@jon @h4890
Yes, I agree. Many people have a fairly instinctive dislike of Big Tech and aren't happy with the service they get, or worry about privacy. But they won't change without an easily available alternative.

I should really give LibreOffice another go, but it has always been a bit disappointing whenever I've tried it. 🙁

@thecasualcritic @jon What is the problem with it?

I press my menu button, I type "wr" (the beginning of the word write) press enter, and then I write in something which looks 99% like microsoft word before they messed up the GUI with the strange "bar".

If people think this is too much, and if people refuse because the icons are not in the exact same position as in O365, again, people will _never move_ and they show they do not care after all.

@h4890 @jon

When I've used it previously I found it's formatting more limited, particularly for slides. Probably exacerbated by constant conversion issues with .docx etc documents.

Which I know is not their fault, but that knowledge doesn't help much if you keep having to adjust layouts and formatting.

@thecasualcritic @jon What I do is to use black text och white background, and I only send odp files to customers and business partners. That way, formatting problems are reduced to a minimum.

If I require more formatting, I send pdf files.

i need mo money fo dem programz

@jon That is very promising and I wish you the best of luck.

Most of my customers, I have to force into non-Microsoft options, and every single year, there comes a Microsoft homo to their board and spreads FUD, and every single year I have to dismantle the fud.

Then we of course have the problem that Microsoft gives away their products for free to push out small companies, like mine, from the market.

What makes this even more hilarious, is that one of my customers got hit by a crypto

@jon miner causing them 50k in unexpected cloud costs over a weekend. On top of that, they had 3000 old, active, accounts in their AD.

I offer them my environment, where a crypto miner would never be able to do the same... but oh no... it's not microsoft.

At least I am able to force a non-microsoft option on them for 1/3 of the year, that's always something.

@jon @h4890 My experience within my IRL circles is that people do not generally care enough directly about these issues to make any changes.

However, they do care about social, political and other issues affecting their world, nation and daily life... so if you wait until they complain about any of these issues and then clearly link their issues to one of our solutions involving #privacy, #decentralisation, #digitalsovereignty, #opensource, #ethicaltech, etc. in a subtle and not-pushy way, you can have a good chance of success.

Using this strategy, I managed to persuade all of my family members to #gnuLinux, and all of my family and most of my extended family + in-laws that I'm in contact with are now on #DeltaChat.

@jon @Vivaldi Btw, would be great to have a light stripped-down version of #Vivaldi without the any of the proprietary UI bits for people who prefer Open Source. You could even make it a paid offering like some other browsers.

#FreeSoftware

@jon @h4890

My own recommendations for new users:

OS : Buy a laptop and phone with #LinuxPreinstalled so you can to get full support.
Browser : #BrowserSeparation - use a few trustworthy browsers, each for a different activity type.
Mail client : #DeltaChat easiest encrypted mail setup in the world, or Thunderbird.
Calendar client : OS default.
Mail Service : #Chatmail for encrypted-only mail contacts, #Thundermail / #TBpro, #PurelyMail,
Social : Mastodon & Fediverse in general, #Nostr.
Office package : LibreOffice.
Video conference : #JitsiMeet, #NextcloudTalk, or #SignalApp for close contacts.

@opensourceopenmind @jon @Vivaldi Family members is not a problem, because if they want my help, Linux is what they are going to run. =)

Beyond family members, the only ones I have ever met who do run linux are highly skilled technologists, and they are far and few in between.

As for vivaldi, I think it would be great if they could sponsor https://ladybird.org/ to use their browser engine.

@opensourceopenmind @jon @Vivaldi Mozilla has sadly selfdestructed and gone all woke. Their CEO also earns disgusting amoungs at the expense of the programmers.

I suspect that the downfall of FF is due to the high salary, which has turned the organization from software to becoming a prestige job and a place for power accumulation.

Sadly the same goes for the linux foundation. They have become completely preverted by corporations, so it is basically

@opensourceopenmind @jon @Vivaldi impossible to do anything with them these days due to red tape and administration. Therefore I always turn down their requests when they ask me.

@h4890 @opensourceopenmind @jon A @Vivaldi browser independent on Chrome would be great (and it would not happen as recently, the Manifest V3 forced adoption), but (among Firefox-based browsers) Zen is yet functionally very far from Vivaldi.

Actually, if the Servo browser engine reaches some day a fully functional release, it would be a great start point for a Vivaldi-like browser.

@IGVazquez @opensourceopenmind @jon @Vivaldi Chrome I cannot touch, because it is a control and domination mechanism created by Google.

No one should use it, because using it means contributing to establishing a mono-culture on the internet controlled by corporations.

While waiting for ladybird, I reluctantly use Librewolf, even though it is based on FF.