I’ve used LibreOffice (on Linux and Mac) for years. It works great, does everything I’ll likely ever need commercial office suites to do, and isn’t locked into some hellish ecosystem or OS.
Microsoft Office is bloated, slow and a usability nightmare. I couldn’t imagine anything being worse in those regards but somehow LibreOffice has consistently shown me the limits of my imagination.
There are a lot of ‘windows support is ending so change to x software instead’ vibes in my extended community all of a sudden. While this is a great moment to address issues around closed/open source software, it feels a bit off. Open source software is not dependant on/the nemesis of closed source software and risks to reduce the importance of open source software to mere marketing or the very issues open source software tries to address
I think that there are two open-source worlds, really. There are projects people make to fill a niche, or do something "the right way" that hasn't been done before. Those are the weekend passion projects that get open-sourced because there's no market for it, or perhaps the developer has a day job and doesn't need money. Then there are projects that are high-complexity, high-polish that can't be supported by one person. I'll call these Type A and Type B.
Type A can become popular and take on more devs, at which point it tends to become Type B.
Type B tends to lose the weekend passion coders, and instead gets people who are building their personal brand around open-source work. These second type of people don't have a vision for what the project should be, they've tacitly accepted whatever the stated goal of the project is. They're just here to get top committer status and add it to their resume.
Type A doesn't care if you use their software, except insofar as they can modify it to help you, as a friendly gesture. Type B really wants people to use their software, because the more people know about it, the more their resume shines.
The loudest voices calling for people to try Linux once Windows 10 goes EOL are coming from Type B. And also people with a financial interest. Paid distros like Zorin OS are spreading FUD, implying that computers bought more than 3 years ago can't run Windows 11. And here we have LibreOffice, supported by donations from nonprofits, trying to get more users.
If your primary need for a computer is managing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations then you'll do well to just get a Chromebook and use Google Docs. It's a cheap, easy, and powerful solution if that's all you need.
