LibreOffice
And perfectly working software that covers whatever else MS365 offers, e.g. Thunderbird
I’d love for more people to change to Linux, but these are all (also) Windows software.
Sometimes I find myself annoyed by Lemmy users. We love to tout foss alternatives, even when they don’t work as well, or aren’t nearly as polished.
Libre office is a different story, it has everything you’ll need, it’s really complete, it does everything you want and it can read any format you throw at it and save its output in any format you need. It launches faster than Microsoft office, it’s more stable, I really have absolutely no complaints, everyone should be using it.
Libre doesn’t support IDM, nor provide email, nor MFA, nor CAM, nor MDM, nor storage.
M365 Business Premium is a LOT more than Office Documents.
Yeah that’s fair, I’ve seen how Office business integrates with the OS and a bunch of network services, so I’m not surprised by that. Well, for those corporate environments I expect MS will continue to be the norm. But for small businesses and home use, Libra is really fantastic.
And honestly, for personal use I could do without all that email and calendar integration, good riddance.
Edit: Also storage? MFA? MDM? Why would you want that in an office suite? like maybe MDM is useful, but it doesn’t belong in the office suite. And the rest of the acronyms I didn’t even recognize… So I’m guessing they also don’t really belong.
Why would you want cloud storage for users in a business? Why would you want multifactor authentication for your users? Are you serious?
Oh no, I can see exactly why you’d want cloud storage in a business… But why as part of your office suite? If nothing else, it seems foolish to tie your storage solution to your office suite. It means your locking yourself into an ecosystem and reducing your options in the future.
Adding all these unrelated features is like saying “check it out! This car has a toaster oven!”. I mean, cool. And sure other cars don’t, so that’s something I guess, but why?
Why would you want multifactor authentication for your word documents? Hell, why do you need authentication? If you’re logged into the machine I think you get to use the word processor. But hey, if all this stuff really belongs in an office suite, why not throw in an aquarium screensaver, a cobal compiler and a drive formatter, that would really round the package out.
It’s not an office suite subscription. It’s basically a complete business productivity solution. M365 != Office. By your post it’s clear that you don’t understand the difference. The MFA for example is organisation wide, not for excel or word lol
M365 includes office, but it’s not just office. Office is one of the least important parts of it tbh. This is evident by the fact that some tiers don’t even include office.
It’s clear that most people in here bashing Microsoft over this don’t even know what M365 is and have never been in charge of any decision making for anything IT related in even a small business.
GNOME Evolution is also a good outlook alternative and am pretty sure it was made as a open source alternative to outlook
Has it gotten a makeover yet? Last time I used it ~3 years ago it still looked like it was built in the early 90s.
It was functional, not a complaint about that. The super old design just got on my nerves.
Yeah office isn’t the what orgs care about losing with this change. Business premium was the lowest cost license option available to non-profits that allowed access to identity management using entra.
Identity and access management ensures that the right people, machines, and software components get access to the right resources at the right time. First, the person, machine, or software component proves they’re who or what they claim to be. Then, the person, machine, or software component is allowed or denied access to or use of certain resources.
So that’s what’s that called. Is that also what tracks who access what and when?
Yeah. Entra is basically the cloud version of Active Directory, it lets you use SAML to build single sign on systems that use your Microsoft account as the identity provider
Not “basically” btw - entra is the azure/cloud version of AD. It was renamed.
It serves the same function , but comparing the two is kind of apples to oranges at this point
That’s the real story here.
I wish I had fuck you money. I’d use it to bankroll the development of LibreOffice and all the other alternatives to MS365 and get them integrated. Then I’d start a massive training program to teach people how to use them.
The french government is kinda doing that right now
Actually I think this isn’t exactly news. The university I go to, which is technically a foundation, had MS365 pulled last year IIRC and sent us all scrambling to find alternatives.
It didn’t bother me too much because I had already fully transitioned to LibreOffice, but my classmates were furious because they didn’t want to lose the “seamless online editing experience”. I told them to either use LibreOffice or move to Google Docs, but they didn’t like the idea and most (if not all) of them purchased MS365 subs. I unfortunately had to budge and get one too, because we needed to get some work done ASAP. I can’t wait until I graduate (should be soon-ish?) to stop paying for that crap.
But yeah. IIRC they started by reducing the amount of storage the university got, meaning they had to quickly delete data from past classes (fortunately I managed to back up quite a bit), and then one day they suddenly sent everyone an email saying “you don’t have access to MS365 anymore lol get fucked”
The university having M365 and the students having M365 are not the same thing. Students don’t subscribe to M365 Business because they need word or excel. Students would subscribe to M365 Family or Personal, or just buy office outright. Students get a huge discount too.
It’s still a rip-off
What is? M365 Business? M365 Family or Personal? Office suite outright purchase?
Actually not in this particular case, the university had MS365 Business and gave us accounts in order for us to use the service. As soon as MS revoked access, we all lost access
Actually not in this particular case, the university had MS365 Business and gave us accounts in order for us to use the service.
Sounds like this university was an absolute shitshow then.
It is!
So not Microsofts fault then :). Universities should not be using employee licenses for students.
we used google docs alot during my final years in college, why aare they so resistant, its free. libreoffice i havnt touched yet.
Depending on what you’re using it for, the gsuite office alternatives are incredibly feature-sparse. Last I checked, a lot of essential features such as accessibility checking and scripting either have nightmarish implementation, or require third-party addons. It also requires an internet connection and can’t save in-progress documents to your local storage.
Honestly the only leg up over the others that I think the GSuite really has is the seamless collaboration features.
Bootstraps, folks! Microsoft is basically BEGGING you to try Linux, and it’s now easier than ever - even easier than installing Windows!
What exactly does Linux offer that M365 does? Linux is an operating system, not a full suite of business management software.
you’re right, and - to your point - Linux vs. Windows poses some potential challenges for some organizations who still cling to the hope that they’ll still hold onto control of anything an a year or two.
on linux, you can access all microsoft office apps for free by using your browser (which is what will totally replace the shit you own in a few years anyway).
so, please tell me why you pay for ads on your OS?
I don’t have ads on my OS, Windows.
hard to have a conversation with someone who just downvotes shit they don’t think they agree with, but whatever. everything’s a fucking popularity contest now.
I downvoted you because of this:
so, please tell me why you pay for ads on your OS?
This is garbage. This isn’t true. It’s spreading BS. Perfect use of the downvote button.
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-to-disable-annoying-ads-on-windows-11
https://www.techworm.net/2024/04/disable-start-menu-recommended-ads-windows-11.html
i don’t understand why we’re in disagreement about this. are you not having the same experience as literally everybody else?
Ackshually Linux is a kernel.
If you take “Linux” broadly, you could piece together a business management stack.
Unfortunately the inevitable enshitification of our lives by capitalism will continue, even if we remove it from our lives as much as we are able.
What microsoft does to its products, it also does to our governments and civil liberties, social media does to society and democracy, data brokers do to privacy, zillow does to housing security, wallstreet does to economic mobility and financial regulations, etc, etc, etc.
you know, i always wondered why of all places to attack, they chose the twin towers. starting to understand it now.
The twin towers made a ton of sense:
- lots of people in a small area
- symbol of America’s dominance of trade
- iconic buildings in the heart of perhaps the most iconic American city
yep, and tons of other reasons, too. i agree with everything you said, but i say that the largest contributor might sound a bit controversial… it all comes down to “kids these days”. or maybe not, but i still think it’s a major component.
edit - i forgot to mention that ‘kids these days’ goes back as far as written time
edit2 - i’m sorry - i’m totally butchering my point.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/why-weve-been-hating-on-kids-these-days-for-thousands-of-years
Yeah, but non profits are bullshit in almost every instance. From the guy running a women’s homeless shelter near me that has 6 rooms but never has more than 2 occupied, one 9f which has lived there for years and seems very “friendly” with the guy running it, while he denies everyone else that tries to get in the place, but keeps collecting money, to all the large non profits that pay their people running it hundreds of thousands a year.
are you sure you replied to the right comment? i know crack isn’t cheap, so i’d like to try my best to save you the bandwidth
is there a c/rareinsults yet?
because this belongs there!
Open office, libre office.
Google offers workspace for free to nonprofits, Including device management. No one, I know in nonprofits even fucks with Microsoft because they’re so ridiculous. Now it’ll be even less people.
Google now has the market cornered because they aren’t as greedy.
Google now has the market cornered because they aren’t as greedy.
honestly cant tell if this is satire. my university is currently purging google storage as fast as we can because they altered the licening once we were fully invested. and that was before they started screwing around with licensing language around their Ai. the google mdm is an absolute joke. not even my orgs own google team reccomends it and their jobs depend on google being used. i’d use the vmware nightmare formerly known as airwatch over google mdm.
google is exactly this greedy.
Google offered Workspace free to individuals. I set that up and used it for my family, and then BAM! After a lomg time using it, they removed the free plan, once we were using it for logins for a bunch of sites and for our emails. Went from free to $50 per month. It took a LOT of effort to get my family off of that. Never again.
So that’s why Gates said he would donate money once he dies
I don’t trust any of these “giving pledges” upon death. In name, their fortunes will pass on to nonprofits. Nonprofits controlled by their family members, which comes down to letting them keep their inheritances tax-free. This even happens in Europe.
Now now, it’s not like they get the whole inheritance. It’s more like they get cushy overpaid non-work jobs to manage or consult for the non-profit.
its “charity” was only a front for him doing this, pure laundering methods. he was on an AMA on reddit last decade i did try to quesiton him on that same thing, but AMA doesnt like to allow discussion of them quesitoning the AMA hosts in anyway.
Yet again, I laugh, and remark ‘People still use Windows? People still use MSFT products?’
Sadly. An example: I work at a small school that does not have an IT department. Staff and teachers are nearly IT-illiterate, and the students can hardly be coaxed to do stuff on a laptop instead of their phones. So installing Linux would add an additional hurdle for both. Probably much smaller than they think, but still: it heightens the threshold to even consider switching to Linux.
There’s a few people who know that Linux is just as valid as Windows, but who would they trust to make the switch safely. Me? I’m not a professional. So they’d have to pay someone, properly. And then it all comes down to money again which usually comes down to “let’s not change anything”.
So for now I’d just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365.
The same goes for Google Workspace. Making the effort to roll your own (totally possible with FOSS) would require to pay at least 1 person, and some sort of transitional period. It’s cheaper and easier to pay none and just blame it on Google when things don’t work as desired. These people just don’t see it as a priority. Don’t understand the dangers.
LibreOffice is not a replacement for M365 though, it’s a replacement for Office. M365 is not just office.
LibreOffice doesn’t give every user 1TB of cloud storage space. It doesn’t give you a company email address and management tools for users. It doesn’t give you 95% of what M365 does.
Making the effort to roll your own (totally possible with FOSS)
You said this too:
So for now I’d just be happy if they used LibreOffice instead of MS365
As I said, LibreOffice can’t be used instead of MS365 unless you want to lose 95% of the features of 365.
Yeah. They honestly get what they deserve at this point.
Let this be a lesson to future communities.
Bit of context:
As such, it is generously removing the ten licenses for Microsoft 365 Business Premium that it previously granted to non-profits. The replacement? “We are transitioning to provide up to 300 licenses of Microsoft 365 Business Basic and discounts of up to 75 percent on many Microsoft 365 offers to nonprofits.”
One could argue that 300 free licenses of Business basic is better than 10 free licenses of Business Premium, especially if the non-profit has more than 10 employees.
A business premium nonprofit license is $5.50 per user per month, so to get it back for those 10 users it would cost them $660.
Business basic was $1 per user per month with the previous non-profit discount.
This means that any non-profit with 55 employees would be no worse off now, but any with more than 55 employees will be better off with the updated plan and discounts.
Lure them in, pull the rug, harvest profits.
