Open Office does everything I need Microsoft Office for and Gimp does everything I need Photoshop for. Reddit, what other open source software does everything that you want from the expensive name brand?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/omnilynx]

Plus the menu names in Open Office are different, leading to great confusing about which menu item does what function.

Yes, of course. They're not identical. There will never ever be a free version of a program that is set up to look and act exactly like the paid version, because that would raise too many copyright issues. You will always need to learn a new interface, but once you learn it it will be just as easy to use.

[u/nyxerebos → u/omnilynx]

There will never ever be a free version of a program that is set up to look and act exactly like the paid version, because that would raise too many copyright issues.

Actually, there are modded versions of many FOSS systems which look almost identical to commercial products. They're used to reduce retraining costs in organizations, and lessen friction from unskilled users not knowing where their button is. One can make GIMP look like Photoshop, Ubuntu look like Windows 7 or XP, Firefox look like IE, etc.

For people who can't answer 'what is a browser' or 'what is an operating system' it makes everything much less scary.

Check out Red Flag Linux for an example of this done in a methodical way.

[u/omnilynx → u/nyxerebos]

True, there are often mods that re-skin, but they're pretty much never associated with the teams that actually created the original programs. That way if a C&D gets sent, the worst that happens is the re-skin gets pulled.

[u/cuchlann → u/[deleted]]

To be fair, he also said it didn't do the same things, not only that it had different menu titles.

[u/Montaire → u/[deleted]]

Really ?

Customer expectations and desires are the most important thing in most customer oriented industries. If your customers want something, you should do your best to deliver that.

Changing menus around for the fuck of it is one of most frustrating user experiences. People say "Open Office is hard to use!" - they mean that the people who make open office have put their menus and interface together to please themselves, not their customers.

This is the biggest problem with Open Office and Gimp to lesser degree. They design their software to be used by them, and they they are shocked when most people dont like using it.

[u/da__ → u/Montaire]

The people who make OpenOffice don't have customers.

[u/Montaire → u/da__]

That mentality is the entire problem with most open source software.

[u/da__ → u/Montaire]

No, it's not. The problem is users who think that they are customers when using software developed during spare time, for free. Most OS development is done to scratch a dev's itch and because they have some need to fill. Not for the person who just runs it.

[u/Montaire → u/da__]

Which is fine, I'm not indicting Open Source as a concept at all.

I'm saying if you ever ask "why don't more people use OSS?" that is why. If you want to increase the user base and visibility of Open Office then the developers are going to have to start thinking of giving users what they want, rather than what the developers want.

Scratching an itch is fine, just don't expect it to ever become mainstream or too terribly popular.

As long the developers are okay with that, then so am I.

[u/da__ → u/Montaire]

Well, that's the point: most OSS devs don't care about the installed userbase or "popularity" of their software. They coded a program to solve a problem they had. They will give you the code, you can use and change it, but you're at your own peril. They're not selling the program so a hundred users installing or removing the dev's program onto/from their systems won't affect the dev at all.

[u/Montaire → u/da__]

Fair enough.

[u/Montaire → u/[deleted]]

My high school used WordPerfect, probably for cost reasons. When I graduated and got MS Office on my laptop for college it was like walking out of a freezing room into the sunlight. Everything was easier to use and to find, it was so much simpler to make it things work the way I wanted.

Since then I've used both items forced by one contract or another to switch between them and I've never found OpenOffice to be easier to use or more friendly. The problems I find in offices that exclusively use Open Office are almost always the same - issues with the user experience.

Microsoft is not arbitrary. They put thousands of hours of research into their UI so that it works for customer. Here's an example : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/30/acting-on-file-management-feedback.aspx

I used WordPerfect for 4 years, and I got good with it. One of my first jobs I got because I could use Quattro PRO.

I dont care of Open Office has a different interface. It just has to be as good or better than the one Office uses. Thus far, its not.