[HN Gopher] Microsoft Edge GA on Linux
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Edge GA on Linux
Author : sendilkumarn
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-11-02 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.windows.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.windows.com)
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Is this even open source? I don't see many package maintainers
| wanting to have a closed-source browser. I am using Chromium for
| now because it is included in the default repos. Will there be an
| open source "Chromium" for Edge, or is that what Chromium is
| already?
| bloblaw wrote:
| Edge has built in support for vertical tabs, tab groups, and
| chrome extensions.
|
| IMHO, Edge is the best chromium based browser out there, and for
| me is miles better than Chrome itself.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| FWIW, Vivaldi has all of these also.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I love Vivaldi feature wise but something about its
| implementation absolutely wrecks performance and memory usage
| compared to traditional chromium based browsers. Even
| disabling most every option and interface doodad I could find
| with no extensions loaded results in noticeably slower
| browsing vs other browsers defaults and it carries over into
| the benchmark results as well, things like Speedometer 2.0
| get significantly lower scores and total RAM usage during the
| test is much higher.
| hulitu wrote:
| It has also builtin telemetry and running with elevated
| priviledges.
| adar wrote:
| > Edge has built in support for vertical tabs, tab groups, and
| chrome extensions.
|
| IMO Vivaldi's implementations of vertical tabs and tab groups
| is superior, but Edge is definitely a close second.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| That sounds good, but I don't want MS tracking on my linux box,
| I lived without those and I can wait a bit longer for ungoogled
| chromium to get them (maybe).
| hbn wrote:
| You'll also be dealing with constant prompts and alerts from
| Microsoft to try Bing and redeem Bing Rewards and install
| smartphone apps to integrate with your Microsoft account, and
| them adding more spammy news articles and ads in the new tab
| page and Googling how to disable them, etc.
|
| It's gotten so bad the past few months that after a year of
| using Edge, it finally pushed me back to Chrome as of yesterday
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| On the other hand, Chrome doesn't ask, it just does it.
|
| Logged in youtube ? You probably meant to sign in the browser
| too, sync all your life with google, and link your android
| phone. There, fixed it for you.
| supernovae wrote:
| to be fair, Google chrome does this too if you visit anything
| non google... i wish none of the browsers did this...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium interested?
| https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/index.html
| marcodiego wrote:
| I use Eloston's ungoogled-chromium installed from flatpak
| from time to time. Mostly for google while I navigate the
| internet with FF.
|
| Don't know safe/clean it really is, but for now seems to be
| working as intended.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| The problem with the Flatpak version is it's almost
| impossible to install the plugin ublock origin.
| oktoberpaard wrote:
| Ungoogled Chromium comes without web store support. Once
| you've installed this plugin you can install other
| plugins like you're used to:
| https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store.
| nimbius wrote:
| Microsoft has a rich historic tradition of releasing
| seemingly well designed, well received tools and applications
| that are immediately clubbed to death by poor planning, toxic
| marketing, vague patch and maintenance priorities, and in
| many cases a near schizophrenic pursuit of niche or unrelated
| market dominance.
|
| one wonders, for example, what Zune could have become had
| Microsoft just used that juggernaut dominance to focus on the
| customer and experience instead of drifting down a rabbit
| hole of byzantine industry pre-crime enforcement.
| dekerta wrote:
| A few years ago, I was using Windows 10 and a huge ad
| banner for OneDrive appeared in the _file explorer_. That
| was the final straw for me, and it 's the reason I finally
| switched over to Linux 100% full time
| captainmuon wrote:
| To be fair, Ubuntu did that a couple of years ago with
| Ubuntu One, and iCloud and Google storage are also
| integrated with the respective OSes, and you can buy
| subscriptions with a couple of clicks.
|
| Windows is basically freemium now, I haven't spent money
| for windows licenses in years, neither privately nor has
| the company I work at. We get 100 or so licenses as a MS
| Gold partner, but pay a lot for services around Office
| 365. It's strange, but this is the new industry status
| quo apparently.
|
| Now what I find really offputting and weird is that MS
| Word had a banner the other day - something like "Looking
| for a new job? Download these templates to make a great
| impression!" after I opened my CV. I really really hope
| MS is not scanning the content of my files because that
| would be a big no go...
| hbn wrote:
| > MS Word had a banner the other day - something like
| "Looking for a new job? Download these templates to make
| a great impression!" after I opened my CV. I really
| really hope MS is not scanning the content of my files
| because that would be a big no go...
|
| Isn't that classic Clippy/Clippit behaviour that Word has
| been famous for for years?
| naikrovek wrote:
| You didn't own a Zune. They were FANTASTIC. They did focus
| on customer experience and usability... they were amazing.
|
| I could put MP3s on there just as easily as I could an
| iPod, if not more easily.
|
| The whole meaningless, punchline-less joke "Microsoft sux
| lol" thing that's been happening since the Triassic period
| is what did the Zune in; bystanders took the _almost_
| toothless anti-ms culture shared among nerd communities as
| if it were something that had an appropriate amount of
| merit. it had merit, yes, but not anywhere nearly as much
| as you would think if you listened to Linux nerds talk to
| each other for more than a few minutes.
| spinningslate wrote:
| > The whole meaningless, punchline-less joke "Microsoft
| sux lol" thing
|
| You can't mention that without context. Why did Microsoft
| have a bad rap? Because they'd done bad/ill-considered
| things and it came back to bite them. The browser wars,
| Balmer's "linux is cancer" rhetoric [0], trying to create
| a "Microsoft internet" instead of the Internet, "Embrace,
| Extend, Extinguish" [1] more generally. To name but a
| few.
|
| The Zune might well have been a good device (don't know),
| but the "Microsoft sux lol" (as you put it) of the time
| wasn't meaningless. It was entirely of Microsoft's own
| doing.
|
| [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linu
| x_is_a_...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_ex
| tinguis...
| tjoff wrote:
| That seems like child-play compared to the google or
| apple of today.
|
| Don't use a chromium browser.
| headsoup wrote:
| It sure was, I have the ZuneHD still, it's still a
| beautiful device with an intuitive UI and nice clean
| software. Pity MS never figured out how to compete in
| marketing against existing sentiment and Apple (with
| their horribly clunky UI/Hardware and software of the
| iPod (which I had to support at work too)). It's a pity
| my Zune is almost a brick now, there's nothing wrong with
| it (my daughter listens to music and plays games on it
| now).
|
| If I could put an open source OS on it I'd still be using
| it (so long as I can sync it with Linux too..)
| hbn wrote:
| > The whole meaningless, punchline-less joke "Microsoft
| sux lol" thing that's been happening since the Triassic
| period is what did the Zune in
|
| I don't know if that was near as much of a factor as the
| fact that Apple had basically solved the digital music
| problem almost 6 years prior with iTunes and the iPod,
| and everyone already had their music libraries there.
| plushpuffin wrote:
| You're not kidding, I just opened Edge to see if I would
| notice any prompts, and it immediately threw up a popup in
| the middle of my screen asking to set it as the default
| browser and change my search to Bing (with "yes" selected by
| default, obviously).
|
| I use it rarely but I know that I've told it no before. It
| looks like it's configured to ask periodically.
| hbn wrote:
| The other thing that cemented my decision to switch from
| Edge was when I went to set my default browser from the
| Windows settings, and upon selecting Chrome it gave me some
| pathetic, last-ditch prompt that said something like
| (extreme paraphrasing, but it was the idea): "Are you sure?
| Edge is much better now!"
|
| If I was having second thoughts before, I'm definitely not
| now.
| jsrcout wrote:
| I hate software that begs.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| It could be on launch if not run in x time as well...
|
| I used chredge for work only and occaisonal validation on
| personal side. And if i dont launch edge for a while ill
| see the prompts, but if i use it daily...i dont.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Don't all browsers do this? Even Firefox asks to be your
| default browser when you first open it... and then every
| time there's an update it conveniently "forgets" this
| preference so you get asked again.
| naikrovek wrote:
| Chrome does the EXACT SAME THING, periodically, just like
| Edge, and no one gives Google any crap for it. no one gives
| Google _any_ grief for the things they 're doing. they're
| just as bad, if not worse, than MS was in the 1990s, when
| MS was at their absolute worst.
|
| it's amazing how blind people are.
| dmw_ng wrote:
| I use Edge on Linux to run Teams 5-7 days per week, and use
| it for anything that won't render in Firefox. Have never
| experienced this.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| You'll also have to deal with every Google-branded site
| screaming at you for daring to use something other than
| Chrome.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Why not Vivaldi?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Its not much different, closed source, has its own VPN, but
| I never saw a reason to choose it unless you want to use a
| public VPN (I don't want to).
| int_19h wrote:
| Vivaldi is much more flexible with its UI customization
| options. It even has something like tree-style tab:
| https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/window-panel/
| luke2m wrote:
| Opera is the on with the VPN. Vivaldi handles groups and
| vertical tabs well, and isn't constantly pushing
| Microsoft products.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Switching from Google to Microsoft - what a choice! :)
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Edge's implementation of vertical tabs is probably the best
| I've seen yet. You can get something similar in Firefox with
| extensions and userchrome edits, but custom userchrome can't be
| relied on since they're removing it at some point, and vertical
| tab extensions without the userchrome edits are very awkward
| (redundant tab bar, stupid sidebar header that can't be
| hidden).
|
| I really wish some FOSS browser would clone Edge's setup.
| Preferably something built with Gecko or WebKit to help oppose
| Chromium hegemony.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I was arguing that WebKit was not a Monopoly but he grouped
| WebKit and Blink together, interesting you see them
| separately. You can just download a config for firefox,
| pretty sure Chrome still can't do rows of tabs.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| WebKit and Blink have diverged quite substantially at this
| point and have several large differences. One is that
| WebKit is more geared toward embedding in applications
| using whatever UI framework and language whereas Blink is
| more married to Chromium.
|
| Firefox configs like you mention are possible only because
| of custom userchrome, which Mozilla has indicated intent to
| remove sooner than later.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Suprised that WebKit is better, wonder why Blink is being
| used in VScode.
| TingPing wrote:
| Its not better, its different. Anyway vscode just uses
| electron, and electron wants the modern Google web.
| e12e wrote:
| > IMHO, Edge is the best chromium based browser out there
|
| Closed source web browser? Not really all that interested tbh.
| bloblaw wrote:
| You do realize Google Chrome is closed source, right?
|
| > Unlike Chromium, Chrome is not open-source, so its binaries
| are licensed as freeware under the Google Chrome Terms of
| Service.
|
| source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#
| Brandin...
|
| I greatly prefer Firefox to Edge or Chrome, but unfortunately
| the world we live in is where some websites only work in
| Chrome, or corporate functionality requires plugins that only
| work in Chrome.
| e12e wrote:
| Hence, I run chromium, not chrome. (ed: and Firefox).
| Anunayj wrote:
| Though I think I kind of agree, I tried out Edge, and it's
| actually not bad, too bad it isn't open sourced or I would
| honestly not mind using it when I'm already using Windows.
|
| I still prefer Firefox.
| drdeca wrote:
| Sure, but, while presumably very similar, isn't the source
| for chrome slightly different from the open-source chromium,
| and not public?
|
| (Does chrome have a setting to disable all DRM plugins like
| firefox does?)
| e12e wrote:
| This is (one reason) why I run chromium, not chrome.
|
| Opera at least used to have a (fast, standards compliant)
| unique render engine and a snappy email client. Beyond IE-
| mode, I don't se why I would prefer Edge to Chromium.
|
| That said, I'm happy to see first party support for Linux.
| But for me, being able to run SQL Server is much more
| useful than Edge.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Closed source with MS tracking and spying from the network
| logs. There seems to be an army of MS fanbois that angrily
| downvote any comments critical of crappy MS products in the
| thread.
| bloblaw wrote:
| For me it's a trade-off between Google and Microsoft.
|
| Nobody would ever confuse me for a Microsoft fan-boy, but I
| personally feel more comfortable with sharing telemetry
| data (which both Google and Microsoft collect) with a
| software and services company than an advertising company.
|
| More than 80% of Google's revenue comes from advertising
| (source cited below).
|
| The majority of Microsoft's revenue comes from cloud
| services, Office, and Windows.
|
| But I understand Microsoft has a trust gap with many folks,
| based on their anti-OSS activity of the late 90's and early
| 00's, and I'm glad we are all free to choose.
|
| The only major browser (by market share) that is truly
| open-source is still Mozilla Firefox.
|
| source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/how-does-google-
| make-money-a...
|
| source: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/filing-shows-
| microsoft-really-...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| They're being aggregated and sold the same to
| advertisers. Just because you don't think MS sells you
| anything (they do btw, why do they have a store?) doesn't
| mean it's not going to be used for advertising.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Why not skip trading off completely and just use Firefox?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Says whom? It also tracks you.
| https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/firefox.html
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I freaking love the new Edge browser, but I only use it on
| my work machine where I could care less about spying and
| tracking. I really hope that MS will open source the edge
| browser at some point. I would love a "Edgium" or
| "UnMicrosofted" version of Edge that I can use on personal
| machines. Vertical tabs are awesome.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Probably not as good but
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tree-style-
| tab/oic... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/vert
| icaltabs/imimo...
| marcodiego wrote:
| That probably will not happen. Edge is not open source.
| [deleted]
| chasil wrote:
| OpenBSD maintains a chromium fork that is outfitted with
| pledge() and unveil(), and Edge belongs in that package
| repository with similar safety features.
|
| Edge should do what is necessary to get there, and this means
| opening the source.
| [deleted]
| marcodiego wrote:
| Microsoft efforts to keep IE relevant were... respectable but
| ineffective:
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+browser+you...
| xupybd wrote:
| I love that their marketing is, large companies use Edge to
| support legacy apps. That does sound like a good use for Edge.
| Another good use is downloading the browser you want to use.
| tlamponi wrote:
| Can I use it to actually watch 4k Netflix content like on
| Windows? FWIW, I have a modern Intel CPU, IIRC that's required
| too for their DRM..
| Mindwipe wrote:
| No, Edge only includes the required PlayReady DRM module on
| Windows (in fact it's actually part of Windows that the browser
| calls).
|
| Edge on Mac or Linux only has Widevine Level 3, exactly the
| same as Chrome, and only gets a max of 720p from Netflix.
| unixhero wrote:
| Embrace
| titusjohnson wrote:
| Congratulations to Microsoft for finally shipping a fully-fledged
| Web Browser! It's been a long time since they made one that
| wasn't hamstrung to a single OS.
|
| Not that I'll use it for anything other than installing Firefox.
| I figure MS has about another 2 decades before I'll recommend any
| products, still a lot of debt to pay off since the IE6 debacle.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Edge is only free if you don't value avoiding targeted ads.
| Personally I don't care if my "data" is out there, but I don't
| know what I'd do if I did (Vivaldi? Brave? Firefox? Something
| more obscure? Are there any paid browsers yet?)
| edelhans wrote:
| Unfortunately no mention of Playready DRM support.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| The Mac version didn't have it so there was zero chance the
| Linux one would.
| modderation wrote:
| GA? Edge for Linux (version 97) still can't sign in to a
| corporate Office 365 account for sync. Personal accounts only.
|
| I'm bewildered, as this functionality works on Mac and Windows,
| but somehow not on Linux. This is the one feature I actually need
| to start using Edge as my primary browser for work tasks. Until
| sync works with Azure AD, I'll have to continue using a separate
| instance of Chrome Beta/Dev that's tied to my corporate Google
| account.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| With Office 365 in the browser, and now Internet Explorer-only
| apps now available on Linux, I wonder what remains to prevent
| most companies/administrations to use a Linux distribution as
| their main OS.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Office 365 in browser sucks. What IE only apps were people
| desperately waiting for? There really isn't a reason to switch
| for most people, its a lot of pain for not much benefit. A
| better question is what do they gain?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > Office 365 in browser sucks.
|
| Kind of, but at least it works and is compatible with
| everybody's Office document which is a big barrier to people
| migrating to LibreOffice.
|
| > What IE only apps were people desperately waiting for?
|
| Every internal corporate web app developed in the 2000s, all
| custom built, developed by external contractors and not
| actively maintained because "they work" (or at least their
| bugs are well known and worked around). In my wife's
| department alone, there's like a dozen of such apps (for
| holiday tracking, training scheduling, etc, etc.). It's also
| discussed in the article btw:
|
| _"We had so many applications that still depend on Internet
| Explorer," Ronny Intrau, Browser Product Manager at
| Bundesagentur fur Arbeit_
|
| > A better question is what do they gain?
|
| Companies and administrations have had enormous troubles
| migrating away from Windows XP when the support ended (and
| some haven't actually, because they just couldn't afford it).
| Windows 7 support ends in January 2023, and with Windows 11
| we now know that the promise to have Windows 10 forever was a
| lie, and that they'll need to migrate yet again (while
| throwing away a good amount of PC, because of the system
| requirements, as it's always the case with such migrations).
| We're talking of migrations costing tens or hundreds of
| millions for public administrations. Never going through this
| all over again is a win.
|
| [1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/lifecycle/products/windows-...
| sylens wrote:
| any number of thick client legacy apps
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That's a good point. I wonder how many there are left. From
| what I've seen, most apps developed after say 2007 or
| something were web-based, but since I was a web developer
| when I was dealing with such things, my PoV is obviously
| biased.
|
| Which fraction would work flawlessly with Wine is also a
| question.
| vetinari wrote:
| That's what Citrix is for... even if you are using Windows on
| the desktop.
| flatiron wrote:
| end user and IT familiarity. sure you know Linux, most end
| users and a lot of IT folks don't. that and corporate VPN
| security stuff. I know the company I work for uses FireEye
| (whatever that is) to make sure I'm up to no good or whatever
| it does. every time i bring up Linux I get the "VPN software"
| and "Security" as the biggest reasons why I need to just be
| happy with Win10 + WSL2 (which honestly isn't bad at all)
| rbanffy wrote:
| > most end users
|
| These will complain loudly when the icon changes, but,
| really, don't see the OS beyond the apps IT makes available.
|
| > and a lot of IT folks don't. that and corporate VPN
| security stuff.
|
| Here lies the problem. A lot of corporate IT departments have
| no idea of how to configure a fleet of Linux machines.
| flatiron wrote:
| "I tried installing webex and double clicked and i saw a
| glass of wine configuring my home directory instead"
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > These will complain loudly when the icon changes, but,
| really, don't see the OS beyond the apps IT makes
| available.
|
| And they're doomed to complain anyway because Windows seven
| EOL is in a bit more than 1 year!
| samrolken wrote:
| IE Mode is only available in Edge on Windows.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Oh, is it? That would definitely make sense, because they
| really don't want their captive customers running away so
| easily when migrating away from Windows 7.
| samrolken wrote:
| I don't think it's very realistic that Microsoft would port
| the whole Trident engine along with all the involved
| technologies used by a lot of these legacy apps (activex,
| VBScript, ms office and active directory integration, etc.)
| to linux. Especially at the end of its life.
| szastamasta wrote:
| Oh boy! It seems that hell has frozen over. I thought it's simply
| not possible that any Linux system will run Internet Explorer...
| ehm, sorry, Edge without exploding.
|
| Never thought I will live to see such a day
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Why did you want to run IE in Linux? This is just closed source
| google chrome with MS spyware and some UI changes and MS
| popups.
| szastamasta wrote:
| I would never want to use it, even on Windows. I just wonder
| why anyone would want to use anything from MS on Linux.
|
| It just looks like good old ,, Embrace, extend, and
| extinguish" at work here. How did it happen that from the
| total evil MS is now a viable alternative for Firefox on
| Linux?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Its not, its just being used for some people who apparantly
| decided that making apps for IE was a good idea years ago
| and stuck to it.
| kaixi wrote:
| Google Chrome is closed source too.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Yes and I don't use it either.
| flatiron wrote:
| I can't see why anyone would use it outside of their
| corporate day job. but if those enterprises can now support
| linux, because they only support edge (or IE mode on edge)
| this is pretty neat
| coolgoose wrote:
| I find it funny that for every person that complains about
| Microsoft 's bad practices there is 0 bitching about Google
| shoving Chrome your throat constantly when on Edge
| kburman wrote:
| Edge used to so good but recently it has turn into Microsoft
| adware and spyware software. I thought it was suppose to replace
| Chrome but it is becoming another Chrome or more evil.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| It is definitely more evil. I use Chromium, which to me is
| perfect. Not a lot of invasive features and a lot can be
| configured or disabled using a policy file with Linux. I am
| honestly pretty disappointed in Firefox as of late. I feel like
| I have to disable an equal amount of tracking with Firefox as I
| do Chromium.
| naikrovek wrote:
| So, are you gonna tell us what you're talking about or just
| complain about Microsoft? Everyone complains about Microsoft at
| every opportunity; it's just meaningless noise at this point.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > Everyone complains about Microsoft at every opportunity;
| it's just meaningless noise at this point.
|
| It still sucks, so yes, people continue complaining.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2020/03/study...
| kburman wrote:
| I have been using edge since it's release and on day 1 it was
| so good with all the google tracking removed or disabled. But
| now if you see it's like microsoft holding your computer
| hostage to use edge.
|
| Few months back with each windows update it would reset my
| browser to edge. It would reset my search engine preference.
| Force me to use MS account to sync. Show some false unread
| notification icon so that I open to see that they now have
| some XYZ feature.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Hi Microsoft!
|
| Please show your love for linux by doing the same with Microsoft
| Office!
| amaccuish wrote:
| Not shilling, but found WPS Office to be the best Linux office,
| followed by OnlyOffice. WPS Office even gets the look of MS
| Office pretty close, which makes the switch much easier.
| marcodiego wrote:
| IME OnlyOffice has better compatibility with OOXML than
| LibreOffice. On the other hand, LibreOffice is faster for
| bigger docs and has more features.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Yuck! They copied the ribbon!
| imbnwa wrote:
| Isn't that what Office365 is for or is that much of a downgrade
| from the desktop experience?
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Its terrible and Teams on Linux is a trash fire on top of a
| dumpster fire on top of a landfill fire.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Try the unofficial client:
| https://github.com/IsmaelMartinez/teams-for-linux
| flerchin wrote:
| Teams on Linux is still Teams, but it works just fine for
| me. It can't do background blur, but is otherwise feature
| complete enough for me to attend stand-up on it daily.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| Currently Teams will not work with my Mic. Half the time
| it doesn't recognize its there, the other half its there
| but not picking up anything. Every other app I tested
| worked fine with the mic except for Teams.
|
| I've had to switch to using CHIME of all apps because
| that actually worked 95%+ time.
| hbn wrote:
| That sounds pretty close to my Teams experience on Mac
| swasheck wrote:
| to be fair, that's just the Teams experience in general. if
| i leave it open for more than 4 hours, somehow it's chewing
| ~4GB RAM. i use the web client but, if i'm honest, i miss
| the notifications from that and miss meeting reminders :D
| wcchandler wrote:
| I'd be happy if they put forth some development into WINE or
| some kind of compatibility layer. Bundle it into a
| container/pak
| dartharva wrote:
| If only "(>=V<=*)o
|
| They'll just point you to Office Online
| aliswe wrote:
| tbh i think i prefer the web based versions
| eikenberry wrote:
| Wine runs MS Office great and if you're going to pay for
| Office, might want to pay Codeweavers to get commercial support
| for running it as well.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Who still honestly uses Office in their personal lives? Some
| people use excel for work but you don't buy that for yourself.
| Most young people I know just use google docs and never used MS
| Office so it doesn't even have the name branding for them to
| call the others bootleg versions. The ribbon was so disgusting
| and annoying that I never used it again and only used 2003
| after trying 2007.
| saltminer wrote:
| For most things, Google Docs suffices for me. I rarely do
| complex formatting, and the most advanced thing I do in
| Sheets/Excel is vlookups, and even that I haven't done in
| months.
|
| However, for my writing (fanfiction), desktop Office is a
| necessity. I used to think the "web layout" in Word was
| weird, but I live by it now. It's a much more efficient use
| of screen real estate than "print layout" (I have a 4k
| monitor and like to maximize the window), and Google Docs has
| no equivalent.
|
| But ignoring the page layout, let's consider something more
| concrete: loading times.
|
| I loaded a 106 page document in Google Docs on my desktop
| (AMD R7-1700, 64 GB RAM, NVME SSD, symmetric gigabit internet
| - a pretty good system overall). It took 27.72 seconds to
| load, and a couple more after that until I could type without
| it hitching. According to Chrome's task manager, the tab is
| already consuming 418 MB of RAM.
|
| On my laptop (Intel i5-6300U, 8 GB RAM, SSD, same internet,
| Office 365 build 2109), I loaded two Word documents at the
| same time. Combined, they total 764 pages in print layout. It
| took 9.71 seconds to load both and for me to be able to type
| in the 527 page document without any noticeable lag. Word is
| currently sipping just 250 MB of RAM (and I have never seen
| it go >500 MB before except when exiting...meanwhile, a
| single Chrome tab hitting >1 GB is not exactly unusual if my
| desktop has been running for more than a week).
|
| This doesn't even consider the experience of writing a
| document this long. Google Docs is already noticeably slower
| than Word with just a 106 page document, and it gets worse
| with longer ones. And the grammar checking in Word is miles
| ahead of what Google has.
|
| Word certainly isn't perfect (I have plenty of complaints
| about it, and have found bugs which only turn up in long
| documents), but it remains my tool of choice because Google
| Docs really can't compete for this use-case. And I know I'm
| not the only writer in this situation.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is there a reason you use office to write in? It's not good
| writing software. Ever tried writing software like this?
| http://www.theologeek.ch/manuskript/
| dan_quixote wrote:
| I was forced back into it after years of using GSuite
| and....it's just as clunky as I remember. You get a different
| feature-set depending on whether you're using the native app
| or browser version (but it's not obvious at first). There is
| some locking and checking-out required to modify shared files
| with the native apps - also not always obvious when this is
| required.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| It was really annoying since office's database was also a
| required dependency and I couldn't use an older office I
| had even though I never used this feature another program
| insisted was essential. The only good part of office is
| onenote. Its very nice.
| [deleted]
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Most people who don't work for a tech department and many who
| do.
| marcodiego wrote:
| People who need a level of compatibility with MSO that
| LibreOffice and OnlyOffice still can't offer.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Is that docx or did they make something worst? I never
| swapped to docx and just used .doc, although it supports
| docx as well. Not much use for me anyway, most people I
| know just use google docs.
| marcodiego wrote:
| It is somewhat common to see commits on LO git that says
| things like: "OOXML specify X, but MSO does Y."
|
| Good compatibility with OOXML is extremely difficult. The
| specification is enormous, hard to understand and, even
| if you implement the specification, you have no guarantee
| that you'll get good compatibility with MSO documents.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I honestly just saved LO in .doc and never had an issue
| when I needed office docs, is this something end users
| have an issue with or is it more backend?
| marcodiego wrote:
| The issue most people have are formatting problems when
| opening OOXML docs in LO.
|
| Considering that .doc is an older, simpler and had been
| frozen for a long time, maybe its compatibility is
| better. I'll try asking people that send me OOXML to
| convert it .doc the next time to see how better it is
| compatibility-wise.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Yeah I saw no reason to switch to docx, it was just
| slightly smaller, at the core its a lock in that zipped
| document files (I don't care about being a few kb
| smaller) and caused more problems (some people didn't
| have office 2007 even years after it had been out) when
| sharing so I never saw a point to using it. It benefitted
| nobody and caused more pain.
| marcodiego wrote:
| It did benefit microsoft. Once the format became an ISO
| standard, many governments were free to use it. Also, by
| being "open", they had less chance of being threatened of
| abusing their monopoly position.
| andylynch wrote:
| People like me who live in Excel and use the many things the
| web apps can't do (or gotta go fast). I still have a mixed
| relationship with the Ribbon but use it mainly to crib all
| the keyboard shortcuts or just type commands in the search
| box.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You never had enough issues to abandon it? I always see and
| hear people with frozen laptops while using excel to edit
| their database.
| easton wrote:
| It's magical to get a handle on things, if it's something
| huge or for production I can port it to not-Excel. I can
| do some stats on a table and get my answer by time I
| could've set up a new poetry env and started Jupyter.
| andylynch wrote:
| Oh yeah for querying it's great and more so with power
| query now built in.
| kinghajj wrote:
| I finally caved and got myself a copy, because the
| spreadsheet capabilities of Excel are still unrivaled
| compared to free alternatives. If you watch the classic "You
| suck at Excel" video, you'll see that there are numerous
| actions the presenter does that do not have analogs in
| LibreOffice nor Google Sheets. The table feature is probably
| the one I miss the most; in fact, I really like how in the
| Mac program Numbers, all sheets are multi-table by default.
| It makes it much easier to group parts of the sheet into
| logical sections, and to extend one table without affecting
| the others.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Thats interesting, many people I know hate excel since its
| so slow, its clunky and switched to python for data since
| their computers overheat, freeze and crash when they work
| with large data sets on excel.
| kinghajj wrote:
| Maybe that's it, I'm not working with large data sets. My
| use case is more like "track all of my salary, dividend,
| and capital gains, and estimate how much extra I need to
| pay in taxes." :)
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You might be better suited with jupiter notebook.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Hell no. At least on Linux machines we are not forced to use
| Outlook by our corporate handlers.
| ginko wrote:
| Yeah, we're forced to use Outlook 365...
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's a bit less bad. At least it's not a locally installed
| executable.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| How is that better?
| Grazester wrote:
| An I think outlook is the best email client I have used.
| trzeci wrote:
| Interesting, I've always thought that I will work on Linux,
| because I love Linux tools, but I will miss some Windows
| specific tools. And this is how I was rolling last 4 years.
|
| But what I really needed was Windows system with WSL and good
| integration of GUI apps (Still on W10 tho) where I can use my
| beloved tools for programming, and still have access to games,
| apps like Office (here only Excel that I care about) and some
| other Windows/macOS only.
|
| With Edge I switched a few months ago for testing. It's great
| to be honest. Especially because of support Chrome extensions -
| and here I need WASM development plugin. Firefox does not offer
| such ability yet. I decided to opt out from Google as much as I
| can. The only missing part in Edge is the tabs and history
| management. It's hard to name, but Firefox is somehow smarter
| in searching in my history of visited pages when I type on the
| search bar. OK, there is another one. If I type a page that I
| have already opened, then in Firefox, It automatically switches
| to that already opened page. In Edge the default choice is to
| open duplicated page.
| laumars wrote:
| I recently bought my wife a new laptop. After 10 minutes of
| arguing with a fresh install of Windows 10 I had to rage quit
| for my own mental health:
|
| 0. There were a thousand different prompts nagging me to
| allow their tracking and ads (and some options amounted to
| either "yes to everything" or "yes to most things" with no
| "don't fucking track me" option in sight.
|
| 1. Followed by Microsoft forcing my to tie my local user
| account to my Microsoft account. Then forcing me to enter the
| 30 character password that I usually just paste from my
| password manager for online accounts.
|
| 2. Then being greater by spamware that had an X button which
| literally did Jack shit.
|
| 3. And a chaotic task menu with 13 different control panels.
|
| I handed the machine to my wife and told her I can't be her
| desktop support guy for this thing because there was a high
| risk of me throwing the laptop out the window in a rage
| (maybe that's why it's called "Windows"?)
|
| I honestly think the only reason people think they like
| Windows is down to Stockholm syndrome.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I don't think most people like windows. It is simply the
| only thing they are used to.
| xattt wrote:
| Sssh, you're saying the quiet part loud!
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