Changing from Windows OS to Linux Lite

[TheDead]

With Office365 and Outlook web access looking more and more like the "installed" outlook, I had more people switching to Linux permanently.
I do not use macros in Excel or such myself but from what I've seen and tried .docx,.xlsx, etc. file types seems quite compatible and page layouts almost 100% (contrary of some years back )
A few years have passed, but the only thing that kept a lot of people in the Magical WiNdOwS World was the Outlook in their office suite.

Personnaly I'm not a fan of web apps, but mails seem to have taken the main web route for almost all offerings and that's what I'v been using for years now.
Standard web browsing and office work can be done with Linux.
The problem resides with proprietary softwares for accounting, security cameras and so on.
You have to be sure what the computer will be used for before installing Linux.... dual booting is less user friendly and converting Windows PCs in virtual machines is a task for the tech guys. (or you have to buy a Windows licence to install one).

A note, well maybe also a question, I have not used a shared printer on a Windows server in a Linux installation... this maybe can be a concern too.

Kirk out!

[MS]

I wonder if desktop Linux became really popular, equal to Windows and Mac, if it wouldn't suffer the same sort of commercialization

I do not quite understand, can you rephrase?

[Artim]

There are lots of games that are played through a browser now anyway, with no downloads to your computer.  The more those rise and the software-dependent ones decline (if and when they do), the more sense it will make for gamers to use Linux.

That said, I wonder if desktop Linux became really popular, equal to Windows and Mac, if it wouldn't suffer the same sort of commercialization, vulnerability to malware, privacy invasion (like the Zorin thread, omygosh), and exploitation that the other major OSes have.  I think one reason to love desktop Linux is because it's not mainstream! 

[MS]

But what about sticking with Linux? Do you know any stories of people who had been active Linux users for more than, say, a year, to return to Windows eventually? Only stories of that kind I have heard of, are among gamers, for understandable reasons. Entire momentum of gaming industry - particularly the big gaming industry - is focused on Windows infrastructure. But what about non-gamers?

Personally, whether I could consider myself a gamer or not - well, perhaps not, I guess, even though I like to explore also in the indie gaming field casually - I would stick with Linux for two reasons. First, because I do not really care and as long as the OS is simple, fast, free and popular enough for practical reasons, I am good with that. Second, I find being on Linux a great excuse to simply skip a plenty of stuff, especially among the indie gaming titles, as these more often than not, have neither any Linux nor WEB builds available, so therefore maintaining my conscience clear while simply saying an arbitrary "no, because I already feel like wasting my time".

[JanetBiggar]

Thanks for these further comments.  I have sent them on to the IT person who is eager to sift through the responses.

[newtusmaximus]

I switched to fully to LL some 5 years ago , as a small business user (SOHO).   In preparation id Used Open office, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, Gimp etc in their Windows versions to get used to them before converting fully to LL.  I have not found there to be any issues for normal business tasks.
Agreed that software is becoming cloud based, but this assumes that Internet connection speeds are sufficient fast and reliable,  This is especially so when considering upload speeds.Therefore IMHO desktop/laptop based tasks are still the mainstay  for the immediate/near future.
I have had to use a "modern" Windows 10 machine, recently for specialist job, and was horrified how "slow" it was, and the amount of HDD space that was wasted due to the OS and its updates.  In my mind a total waste of resource.
Giving students the confidence  to be comfortable with using the  Linux family IMHO  will be a true gift of education/freedom. 

[MS]

Thanks @Artim, well put indeed. Linux does need formidable Office style suite.

We have spoken of the tech perspective a little bit, so now perhaps we could focus on some more casual one.

With things moving to the cloud gradually and the world becoming more WEB native - high-speed Internet dependent - the main thing of profit, thinking of the OS, would be for the desktop environment to pose intuitive likeness to any other popular desktop environment, so that people could catch up easily. The less the adaptation trouble, the faster the user can simply do whatever needed, with the web browser under online connection, being perhaps the primary destination, which ought to pose the least amount of adaptation trouble. The Internet is not dependent on the local OS of a user, definitive majority of cases, therefore why should the local OS or any browser related specifics, pose any trouble to the access or the fair usage of Internet?

Internet, is communication and without the communication, there is neither civilization, nor any notion of freedom. Even if the concept of 'freedom' is rooted mainly in the culture, which is the world 'software', as opposed to 'hardware' - there is no valid software without valid hardware, technologically speaking.

Again, even in our enlightened contemporary days, there is not much freedom without money. Think about it.

What made my transition from Windows10 to LinuxLite easier, was the direct communication between Chrome and Chromium, which allowed me to automagically teleport my actual stuff from Windows canvas to Linux canvas, without any fuss whatsoever. I have already stated couple of times that the single most important program on my PC, is the web browser. I very rarely do anything locally. Installing stuff feels like making a mess, after which I almost compulsively need to do cleanup. I do know web browsers download stuff, but their management of downloaded contents, is far more 'hygienic' than allowing anything run wild and leave garbage.

But these speculations are all blind shots. Mobile technology has won the race. Large machines of any kind gradually fade down to the favour only of those inclined, which nonetheless is still impressive demographics, minding how many of the younger generation are well tech inclined. But the mobile technology, has taken the world by storm and it seems the mobile tech, corresponds very well with machine learning and automatization of various kinds, such as - for example - a well working recommendations system, which saves a mobile tech user browsing through enormous amounts of content on a device unintended for interface precision.

There are only two ways to go, then. One is massive consumerism and being slave to trends, the other is relative, possibly self imposed, poverty, sometimes without even the notion of do-it-yourself solution.

[robinc]

If you follow the original dinosaur thinking to the logical conclusion then all phones and tablets should run Windows 10 with MS Office - but they don't and - gosh - folks work out how to use them. Not teaching MS Word, but a wordprocessing package - they all do the same thing. Not Excel but a spreadsheet, they all do the same thing. By using different tools people quickly get to recognise that skills are portable from one tool to another.

The skills that are relevant are not what menu to click in word in order to do x, y or z but rather - this is a word processor, all word processing software does the same tricks in slightly different ways.

Sadly the job market does not understand this so if there is a burning desire to stay close to MS Office then I suggest you look at the free version of Softmaker Office. It has simple pickers to simulate different versions of MS Office if that is what is required. The menu structures are virtually identical. Over many years I have regularly swapped doc and docx files with MS Office users - including complex tables that LibreOffice just cannot touch - without issues. The free version will handle older doc xl files but only saves in docx etc. https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ is the place to go.

[JanetBiggar]

Very well stated Torrydale, thank you 😊

[Artim]

Speaking of 'Libre Office', does anyone know of the 'Open Office'?

OpenOffice was forked when some big company took it over.  The FOSS version is now LibreOffice.

[MS]

Speaking of 'Libre Office', does anyone know of the 'Open Office'?

[torreydale]

@JanetBiggar

It is very likely that whenever someone works in industry, they will be forced to work on a Windows platform.  When they take a class on Excel and work on a Windows platform at work, they will likely be incompetent at learning anything else.  But if they start off on Linux or LibreOffice and still have to use Windows or MS Office at work, it's like they become bilingual by default.  And THAT is more important to their career in the long run.  The ability to see options instead of only obstacles is omnipotent. 

Having Linux at ones disposal gives THEM options.  If they think they only have MS Windows as an option, when their computer frustrates them, they will think they need a newer computer...an MS Windows based computer.  Lack of money to make the purchase (or the right purchase) stunts their personal computing growth.  What I mean by right purchase is newer isn't always better.  You can literally get a newer computer with hardware specifications worse than what you had before.  That can easily happen to the person not familiar with what to look for in a new purchase.  For example, they still sell computers with 5400 RPM hard drives.  I also saw a computer newer than mine running Windows 10 on 32 GB of NVMe storage.  Six months ago, it ran out of space trying to install an MS Windows 10 update.  Very little personal data was on that drive, so it was the operating system (Windows 10) that stopped the computer from running Windows 10.  For that friend, I installed Linux.  It runs better than new and they have plenty of free space, even on that 32 GB NVMe drive.

I'm a late Linux and LibreOffice learner, but I know I became a better engineer when I started my Linux journey in late 2014.  I'm not hearing a real reason to only stick with MS Windows or MS Office in this case.  If the students have a class where the computers are being provided, chances are they don't have personal computers.  This doesn't sound like a "Bring Your Own Device" environment.  But when they want their own device, the financial bar to get a personal computer with an updated office suite in Linux is lower than the financial bar to get a personal computer with an updated MS Office suite. 

For this situation, if these students want to learn more faster, consider starting with Linux and open source.  LibreOffice is perfectly fine for this class.  The students won't be useless in industry if they know LibreOffice first and are forced to use Excel at work.

[JanetBiggar]

Thank you all for your various opinions and viewpoints, as we all find out in life things aren’t black and white, there’s mostly grey! Any question or situation depends upon the view from which you’re looking...

I will bring these points up with the IT person when we meet next and see what ultimately they decide.

[MS]

And where is the logic in locking a business into using a single vendor?

The problem is, it is not the logic, it is the momentum. Microsoft - even though I do not believe these are their best times - has built and sold a momentum kind of thing and that is why it is so hard to interfere with their dominance. Because it does unnecessarily involve logic. Logic may serve as an excuse. Using WindowsOS fuels further usage of WindowsOS and other Microsoft related products in the populace - especially among those that seek to find themselves in the right infrastructure, maintaining best environmental touch with their recipients. Whether alternatives can be found, for certain they could, but it might have been too much of work around for too little perk in return. WindowsOS 'is' simply 'the personal computer' in proper shape, while the rest, who knows what that even is, right?

Linux is a biased term, because it comes with a notion of different kind of culture to it, becoming cornered up by aggressive competition, promoting contrary ideals. Statistical majority of consumers rather plays safe, even if it means paying extra to get on the safe cart. If using Linux does not promote a more open software culture, different to the one currently in charge, there is no point in promoting Linux at all or anyhow else 'selling it'. We have enough of products going around, the market is saturated. Linux needs to keep doing what it does and perhaps one day it will be done justice. If not, we must take it as justice.

Focusing on WEB related solutions gives Linux much of the needed advantage, since WEB nullifies the requirement for particular operating system to serve as a necessary context running each given piece of software, save for having a well maintained and popular browser. The era of 'downloading and installing' perhaps comes to an end, WEB grows bigger and soon, it could be irrelevant what local OS manages your machine.

Linux does not have workers, it has followers and this, is a very long lasting investment.

[trinidad]

It's been my experience over the years that the deeper the immersion of any student in anything MS i/e programming, system administration, network administration, only makes them more proficient with Linux. Also basic computer use skills are similar enough that users shouldn't really have issues going back and forth other than dealing with differences in the GUI's. Diversity is always a better educational experience. The real issue is that MS provides nothing free beyond basic skills as far as education, and those basic skills courses are only interested in creating more worker bees within their proprietary cosmology, and Linux on the other hand leads any student to a better understandings of how computers actually work and doesn't charge you a dime, i/e things like the free Debian installation manuals, and the Debian Wiki. If the teachers are actually proficient and qualified to teach courses on basic computer usage they should be skilled enough to deal with any differences between Linux DE's and Windows. Linux Lite is designed to make that very easy and would be a good choice to use as a comparison with Windows as far as basic DE usage within a course on basic computer usage.

TC