Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward
It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone
There's no meaningful difference in the desktop Linux ecosystem right now and a decade ago, you're just more open to it as the alternative got worse.
There were a bunch of issues with compatibility if you wanted to do any sort of gaming and driver support was pretty bad from what I remember. Flatpaks were barely starting to become a thing, desktop environments were very unrefined and applications like LibreOffice still had a way to go.
If you look at what's happened in the Linux ecosystem in the past decade there are in fact significant improvements and refinements thanks to the hard work of thousands of contributors making it easier and easier to use.
People should realize everything you do in Excel and Word is being spied on by Microsoft, this cloud push is making that process easier and faster for M/S.
At the very least, go to Libreoffice. But better yet, as you just did, people need to abandon Microsoft and Apple for Linux or a BSD.
If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick desktop components that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them.
If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick hardware that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them.
Some vendors sell hardware with Linux preinstalled or specifically tested (besides the obvious ones like System76/Framework/Tuxedo, Dell provides an XPS flavor that comes with Ubuntu). You don't need to actually use the preinstalled distro, but buying such models ensures baseline support is solid and it sends a signal to vendors to continue ensuring so.
Then there's Apple's M1/M2 lineup, which provides the smoothest Linux experience you can have today (specific hardware features are not supported yet, the rest works extremely well!).
Other than that, the Arch wiki is typically a good resource that lists quirks of individual devices with Linux.
More seriously, it's only the motherboard and the GPU that can be problematic here in the first place, isn't it? So that's far more manageable using websearch than laptops with their gazillion components. But then again I've only built a new PC once these last 10 years, so maybe I was just very lucky with my choice.
M3 Macbook Air if it matters.
I have very real doubts that any laptop can support both Linux and Windows well.
specific hardware features are not supported yet, the rest works extremely well
I would not describe this as "working well," let alone the "smoothest Linux experience you can have today"
Especially compared to System76, which designs their laptops for Linux, customized the firmware for Linux, and ships with Linux already installed.
For your Windows applications you can try to use winapps (windows vm behind the scenes, but tucked away from view) https://github.com/Fmstrat/winapps
[1] never update to the latest Fedora version, at least until a couple of months after release. If you don't want to be a beta tester. Yes sometimes they don't a good job with SELinux policies and you'll be dealing with annoying popup notifications from time to time. And yes, if you're using full disk encryption (via LUKS) you really want to enable some flags which Cloudflare engineering contributed back (but are not the defaults), otherwise stuttery desktop behaviour is possible.
I've started using LibreOffice at home and I'm surprised at how snappier it is compared to Word. Exported PDFs are even lighter that the ones Word do.
Also how would backing up specifically to rtf or txt help? Just back up the original doc files.
Googling would show that any number of users run into issues with OO/LO file corruption, often from power interruption during saves. The applications seem to handle that in a suboptimal way, and maintainers are unwilling to address it. My suspicion is that their unspoken contention is that the problem is with Windows, not OO/LO.
I recommend backing up to a general file type simply because it's less likely to open in the offending application by default, if the user ever needs to access it.
it looks like the cause is a shutdown without flushing buffers so a file is not properly saved. Backups of any file type should be OK.
Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop.
Try Darktable or Ansel instead of Lightroom. I'm not gonna tell you Gimp is a good photoshop replacement though ;-)
Still, I'm in the same boat as many who wish they could migrate their decades' worth of photos with all their adjustments to a FOSS alternative. For me too, Lightroom is the last application that keeps me from dumping Windows for good. It already lives in a Windows VM on a Linux host these days.
I use FreeBSD for my daily driver. I now stream games/Windows apps from a dedicated windows VM. It's impressive technology.
I just have my two monitors hooked up to both my iGPU and dedicated GPU, and switch inputs if I want to use my Windows VM. It means things like colour profiles and VRR work as expected too.
I love Linux and specifically NixOS but my experience with good audio and non-AMD drivers has been pretty so-so.
[1] https://blog.tombert.com/posts/2025-03-09-egpu/ Not trying to self-plug, just documented my headache.
Or is OSX bad because you can't put it on some random laptop off Amazon?
I specifically said that I had so-so luck getting Linux working with non-AMD stuff, and regardless of who is ultimately to blame it's still something I had to deal with.
had so-so luck getting Linux working with non-AMD stuff, and regardless of who is ultimately to blame it's still something I had to deal with.
Did you buy the laptop with the intention of running Linux on it?
Did it ship with Linux preinstalled?
Did the vendor support Linux running on that computer? Like, could you call them and get them to provide you help in the case of problems?
I already had an Nvidia GPU and an eGPU case that I had bought for previous projects with AI (on Linux, but headless). I wanted to use it to play some games that are a bit too intense for the little gaming box (specifically the System Shock remake from 2023).
It's mentioned in the blog post, but getting the eGPU case and getting Nvidia stuff working with regular Gnome wasn't too bad on Linux, only took a few hours. The biggest issue was that I wanted to use the SteamOS interface and that was completely corrupted with the stable Nvidia driver. I had to move to the beta driver and it's still a little broken, but usable. The games themselves work fine.
I also had a lot of issues with audio getting increasingly scratchy as I played, to a point of being completely unusable after about an hour, and that required a lot of trial and error but eventually I was able to search my way through NixOS docs and figure it out.
The card was already two years old so I doubt I could have gotten much support from it, and I am even more skeptical that Nvidia's tech support would have known how to do anything with NixOS.
My wife switched this year after only ever using Windows and pure dotnet dev.
The first thing she said was "how is it so fast"
She has me for tech support though and she’s a dev which helps.
I would go with popOS or Ubuntu if the tech support isn’t an option.
Still a few minor issues though. Sleep doesn't work well with Ubuntu on a desktop PC with an Nvidia card. It frequently wakes up immediately, or the screen remains black upon wake up. And sometimes it just works. Same problem on different PCs.
Just a minor annoyance though. I love Linux. On a recent computer everything is so fast and snappy compared to Windows or even macOS.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/linus...
Yes the user mode side is still closed, but that was never really the issue.
Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem (how the fuck do I even start, even if I wanted to?), but still, the point stands.
we've truly reached the milestone where a dedicated person can run Linux as their main desktop system.
You're 20 years too late for this.
The reason why Linux doesn't run well on the latest greatest hardware (and never has) is because the vendors of that hardware range from indifferent to actively hostile to Linux, and to make the system work people have to fight. Buy a legacy thinkpad, or something you've researched, and you'll have fewer problems than with Windows or Macs (which are tied to even more specific hardware and obsoleted by company whim.)
Of course, if you're on the bleeding edge of technology, everyone is using Linux (whether directly or in VMs and containers), so when I say the latest greatest, I mean the latest greatest consumer and business user stuff.
I've never understood comments like this. It's like you're looking at a pool full of people who have been swimming for years and telling you the pool is nice, and saying: "I guess it's finally ready for the real experts now."
Also, if you love vendors so much, you can have one. Buy your Linux computer from somebody who sells Linux computers, knows any problems you'll run into on that specially-selected hardware, and call them when you have a problem, just like you would do for the others.
Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem
This is the worst point by far. You can complain about anything that is broken, you just can't expect anyone to care (because you haven't obligated anyone to.) The problem isn't complaining, it's complaining badly. Get a vendor, whine to them.
I hope that as Valve pushes people into gaming on Linux, things will slowly change.
Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth
FWIW I use a DualSense controller connected to my Linux computers all the time without issue and without having to do anything special. In fact, Sony is the author of the DualSense driver on Linux[0]. Do you connect anything else over bluetooth? I'm wondering if your bluetooth setup might just be broken in general rather than specifically for DualSense controllers.
I too was experiencing odd/erratic pairing issues with DualSense controllers and this RTL8671B based dongle, and using the older firmware entirely fixed it. Now four controllers can be connected simultaneously without issue.
Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth
I've had this issue as well on KDE Plasma. I'm convinced it's some sort of bug within Plasma itself. If I use bluetoothctl to pair the controller, it works fine, might be worth giving that a try if you haven't.
well for games outside ones that have kernel level rootkits
I wish people would stop bringing this up which has not been true for years. Around 40-50% of kernel level anti cheats work and are supported (in user space).
Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth
This is a gotcha. The issue is probably that your user dont have the permissions to interact with udev devices.
Most children (American children, at least) grew up on Chromebooks. That instills a certain expectation of how these things work — documents save themselves.
To switch to Microsoft Office means adding a cryptic, unnecessary-seeming extra step. I imagine it feels something like having a laptop that's designed to be shut down before closing.
You’ve all heard the stories about college CS students who have to be told what a folder is — and those are the kids who actually want to work with computers. Now step back to the next generation of lawyers and nurses and novelists and think about their lifetime experience.
Microsoft is just chasing the puck.
We have to understand that being on this website alone puts us in a group that is not "normal" (from the content of the site, to the UI, to the rules, etc). I think almost everyone here would agree backups are important but what is the "normal" Windows person supposed to do for that if not OneDrive?
External/NAS is out of reach of most people (to manage if not to buy) and it's local and you really want a cloud backup. And while it would be great if we all had e2e encrypted backups where we had the only key, that is just not going to work for most people. They will lose the key, want features (like search) that don't work unless you pull all the data local, want ease of use moving between multiple devices, or <insert 1000 other reasons>.
Yes, yes, I know _you_ (collective) know how to do that, I get that you can set it up for the friends and family in your life, but most people will not learn or put up with the limitations even if someone else manages it for them.
Honestly, a lot of people (both young and old) have no concept of where they are saving their files, I think saving to the cloud by default is the right call. I wouldn't save a document locally unless I knew one of my many backups would get it safely to the cloud in short order if not immediately. If only to cut down on support calls for myself I think this is a welcome change.
All that's changing here is the default, you can still save locally if you want. It's just another layer of training wheels on technology. As much as that chafes people on this website, myself included often, I think it's 100% the right move. The side-effect of making more money from OneDrive is icing on the cake IMHO, not the cake itself.
Honestly, a lot of people (both young and old) have no concept of where they are saving their files
Microsoft is working hard on this issue since Windows 95. They even push their braindead Documents, Pictures, Videos before anything else. Good luck finding your files when something goes wrong. Though, it is better than iOS or Android where files are second class citizens and working with them is a PITA.
But I'd have to assume it's a more "data driven" reason (ie capturing context of docs).
Then the data centralization is a nice plus that makes it impossible to go back on.
It's also getting tiring seeing everything dumbed down for dumb people. I thought that people would learn how to use computers, and become empowered to integrate technology into their lives in the way that works for them. Instead, they have just become dumber than ever and more helpless and dependent.
The Chromebook user makes a doc, closes the lid, and finds their doc on their phone or web later.
Why wouldn't the Windows user get the same UX?
The expectation is that your data's available anywhere. Even linux users are going to want backups of their own choice so it's available anywhere.
The expectation is that your data's available anywhere.
Then why it is not available ? Why can't i run a dotNet program from a network share ? Why i can see heic files shared in Teams, but my boss cannot open them ?
The way it works there is that documents are auto-saved to a non-volatile app-specific temp directory until they’re explicitly saved, at which point they’re moved to the specified location and continue to be auto-saved there. Anybody who uses TextEdit as a temp text stash is familiar with this with the hoard of unsaved documents that comes back even after a cold boot.
Microsoft is just motivated to push cloud storage onto usage.
And while I think this is to some degree "keeping with the times" MS clearly has ulterior motives to do this, to lock users into an ecosystem, to dangle premium services, to charge for storage etc.
I suspect the HN crowd leans towards pessimistic/jaded views and that like MS is mostly doing this for the other reasons and not to conform to the norms of a population that doesn't really use MS word.
a laptop that's designed to be shut down
For the people who do shut it down, they do it by holding down the power button for 10+ seconds, because that’s how phones do it. On Windows at least, that causes a forced/crash shutdown.
You’ve all heard the stories about college CS students who have to be told what a folder is
Back in the olden days of the early 90's when I was in school, I was working for the university's "Unix Group". Since I, being an undergrad, was the low man on the totem-pole there, I was always the one sent out to the various departments to do the support work on their workstations. The CS professors were, without question, the ones who knew the least about how to operate their machines. They mostly had no interest, as they were much more invested in CS theory than in practical use.
Most children (American children, at least) grew up on Chromebooks. That instills a certain expectation of how these things work — documents save themselves.
I'd say iPads rather than Chromebooks, but the same applies - no concept of a file system, everything just living "in the cloud", the devices themselves being ultimately disposable - as long as you have iCloud set up, you can put your iPad in the shredder, and get all of your content back in under an hour.
This is a feature that has been among the most loved aspects of its main competitor for more than a decade.
Somehow, Microsoft managed to make the same feature sound and feel and be creepy.
People who wanted that kind of treatment and walled garden already moved to apple's ecosystem, and people who do not want this stayed with windows.
Now more and more of my non-technical friends are moving towards linux because microsoft is pushing them away.
Again, for the Nth time, you can run any software you like on a Mac. You can do anything you want. App store? Of course. Direct vendor download? You bet. Build from source? No problem.
Further, this line is out of place here because Microsoft is FAR more invasive about pushing cloud-first storage than Apple has ever been. No app on my Mac default to saving to iCloud. NONE.
you can't bring your software with you, you can't bring your licenses with you, and all services are available only inside it.
I'm no spring chicken. I've had painful migrations. I'm not interested in tools that don't have an exit. Nothing about a normal Mac setup is locked-in. I could migrate my data to Linux, I expect, with minimal hassle. I mean, I wouldn't, because I enjoy the network effects of using the Apple ecosystem, and I find MacOS more pleasing to interact with than any Linux window manager I've yet seen. But it's absolutely possible for me to leave, and simple to do so.
There's no lock in.
You're forced by what's given to you and can only use within the garden on only the device you own.
Yes, the Mac defaults to a stricter policy than most HN readers would want. Mass market computers SHOULD. That they don't is a reason we have so much malware on the Aunt Millie PCs of the world.
HN readers are more technical. We want to do what we want to do, but we have to understand that what WE want isn't what's right for the average user. As long as a platform gives us a path to download a random utility from a buddy's site or whatever, it's fine.
It's very, very easy to set a Mac to run whatever you want. Nothing is hidden about it. Is it different than it was under Sonoma? Yes, but the changes are well documented and there are countless articles online, including at Apple, that explain the trivial steps required.
People who wanted that kind of treatment and walled garden already moved to apple's ecosystem, and people who do not want this stayed with windows.
Probably mostly applicable to people who know about "ecosystems", rather than normies who view computers mostly as another type of hammer (a tool).
I have to re-learn how to use software very regularly, and as more and more things become software I have lost some functional skills because there are only 24 hours in a day and I can't stay current on everything. If I haven't done a thing in six years, it means I need to research what the current software tool for doing that thing is, try installing four of those things and land on the one that isn't broken or some type of malware, and then teach myself an entirely new interface over time. I just wanted to hit a nail! My hammer was installed on my old computer! I knew that hammer!
But no, it's never that simple with software. I can learn 150 software tools to do specific things and have to re-learn something every week just to maintain capability. I don't have to do that with hammers, wrenches, saws, etc.
We need more hammer-like tools instead of managed, constantly updated "ecosystems", and when we do find a good one, we need a way to keep it. Because we have finite time and cognitive bandwidth.
"That was deprecated three years ago, why are you still trying to use an old version that doesn't even have security updates? What is wrong with you?! [WONTFIX]"... Fuck you, give me back my fucking hammer. I could do this task I'm trying to do in literally 90 seconds ten years ago; I'm an hour deep into determining how you would even begin to do it today.
Apple, as far as i know, still gives you a choice.
Why does this app that's been working just fine as desktop software need to save anything to the cloud by default? It's conceptually odd.
I've used Google docs from the beginning, but I actively choose what docs I want on that platform.
All MS had to do was add "save to cloud" as an additional save option along with "save" and "save as" (maybe renamed as "save to desktop") then auto save could activate where your last save location was. This would be good design.
Microsoft is rolling back control
Agreed. Functionality like this should be presented as a choice in an OOBE welcoming screen right after installation. And it should be _a choice,_ something that can be reversed at a later date if the decision was wrong.
This has the effect that (to a first approximation) everyone knows someone with a horrific OneDrive data loss story, no-one particularly trusts OneDrive with anything actually important, and so no-one wants to be forced to use it for everything.
I understand that you run into this problem with third party software like Dropbox, because they aren't natively integrated with the OS and therefore need to do some unreliable file tagging to support basic operations like renaming, moving or copying files, but Microsoft controls the entire OS.
They can scan the filesystem journal for file system operations. They can build custom OneDrive specific features into their file explorer. They have an office suite that can directly integrate with OneDrive.
Yet they chose to not do that and instead decided that they really ought to collect all your data for training AI instead.
However, OneDrive's promise is "save your files and photos to OneDrive and access them from any device, anywhere". Accordingly, the model OneDrive actually exposes to the user is directory trees of arbitrary files containing what, for OneDrive's purposes, are opaque blobs. This leads to all the behaviours you'd expect from a distributed system using such a model, and therefore the trust issues the public has with MS distributed systems.
Regaining someone's trust in a vendor after a bad experience, even for a different product, is very hard.
This is still a local app, so it doesn't feel like a natural default.
Person/Company does crappy thing
People complain
Fanboy says "Person/Company could do amazing thing and people would still complain"
... when it's very obvious that company/person didn't do anything good.
I've seen it so many times there must be a name for it. Anyone know what it is?
Step 1: Assume your claim is already true, e.g. "Microsoft is a still good corporate actor in spite of doing X".
Step 2: Manufacture circular logic to support your claim from Step 1.
In other words, the poster is begging the question to be self-evident, rather than producing evidence to support their claim.
Somehow, Microsoft managed to make the same feature sound and feel and be creepy.
The company they're imitating (poorly, as always) is one I've found so creepy that I actively go out of my way to distance myself from. For at least the last decade at this point. If Microsoft is being creepy too, this just means they'e successfully imitated the competition... for once.
I think the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of Linux is not using Linux itself, it's installing it on a computer. 99% of people don't know how to format a USB device, or how to enter the BIOS.
If it isn't a problem it's not worth fixing. A lot of people don't even know where they are saving their stuff to, so if it's in the cloud or on their device doesn't really matter to them.
Third-party doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
A lot of people don't even know where they are saving their stuff to, so if it's in the cloud or on their device doesn't really matter to them
Until their computer dies, and then they get upset at Microsoft for not having some automatic backup process like they have on the other platforms their friends use.
Between those and the people that can navigate everything on Linux, there'll be mildly technical people. Those may explore things that are out of the ordinary but will be unable or unwilling to fix issues that could arise from that
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_an... w
Problems with sleep/suspend modes is a relatively common in Linux.
It is if you slap Linux on your Windows computer and expect it to work. Dell etc have teams whose entire job is ensuring Windows works well on their hardware. These are systems integration teams.
If you try to put Linux on a Windows box, you've signed up to do all the system integration work yourself, without any help or support (eg documentation) from anyone.
The best Linux experience will happen on hardware that was designed to run Linux, with a system integration team to make the hardware/firmware and Os work together, with a support line you can call or write.
I am thinking Fedora's atomic desktop for family. Any other suggestions?
She then proceeded to install and test the programs she needed and everything worked basically out of the box, so now she continued to use it because it doesn't matter to her what she uses, as long as she can use it.
(She is using Fedora on a Framework laptop)
However, I realize that I'm weird, and I certainly don't blame most people for preferring the Word style of editing, since most people aren't nerdy software engineers.
While a part of me hopes this works as a push for people to use FOSS like LibreOffice, I'm not really holding my breath. I tried getting my parents to switch years ago after they were complaining about having to pay for a subscription to Office, and they were wholly unmoved and didn't like LibreOffice.
In fairness, LibreOffice didn't really do what my parents wanted; the equation editor for LibreOffice is decidedly harder to use than Microsoft's (even compared to the old Mathtype version), and the syntax for their spreadsheet stuff is different enough from Excel that it can lead to a fairly steep learning curve.
Normal documents, 99.999% of the time, are written in Markdown, and stored like that or rendered to PDF, if required.
Everything serious go through LaTeX. I don't care about Typst, I'm happy with LaTeX syntax (I've written my Ph.D. with it, so I don't care if it fights you).
For some Office stuff I need to use office tools. LibreOffice if the other party accepts it or Microsoft Office for the picky documents and people.
A lot of personal calculations are done in Notion databases now, but I can wrangle Calc/Excel/Numbers enough to have them on file, if they are sensitive or need to be detached from Notion.
I'm an old school people. I don't migrate from tool to tool much.
I think that LaTeX is mostly fine enough but there are a few bits of bullshit that I find infuriating, e.g. having to remember to do `` for beginning quotes, which apparently I will never remember to do until I look at the rendered document. Also, the errors when compiling are pretty opaque and hard to parse; I've done it enough now to where I can usually figure it out but they're certainly pretty weird to a beginner.
I think we're both kind of weird :). Weird doesn't mean "bad", certainly, I'm just saying that I don't think it's reasonable to ask a random non-techy person to learn LaTeX or how to render with Pandoc. I did my entire undergrad work in Pandoc->LaTeX->PDF, and my entire masters work in Typst; I didn't finish my PhD but all the work I did for that was in vanilla LaTeX.
Importantly, though, I get to do it all using Neovim + tmux, so I can keep using my normal "IDE" at all times.
For spreadsheets, I usually just use Calc for anything that requires privacy, and Google Sheets for anything where privacy doesn't matter. They're both good enough for what I'm doing.
LaTeX has its own quirks and doesn't talk kindly to a newcomer, but I know a lot of people (nerd or otherwise) like it for what it is. For some of the users, it's an acquired taste though.
I have written my B.Sc. and M.Sc. stuff in Open/LibreOffice. Then I said never, and migrated to LaTeX for Ph.D. and did everything in 5x speed with 10x less fuss. I have a tendency to learn markup and programming languages fast, so I never felt off while working with it.
I'm more of a screen guy, for tmux works, too. I also still use Eclipse as my serious IDE. VSCode can play over there, heh.
I used to use Google Docs, but Notion's "personal wiki" structure won me for non-technical things. All technical things stay in Obsidian, which is also opened as a public digital garden.
My Mac is always trying to get me to save to iCloud by default.
Nothing in macOS has ever attempted to lure me into saving to iCloud Drive.
I thought you might be referring to Apple's office suite rather than macOS, but I just tried Pages and it boringly defaults to local storage as expected.
I'm not on a clean install either, and I have changed the save location from iCloud to a local folder a zillion times.
That's unfortunate, I can only confirm that it doesn't happen to me on current/next versions of macOS.
If that happened to me, I guess I'd just turn it off. https://imgur.com/a/Cl0xyJi
Word has defaulted to saving in OneDrive (if you turn on autosave and you're signed into an MS account) for years now, I think since the Office 2016 > Office 365 update. The only real change I see is that the document will now be given a name with the date instead of just 'Document 1'. Maybe it's a little more aggressive about turning on autosave for you? The autorecover location is still in appdata.
In my 10 years using this website daily i am yet to see a microsoft related thread and comments that is not fud, misinformation or straight lies
Steamrolling their users then getting rewarded with their stock going stratospheric. Excellent!
[1]https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-china-defense-d...
Microsoft Failed to Disclose Key Details About Use of China-Based Engineers in U.S. Defense Work, Record Shows
A reasonable policy for dealing with this variety is to default to not transferring anything you're working on outside the relevant parts of your organisation - including use of cloud services - and then enable specifics on a per-client basis according to need. It's like the principle of least privilege. But if you operate that way then any software that quietly starts sharing things without explicit permission is a big problem.
And if this change will affect home users who don't have professionally managed systems as well then the same moral hazard applies. I don't think it's OK to push people into sharing their personal data online without understanding what they're doing and the potential consequences.
https://ridaayed.com/posts/create-diagrams-in-emacs-org-mode...
Seriously if I could use Logic Pro inside Emacs I would.
I find it annoying because I often just want a document to live on a local device, and I'll decide when I want to upload it to a cloud service. But a lot of normal, non-tech people don't have any concept of how data is stored on their devices. I can't tell you how many times I've encountered a situation that roughly goes,
"Did you download the file?" "I guess so." "Okay. Now go the file and open it." "Where is it?" "I don't know. Where did you download it? "I don't know!"
For a lot of normies, just saving the document in the cloud is going to be easier. The ironic thing is that now I'm the one who is annoyed because I have no idea where my document is saved.
The only issue with linux I am wondering about is sharing my CV where most companies need a word file.
For dev work/play time - 100% linux
The only issue with linux I am wondering about is sharing my CV where most companies need a word file.
Maybe it's regional, but I've never been asked for a Word file resume.
I've never had somebody turn down a PDF. And all of the "Upload you resume" online applications I've seen also support PDF. A lot of them lately will even correctly parse out the info and auto-fill forms with it, but some of them mangle it.
I've also heard that OnlyOffice is very good and has better compatibility with Microsoft's formats, but I've never personally used it.
Now that would require the competent configuration of the software by the government and proper usage by the individual. So leak guaranteed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/07/26/censors...
When did Google offer an non-cloud installable app and changed it to upload to the cloud?
I bet all those cool SV people "we're better than Microsoft" aren't using Libre Office on a GNU/Linux system.
Maybe it is time for some donations?
Local First stalwart that has some legacy || Cloud first "new kid" but you surrender your files.
The issue is, first: they changed the deal. Change by default is bad. People need to learn this because honestly it's an important lesson. Change is inherently bad, so if you're going to change: have a stonking good reason.
Second: Now the drawbacks of the second "hip" alternative is included the same drawbacks of the first. So, now, Google Office is a strictly superior offering.
Congratulations, I guess?
Yes, more people should use libreoffice, but most people are concerned with compatibility, a sunk cost on their office skills and it's pretty bad UX.
We don’t have one for the 3 people in the company to need to use Word on occasion.
If that is the case, I think it makes some sense if you are already setup to use that to default to saving there since it makes it easier to find your files on other devices and they be safe. Theoretically if you have it setup you already agree to the risks of storing data in the cloud.
however... The real problem to me is that onedrive is enabled by default and that they are now requiring you to login with a microsoft account to use Windows. If both of those were not the case this makes complete sense.
But until they stop enabling one drive by default and making it a pain in the ass to disable this is bad.
iOS does it with its apps and iCloud but it’s seamless so you don’t mind.
Using OneDrive is like putting your face next to an anus and breathing deeply.
Also, MS wants more sales opportunities. If data is on their cloud, they have at least some control over your access of it, and the ease with which it is used in your daily work. It's a pain in the ass to have to manually save stuff, but that's what you'll have to do once you exceed the 5GB free tier limit. I guess you'll probably want to shell out for more space, no?
The good news for your work Mac is that it's your IT and budget departments' headaches, not yours.
The gaming machine operates significantly better on fedora than it ever did on windows.
I'm on the fence for what to do with my other two machines, but it feels like there's weekly news pushing me away from continuing with windows.
Additionally, my Office 365 subscription is a work subscription and this is my personal device, so I don’t want every file I work on to during personal hours to be uploaded to my work’s sharepoint?
I hate Office so much and wish there was a trully viable alternative.
To be fair, I already sync some of my text files to the cloud, but I choose which ones I sync to which services. This seems to take away our agency.
I don't use Microsoft software other than for playing the occasional games, this is a good reminder of _why_ I don't. Other than Windows being a hot mess of an operating system half the time, multiple different UI's that don't mesh together, ads being pushed in the start menu, and somehow more hardware problems than I run into on Linux these days.
On my work laptop I've had to move my working folder out of "My Documents" so that going into subfolders doesn't stop and think for ten seconds each while it does... something... with OneDrive.
I just want to get to the files real quick, I don't want to calculate '42' at every fucking folder-open event.
I'm not a very nostalgic motherfucker, so I have no desire to relive computing from the early 90s.
(this may be specific to enforced settings at my workplace, but it feels like this is the same kinda thing)
Linux at home for the last five-odd years and almost daily I'm reminded how good a decision that was.
It’d be a bummer if my cousin lost the term paper he was writing. It would be a Truly Bad Day if a coworker uploaded a sensitive document to an unauthorized (or unexpected!) cloud service and it got compromised and the sensitive data used against us.
The former would be bad for my cousin. The latter would involve lawsuits and smitings. The probability is lower, but the risk is much, much higher.
But I stopped auto saving by default. I find that simply navigating a document and making markups ends up saving the document when all i wanted to was view it and not save it
I use the modified date filter extensively to figure out what is most relevant and what is not. With autosave, the date modified keeps changing. And going online and restoring the file to an earlier version changes DM to now. Meaning that information is either permanently lost or I have to hack it and change it manually.
Microsoft is potentially staring at tons of lawsuits if their actions result in violations of these privacy regulations.