be solved with regular tools. The .doc file format should simply be abandoned completely.

So indeed, it is not because it is better. It is just a little different, which is a small price to pay for the inconvenience of not enabling a country that has with some regularity threatened EU countries and other allies. Or did you think that companies like Microsoft are immune to the fall-out of such antics?

> for me that's _peak incompetence_

Empires always fall from within. It was inconceivable for a young me to ever think of day when MS Office would be unworkable. Advance couple of decades and MS 365 Copilot is just the thing that just doesn't work. Not because somebody exploited a bug and created unviewable doc, but because MS decided to pile on bugs while leaving old ones in..

librecalc shuts down for me all the time on small simple documents on different OSs and hardwares. I don't know how to work with it. I'm using Onlyoffice for editing and Tad for reading csv/xlsx files now.

Maybe someone needs to start a LibreRiR project.

Links for those who hadn't heard of those:

https://www.tadviewer.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/

Is OnlyOffice much more productive in terms of features/week than LibreOffice that they are better? How?

I haven't used OnlyOffice, but I prefer the vibes that LibreOffice gives off.

It's better in the dimensions they care about.

LO may open old files, doesn't mean you're seeing the original/complete/"authentic" content https://natlib.govt.nz/records/46031753

Also, that reports highlights that yes most users don't use most rare features of office products, but many/most seem to use at least one