I’m glad this is working for him, but it’s only been three months. The most important thing Word gets me is an excuse. If someone sends me a Word doc and I open it in Word and something is screwed up, I can say “oh, um, maybe something is wrong on your end.” If I’m using anything else—LibreOffice, Pages, Google Docs, anything—then there’s a possibility that it’s the software’s fault. I can’t be messing around with that in moments when it counts. Like it or not, Word is the standard, and anyone using software that is not the standard is carrying a burden.

I’m an attorney and it’s my job to practice law, not be ideological about my tools. I keep a Thinkpad with Debian on my desk and use it to track my tasks in Taskwarrior, because it’s the best tool for the job. For document exchange, there is absolutely no substitute for a Windows PC with Microsoft Word. I say this as someone who hits Word bugs and loathes Word. But I’m a lawyer, not a professional Linux tinkerer.