I’m curious about what everyone is using for their productivity suite.
My Office 365 renewal is due again in December, and I’m half-heartedly looking around for alternatives, the same as I have done for the past several years (possibly a little more vigorously this time around given that Copilot is being rammed down my throat). I’ve been using Office in its various forms since 4.2 and I’ll admit that up until around 18 months ago I had a Windows PC that I’d boot up to get stuff done, as I was even finding the differences in the macOS version to be frustrating after using the Windows flavour for so long. Thankfully I’ve managed to break that habit and the last Windows PC is gone, but it was very difficult to adjust long ingrained workflows and keyboard shortcuts.
I’ve got the various macOS built in tools available (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) and they seem okay, I had a look into LibreOffice again a few years ago and was whelmed but I guess it’s a viable alternative, have heard some good things about CryptPad but not used it myself, seen some references to Nextcloud having some productivity software built in… are Corel still in the office suite game? Lotus!?
What’s your personal experience been like with FOSS and/or self-hosted alternatives to Word/Excel/PowerPoint? I believe that LibreOffice has come leaps and bounds in the last few years so I’ll absolutely give it another go, but is there anything else that you’d recommend for a rusted on Microsoft Office user? Happy to explore paid projects - I’d rather give a similar amount of money to a FOSS project than give it to Microsoft.
I have a feeling that no matter what I try it’s going to be as big of an adjustment as it was to go from ClarisWorks to Microsoft Office 4.2 !
Traditionally an office suite comprised a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and perhaps a graphics program. I’ve been a long time Google suite user but I consider it much the same as Microsoft Office. The advantage that both Microsoft and Google have is that they integrate with cloud storage, email and calendars solutions and make it easy to share data, even with write permissions for others if you enable it.
Of course you can always go back to a simple text editor like Notepad but even that has AI these days.
@jdownie is using obsidian with effect but I have not been down that track myself.
I love Obsidian, but it’s more of a replacement for OneNote, Evernote, etc. Having said that, almost everything that i write is for myself. I don’t really publish anything for anybody else’s consumption, so pictures, colours, fonts are a bit of an afterthought for me. I did knock out that git presentation the other day, and managed to do that in Obsidian. I’m a little strange though… I’d rather write a document or presentation in Markdown than Word or Powerpoint. Once upon a time i would have used LaTeX.
I did get into CryptPad for a while, but it wasn’t really ready when i tried it out about two years ago. I liked the security of it, and i liked the self hosted apps too. It seemed like a fantastic alternative to Google Office. I remember that i had migrated a spreadsheet that i rely on into it, and it then got munged, so i had to roll back to a backup and play catch up on a month or so of updates, so if you go down that path, tread lightly. It was super cool though, so if it’s ready now i’d love to hear about it.
I’m using LibreOffice for that one spreadsheet that i use. I’m also using SyncThing to replicate it across my devices. Excel opens it seamlessly when i find myself on my work laptop which is a bonus.
Will have to check out Obsidian - thanks for the tip. I’ve been waiting to see what Proton did with their Standard Notes acquisition (evidently, nothing), but Obsidian looks like it’ll be a good alternative there.
I had a bit of a dig into CryptPad Docs this evening given you said you’d tried it out. I’ve not actually heard of anyone giving it a go, so that’s encouraging (despite the mangling of the spreadsheet) and see that it’s using the ONLYOFFICE frontend and a custom backend (ref). Not sure if that was the case when you tried it a few years ago.
My needs are pretty basic again now and I doubt I’d have any further need for 95% of the features in the Microsoft suite. I will need to retain compatibility with the current defacto standard Office file formats though, and I don’t want the learning curve to be too steep either!
I might give CryptPad a go as well as LibreOffice. It’s nice to hear someone’s actually tried the former out as it’s something I’ve heard plenty about but not ever heard anyone actually using.
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