Alternative to Microsoft

[Paolo]

The filthy whore of a Win 10-machine had it coming. I've hated that damn thing since day 1.

Next one I get is going to be a 50 lb. refurbished chunker running 7.

[GordonGG (imported)]

The filthy whore of a Win 10-machine had it coming. I've hated that damn thing since day 1.

Next one I get is going to be a 50 lb. refurbished chunker running 7.

I too hated Win10 when it first came out 4 years ago. I wanted to go back to 7 so bad. But I was persuaded by an IT guy that I knew at the time to keep with it, that the things I hated about it were minor compared to the good things about it. So glad I did, I think in the present version of 10 it is better than 7. But what do I know......

[ka.dick. (imported)]

Yesterday I wanted to make a call and somehow my password didn't work. You have to go thru a routine of establishing your cell phone to receive a text code, put that in and input a new password. Grabbing a password out of my mind, twice it said the new password was like one previously used and rejected it, so I had to do the whole thing over again.

It often goes like this, doesn't it?

1. Enter password <enters pw>

2. Wrong password, try again <trying again>

3. Wrong password, try again <double-checking everything, CAPS and all, and trying again>

4. Wrong password. You need to reset the password <cursing, clicking the link and entering the email address>

5. <waiting for the email>

6. <an hour later, the email arrives. Clicking the link> Error 404 (or similar)

7. <clicking the link again> The password reset link has expired. Please try again

8. <cursing more, going through the reset process again>

9. <2 hours later, clicking the new link in the email> Please enter a new password:

10. <entering a new password> You can't use this password as it's your current password.

11. <cursing some more still, entering a new password> You need to use a password with the length of at least 28 characters, out of which 7 are lower caps, 9 are all caps, 6 are numbers and 13 are special characters

12. <fiiiiine gosh entering a new crazy password> Your password has been reset. You can log in now

13. <entering the new pw on the login screen> Wrong password. You need to reset the password.

Anyway. I still have my computer and tablet on Win7 and Win8 respectively. The 7 is in dual-boot with 10 but 10 is just ridiculous indeed. For a while I was using various Linux distros but when KDE4 rolled out and I didn't like it, I went back to XP, later 7.

I recommend just getting Ubuntu or any of its derivatives; I'd personally go for Lubuntu or Kubuntu (if they still exist). It's actually quite insanely easy, you just need to be a little bit (really just a little bit) careful when installing. You can also install it in dual-boot mode, or even in a virtual machine or other methods to try it out.

Linux may be a tad problematic on some laptops but from what I hear, it's been pretty good lately. So if Ubuntu doesn't work out, there are a lot of other distributions to try.

And yea +1 for LibreOffice. It also has the old-school Office pre-2007-like interface. Honestly tho it's somewhat outdated by default, for example the default font is a crappy Serif font so you may need to play around with it and set it up how you like it.

If you don't do that much office work, and you need cloud, you might be happier with Google Docs... But that's just replacing one corporate online hell with another.

Personally I'm sticking with Libre Office and have been for over 10 years. And if I ever get a new computer, it's not gonna be Windows-based.

[ambiguous (imported)]

I never liked win7 . It swallowed up gigabytes of hard drive but did less than win98..Glad to see the back of it.

XP was pretty stable but forced to move on from that as web browser became incompatible with most sites.

Guess these guys wanted the different protocols so they could bombard you with pointless cookies that spied on you.

I can see why folks buy Macs but having a manufacturer that holds all the cards leads to forced obsolescence.

I may try to put Linux on one of my old bits of kit to see if I get on with it.

[gandalf (imported)]

The laptop I am on now has Vista, which I like better than the Laptop with Win7.

[ka.dick. (imported)]

Microsoft's OSes have been going downhill since W2000. Or since W98 if you will, although I personally am probably the only person who had good experience with Me. It was my first OS on my first PC tho so maybe I just didn't know better.

XP was a mess at first and the computers at the time just weren't ready, with new drivers, game support and all that. SP1 fixed most of the issues, but with more and more updates... At the end SP3 was a huge, buggy, slow behemoth. That said, my installation of XP had lasted for I dunno, 7 years? Of very intensive usage. However, when I switched to W7 on the same machine, the fresh W7 installation was just as fast as that old XP SP3 installation, so go figure. Still I did want 64 bits for more RAM, better SSD support and latest programs, and the computer needed a fresh start anyway; also I was too lazy to go back to Linux. So I've stuck primarily with 7.

Vista was just XP all over again. A bloody mess at first. Yes, I hated it too. It had some good ideas about architecture, but no consideration of how real users use computers. And of course computer manufacturers messed it up royally by providing machines with 1GB of RAM; Vista was barely usable on 2GB.

8 was just Vista all over again. Microsoft had no idea how people use computers. Calculator as a full-screen app? That's just... I can't even.

Admittedly 8 works quite nicely on my little 8-inch tablet but for anything more serious it's unusable.

And 10 is so beyond unusable I don't even want to think something like that can exist.

Apple products are nice if you can print money and are willing to accept anything Apple throws at you, such as the necessity to carry dongles and so on.

Today Linux is simply the way to go. There's just no contest in my mind. Some minor inconveniences that may occur when it comes to hardware compatibility are nothing compared to forced restarts, blue screens and all the data gathering.

When I was at a job interview last year, I actually asked if I can get a Linux laptop. It made me sound like a hipster, but that's better than dealing with MS shit.

[AnneK_TG (imported)]

You might want to look at Open Office. It can read and write most Microsoft generated files. I actually prefer the user interface of its "Calc" to that of "Excel." However I am too lazy to get off of "Word."

LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/) is more popular and up to date. I used OO for years, but LO for the past few. LO forked from OO, shortly after Oracle bought Sun and started causing problems with the licensing. The two are very similar to use. LibreOffice also comes with most Linux distros.

[Prudence (imported)]

LibreOffice would be the best alternative to Word, Excel, etc. Apache OpenOffice is decent but its behind LibreOffice in features/capability. Most of the people who originally worked on OpenOffice left it and formed LibreOffice when Oracle tried to make OpenOffice a commercial product instead of free/open-source.

For the Desktop/OS, try Ubuntu Desktop Linux 18.04, or LinuxMint 19.2 (Mate edition is generally the best choice. Cinnamon will have more features but sometimes has bugs because its new/cutting-edge). LinuxMint works very similar to Windows. Ubuntu is close, but there will be a little bit of a learning curve. You can create a bootable USB Flash Drive with a tool such as Rufus or PenDriveLinux Universal Installer. Or a bootable CD/DVD using your CD/DVD software's "Burn Image" feature. Start the computer from this bootable (CD/DVD, or Flash Drive) to see what Linux is like. If you like it, you can install Linux on the computer.

Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/#download

LinuxMint: https://linuxmint.com/

Rufus: https://rufus.ie/

PenDriveLinux: https://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal ... -as-1-2-3/ (scroll down to "Download UUI" and click it. Don't click on the stupid "Download Now" Ad that may appear)

ImgBurn CD/DVD/Blu-Ray software (free and opensource): https://www.imgburn.com/

LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/

OpenOffice: https://www.openoffice.org/

[Arab Nights (imported)]

It often goes like this, doesn't it?

You take good notes. Yes, that all sounds familiar.

What got me even more was skype. I ended up having to chat with tech support to change password. You get into this endless loop and you need tech support to tell you when to exit. I was just trying to make a call on skype and, although it has only been about two months, fell into the password trap. Think I will just bag skype and send them a letter by snail mail asking to close account and return credit to me.

[cocknife (imported)]

Hello

Sounds like me with Microsoft. Open source software is the only alternative. You might be happier migrating to Linux, but again, I really really really hate Microsoft and Windows.

Good Luck

Cocknife