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Comment by bittercynic | Hacker News Reader

Libreoffice meets my needs just fine. I spend a couple of hours a week in their spreadsheet and word processor, and don't really have any complaints.

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Agree. Libreoffice works quite well, and although their presentation software isn't as pretty as powerpoint, I actually prefer their slideshow mode on multiple monitors. Quite sexy, in fact.

There's no reason for any government office or public school system at any level to be paying for office licenses IMHO. We can communicate and teach quite well with L.O.- and donate a share of the saved budget to FOSS.

Where do you draw the line for how much you can cut costs and sacrifice a little bit of productivity or retraining? For example, I often see programmers talk about having proper tools to do their job, whether that be high quality keyboards, faster computers with more memory, or subscription IDEs like Intellij. Should government programmers be denied these things because it is possible to program quite well without them?

Great question. I was thinking of the people who use office for communiqués and presentations and such. You don't need Microsoft Word to write an interoffice memo, nor do you need it to write a request for proposal.

That would free more money so that the people who did need or could truly benefit from premium tools could get them.

Same here. I am also happy they did not throw away the confusing but great working ui for that big icon bullshit. Using ms office is a very depressing eperience for me these days.

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