This is certainly about making sure your files are safe and definitely not about stealing your data for training AI. /s
Don’t let Murdersoft steal your data. Don’t contribute to their corruption or genocide assistance.
Step 1: https://fedoraproject.org/
Step 2: https://www.libreoffice.org/Thanks, going to try out LibreOffice. Does it has same (or similar) functions as Word itself?
It’s designed to be very similar. If you are already familiar with Word, you should feel right at home.
I’m not exactly s power user in Microsoft office, but I found using libre office to be very similar. Never had issues using it for school back in the day and I’m sure it’s better now.
My only problem is how Libre Office handles their style system. It’s forced use for things like Footers, and very hard to manipulate and turn off unlike Word.
My own way to bypass it was to replace a new document text into an old converted word text that had the correct footer pages from Word.
I really hate page and Style guides because they always want to propagate everything through entire documents, instead of only changing things on a page by page basis. Adding things to previous pages when you change something isn’t helpful.
I’ve been using it for over a decade now and have only rarely come across broken documents due to proprietary features. If you’re making docs for yourself, I’d say it’s pretty much a 100% replacement. Things can get a bit more fucky if you’re having exchanges where you edit with Libre and someone else edits with Word. But other than that, they’re pretty darn close.
It doesn’t make it flawless (at all), but installing the microsoft fonts helps. Most distros have a package or helper tool for that.
Pretty much. It was OpenOffice years ago, but then Oracle got involved and so all the devs left and put a new name on it.
No. That’s the point. LibreOffice does not send your data to Microsoft.
LibreOffice is what Microsoft Office WAS without the bugs. If Word and Excel worked for you before the cloud, Libre is golden.
I’m 99% of the way on LibreOffice. Gave it a solid go, but the main thing I use in excel is too cumbersome in Libre. I think it’s a great option for many people though.
As a clueless individual, how are they assisting genocide?
For today, you can call me Jeeves. To learn more, a quick search for “microsoft genocide” or “microsoft gaza” will give you the answers.
- https://www.newarab.com/features/ex-microsoft-employees-expose-companys-role-gaza-genocide
- https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/21/tech/microsoft-employee-protests-israel-intl
- https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-israel-protests-2000648637
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cger582weplo
- https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft-asked-fbi-for-help-tracking-palestinian-protests/
Wow thanks for the resources! I appreciate you dropping links I had no idea this was going on. Of course Google and Amazon are involved too, could have figured as much. Appears the only way do avoid the military industrial complex is to cease using anything provided from our oligarch overlords. What an age we live in.
Working hand in hand with the Israeli government in mass surveillance and (likely) AI-generated targeting data.
Another user just linked some resources. Incredible the bullshit going on these days. So much going on it’s hard for me to keep up with it all but I’m glad to be enlightened.
Not to be used to train AI. We promise.
LLM’s out here running wild. How Rude.Maybe I should switch to Linux again.
They’d break SO MANY international and data security laws if they tried breaking into people’s OneDrive, it’d be hilarious to see the number of lawsuits they’d lose by default.
they’re probably already doing that to a smaller degree, and slightly protecting themselves with an obscure clause in their TOS. besides, you only lose lawsuits if you get caught - and churning things through AI is a great way to erase any fingerprints that identifies stolen data
they’re probably already doing that to a smaller degree, and slightly protecting themselves with an obscure clause in their TOS
As soon as you find proof, you have literally free money up for the taking at any court.
you only lose lawsuits if you get caught - and churning things through AI is a great way to erase any fingerprints that identifies stolen data
That’s… not how any of this works…
an obscure clause in TOS won’t be a small print of an evil villain speech exposing their plot in clear wording. what it would be is something worded vaguely enough to make things seem like the end user technically agreed to what was being done, it could also be an “and” where you expected “or”, or an ommision of a specific thing… my point being - it’s always going to be a technicality that in case of a lawsuit would be a valid defence in the eyes of law
it very much is how it works though? show me a lawsuit someone lost before they got caught commiting a crime. and how would you even go about proving that your unpublished documents were used to train AI? even an entire life’s work of one person is just a speck in the training data, it’s impossible to definitively prove your work was stolen and used to train an AI. besides there will always be plausible deniability that the AI just made shit up that happened to look kinda like what you once wrote
an obscure clause in TOS won’t be a small print of an evil villain speech exposing their plot in clear wording. what it would be is something worded vaguely enough to make things seem like the end user technically agreed to what was being done
That means nothing. Illegal terms can’t be enforced in contracts or terms of service.
it’s always going to be a technicality that in case of a lawsuit would be a valid defence in the eyes of law
No. Written law always takes precedence. If they spied on your data stored in OneDrive, they’d lose by default the moment the case hit the courthouse.
As for your second paragraph: yeah, I agree. If they did that, the damage would’ve already been done. But it would kill the business once found out. The benefit is not worth the risk.
For example: you’re saying that they would use it to train AI, right?
They don’t train AI. They get a trained model from OpenAI.
To anyone thinking “LibreOffice still has issues”, here’s the LibreOffice donation page to help them fix it up and be rid of MS Office forever.
No, I don’t think they will. LibreOffice
Laughs in LaTeX?
I’ve been writing all my college papers in LaTeX and it’s been great. They look so professional, and it’s easier to work on a collection of text files than one monolithic document.
I swear typesetting your papers is worth half a grade point at least. Then once you find Zotero and realize it will automagically handle your citations and you have auto biblios and cites working in LyX…life changing, absolutely.
I’ve never learned latex but it seems like a huge learning curve. Never even proficiently learned vim yet
Not really like Vim at all. But yes its a bit of a learning curve. Imo its worth it but I’m an engineering grad student so it is especially suited to my uses.
It really depends on what you will use it for. Using it for plain text doesn’t require much, some advanced layouts require a bit more digging, if you’re including fancy graphics, equations, bibliography, footnotes, etc, you’re going to look at managing the relevant libraries to gandle that (they are very well made and very convenient). All in all, it can be as complex as you want, but it can also be quite easy to use.
Also LaTeX is way simpler than plain TeX.Not too bad with LyX. Get templates and modify them. It is a learning curve but entirely doable.
These days you can just use AI to make the outline for you and go from there. Should be easier than ever
Google doc for me. It is free and it is good enough. /S
That’s interesting, since Google Docs has always automatically saved files to the cloud.
I’m waiting for them to edit the comment and add an /s tag.
Tbf, if they are in K-12 as a student or teacher, they’d probably have to use google docs anyways.
“Fuck you, Microsoft.” -Everyone, at all times
Even if you’re not ready to come to Linux, you’re definitely ready to switch to LibreOffice. I dare you to try it.
I’m using OnlyOffice bins on linux and find it to be a fantastic suite for my (minimal) uses. Not sure how it works on Windows though.
I’m unclear on the differences between OpenOffice (which I genuinely thought was retired, didn’t realize it was still a thing) and LibreOffice. If it ever gives you trouble, do make the switch.
OnlyOffice, not OpenOffice. This is a different suite entirely. Might be better for people coming from MS Office, since it looks practically identical. Also supports opening multiple files as tabs.
Ah. I tried that a few times and didn’t care for it myself. Weird that my brain thought it saw OpenOffice.
Only office is designed for people who work with MS files. Libre Office is for people who work with open files.
It’s still being kept barely alive for whatever reason. But it hasn’t gotten any reasonable updates (I think not even including security updates as of recently, see https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/libreoffice-vs-openoffice/ ).
See also https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/10/12/open-letter-to-apache-openoffice/
which I genuinely thought was retired, didn’t realize it was still a thing
It’s not gone. It’s still around. Libre is forked from OpenOffice. When Libre was forked, everyone moved to Libre because Open has a lot of issues, which is why Libre was forked.
Got it. Thanks.
“Fuck you, Microsoft.” -Everyone, at all times
Eh, that game where you had two gorillas standing on buildings lobbing exploding bananas at each other was pretty cool.
Writer and Impress should cover Word and Powerpoint perfectly. Even if your colleagues use Windows, you can still open them just fine.
Excel though is troublesome, especially those with coded VBA or some plugins from companies. But for basic Excel? Calc can do the job ok too.
Yeah I got through school and could work just fine now with Calc. I’m sure it breaks when you get fancy but not that many people get that fancy.
Thank you to the skilled developers who bailed on OpenOffice when the shit stain company Oracle bought Sun, and formed LibreOffice.
I can only hope there will always be digital freedom fighters on the side of good.
I’ve donated to LibreOffice, and you should too, if you use their suite.
I love LibreOffice, but I wish there was an Android app. I’ve even considered learning more app development to try and help, but it’s such a daunting task.
This here. Not fully featured but a decent reader and editor which we hope will improve with time. Good effort on the devs!
LibreOffice & Open Office Document Reader | ODF https://f-droid.org/packages/at.tomtasche.reader/
It can edit files now? Apparently it can. It took a while but it’s finally there. Finally. Good job.
There’s a web port AFAIK, web dev has a lower entry level
Check out the Collabra Office android app. It probably covers your needs.
Holy fucking shit, what absolute trash
tell your friends.
OnlyOffice gang https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx
I like the idea of it, but it is Russian.
I think it they are based in Latvia now which is in Europe. They did originally start in Russia and still supply the Russian government. Though it is free and open source. So where it is based does not really matter.
OnlyOffice is one of the few open source applications which actually puts effort into its UI. LibreOffice looks straight from 1990. I really would not recommend LibreOffice to anyone who is not technical, whereas OnlyOffice provides a great UI experience.
With the entire West supporting a livestreamed genocide the whole moral highground schtick does not really land for me anymore either.
At this point that’s almost like ransomware.
If you mind that Word documents are stored in the cloud by default, you need to modify the default setting
…or just use some other app for your private documents and Word only for work-related stuff or such. I use Word/Office at work and have absolutely no issue with all the documentation being saved in the cloud. But for private stuff I would have to think twice if I want this.
The breaking point for me was when I was showered with Copilot+ pop-ups on every single hover. Let me fucking copy/cut/paste/format in peace. I never asked for any of this, and neither did any user of any level of expertise.
Switched to OnlyOffice as it felt to perfectly answer my needs. There are still some quirks with non-UTF-8 documents, but you know what, I’d rather iron those issues out than be shoved a product I didn’t request nor need at every single interaction I have.
I highly encourage anyone that hasn’t done already to explore alternatives to the M*crosoft Suite, if they haven’t done it by now. Every update is just the worst form of enshittification known to humankind. Can’t wait to have an intrusive slop AI agent tell me how to do my Maths in the Calculator app next.
Let apps be just apps again 🗣️🗣️📢
This might be when I finally jump ship and go to Linux. I should do Mint, right?
L I B R E O F F I C E
You have to click through to a third save dialogue just to choose “Browse my files…”.
