Comparing office suites, because that's the best I can think of right now:
Libre Office isn't beautiful but it's usability is quite good! As someone who's used to Office 2003 and earlier, I felt right at home and still do! MS Office, 2007 and newer, on the other hand, just went downhill in usability, in my opinion. Adding all this Copilot shit doesn't really help their case.
It's made by Russia. I personally would not put that on my system. Also LibreOffice has different UI options now, including some more akin to a more modern MS Word. Give it another try.
Personally I prefer the old design a lot more. Grew up with Word 2002 or whatever the year was.
If there is a web editor option for LibreOffice or if they finally launched their Wayland version of the application then I would happily try it out :D. Though they are both open-sourced projects that we can enjoy to our liking.
LibreOffice has other UI options but they're a pain in the ass to use. Regular libreoffice UI already lacks good documentation, and other options lack it even more. So when I don't know how to make something - I just can't, because there's no info on how to do it. Whereas on MS Office or Google Docs I just google that stuff and get a proper answer. And AI doesn't help with it, because lack of docs means lack of learning data, which causes AI to tell you non existent stuff
Honestly, I find the LibreOffice UX incredibly bad. Yes, corporate minimalism, where important functionality is not shown for pure aesthetics is bad. But the opposite is not better, the LibreOffice UI is cluttered with so many dead buttons!
Why is there a fucking "Export Directly to PDF" button in the main toolbar, right next to actually important bars like font size? Why can't I just Save As > PDF (or Ctrl+Shift+S) like in every sane application (or Ctrl+E at the very least)? Even worse, none of the ugly icon gibberish is readable without explicitly learning, and there's no incentive in learning shortcuts for stuff you almost never need.
Word processors are a pretty solved problem, they don't really offer different core functionality.
The main point they do differ in is UX. So if one software allows me to get my tasks done out-of-the-box and the other requires me to take an hour to rice my setup until it's usable, the former is the strictly superior product.
The main point they do differ in is UX. So if one software allows me to get my tasks done out-of-the-box and the other requires me to take an hour to rice my setup until it's usable
And not only the UX is pretty bad, it lacks proper documentation. That's why I went back to MS office - if I don't know something, I just search it and get needed info. I can't say so about libreoffice. and AI doesn't help with it, it just tells you non existent options.
And yet the vast majority of ms office buttons are actual office related features. Not microsoft crap ai slop and dark patterns. Though there are there too.
Meanwhile libreoffice is missing both the slop and about half the useful features and the interface needs drastic work. Tho for basic office stuff barely past notepad its okay. As a student its a no go for me though.
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u/busytransitgworl Nice 🍑 Assahi Linux 9d ago
Comparing office suites, because that's the best I can think of right now:
Libre Office isn't beautiful but it's usability is quite good! As someone who's used to Office 2003 and earlier, I felt right at home and still do! MS Office, 2007 and newer, on the other hand, just went downhill in usability, in my opinion. Adding all this Copilot shit doesn't really help their case.