Thread

1. fbn79 · 1790334206 · focus · HN ↗

   The highest problem is the office suite. If you think Libreoffice/Collabora can replace Microsoft 365 without friction the project could be a success. Honestly I do not think so as of today.

   1. tombert · 1790341198 · focus · HN ↗

      Yeah, especially Excel.

      LibreOffice Sheets doesn’t compete with Excel 2024, it competes more with Excel 2003. Granted, this is fine for a lot of (most?) people but it’s still not a “replacement” in my mind.

      I ended up just building a Nix Flake to properly run Excel. At least then the operating system itself isn’t MS.

      1. qubex · 1790343582 · focus · HN ↗

         I kicked Excel to the kerb in 2005 or something like that and have been a happy Apple Numbers and Wolfram Mathematica (and SPSS, PSPP, and R, and Python) user ever since.

         1. tombert · 1790348736 · focus · HN ↗

            Both Apple Numbers and Mathematica still depend on a proprietary software package from a for-profit company though.

            I think the only way we can actually solve the problem is to get a FOSS product up to snuff with Excel. I use Julia if I need really elaborate number crunching, but I don’t view it as a substitute for Excel; the interactivity of spreadsheets is really useful, especially when you’re actively developing stuff.

            1. qubex · 1790372008 · focus · HN ↗

               For what it’s worth I’ve started building a Mathematica-to-Python transpiler.

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