KDE + any rolling distro is miles ahead of Windows. So, as a user of both, I read your question with a smirk.
If you would ask if LibreOffice is ready, I would say: yes and no. The UX of LO is worse than MS Office. LO is more feature rich in certain areas but it lacks the UX if you want to get a well-looking document with a minimum amount of work. Case in point: lack of acceptable Impress templates (they look from the year 1994), lack of document themes in Writer, lack of quick table style in Calc.
I've stopped recommending LibreOffice to anyone after I found out about OnlyOffice, its UI/UX is much better and I've personally been using it without running into any issues or limitations. I'm not a super big power user so I don't know if it lacks features that professionals need, but it's been perfect in my case
I've been using KDE for years now, I've recently put CachyOS with KDE on the new personal machine I just built and I've not been so impressed with a distro in ages. It's rock solid, minimal faff, very fast, and having got back into PC gaming after a long hiatus the playability of Windows games on Linux is amazing now. Even has a really good looking system theme (in my opinion).
I definitely agree LO and particularly its terribly dated UI is a greater barrier to desktop Linux adoption than the desktop environment itself.
I agree that the UI/UX of libreofice is not the prettiest...but its fine for what i need it for: regular work-related document management, word processing sorts of tasks. But my partner? They LOVE libreoffice specifically BECAUSE its looks like older versions of MS Word! Their needs are basic and are easily met with the functionality of libreoffice and onlyoffice...but they prefer libreoffice especially for the look-and-feel. Caveat: we are of a particularly advanced age, hence we recall many decades of the different versions of MS Office and its app offerings. ;-)
I'd say Writer is miles ahead from Word. To start with, it works and won't mangle your entire document because you added a line-break some place it didn't like.
But also, office suites are becoming anachronistic very quickly. Every time you use one nowadays, it's a symptom of some organization failure. (Ok, there are a few reasonable use cases for spreadsheets.) So the entire question is kinda of moot.
Changing infrastructure and software packages should not fail due to a missing or bad office template. Surely this can be made from scratch to suit the gov org and current standards/legislation within one work month by any skilled consultant.
There are challenges yes, an office template should not be on the top list.
Maybe I'm totally wrong...
Linux is better than windows nowadays as an OS to work on (also for non programming stuff), imo. Even the enterprise versions of windows are full of crap. For non-enterprise versions (home and pro) I really don't understand how people can put up with MS's total crap like installing candy crash and a ton of bloatware after each major update.
The problem with Linux is the software ecosystem around it, esp security software, office suits, and tons of various specialised software that often target only windows, or at best also macos. But there has been a lot of improvement to that direction last years. I really hope linux takes over work desktop environments, the degree of slop that MS puts into windows is getting more and more over the years. In linux it is infinitely easier to get a machine do what you want once you get to understand some basics wrt how to configure stuff (and now with llms is much less steep curve to get relevant info). In windows you have to constantly dance around whatever horrible UX each version brings upon you.
exceptione|8 months ago
If you would ask if LibreOffice is ready, I would say: yes and no. The UX of LO is worse than MS Office. LO is more feature rich in certain areas but it lacks the UX if you want to get a well-looking document with a minimum amount of work. Case in point: lack of acceptable Impress templates (they look from the year 1994), lack of document themes in Writer, lack of quick table style in Calc.
The UX/UI is in dire need for attention.
a2128|8 months ago
BoxOfRain|8 months ago
I definitely agree LO and particularly its terribly dated UI is a greater barrier to desktop Linux adoption than the desktop environment itself.
mxuribe|8 months ago
marcosdumay|8 months ago
But also, office suites are becoming anachronistic very quickly. Every time you use one nowadays, it's a symptom of some organization failure. (Ok, there are a few reasonable use cases for spreadsheets.) So the entire question is kinda of moot.
seb1204|8 months ago
sneak|8 months ago
There is no reasonable substitute or replacement for Excel.
There should be, but there isn’t.
sgt|8 months ago
But what has really happened in the last 2-4 years to make it miles ahead of Windows?
dismalaf|8 months ago
kalaksi|8 months ago
preisschild|8 months ago
Wayland is also in quite a good place compared to just a few years ago. Stuff like HDR, VRR, High-Refresh Rates, DisplayPort 2.1 and so on just works.
Flatpak is also great and works really well with many apps when they support XDG Portals properly.
freehorse|8 months ago
The problem with Linux is the software ecosystem around it, esp security software, office suits, and tons of various specialised software that often target only windows, or at best also macos. But there has been a lot of improvement to that direction last years. I really hope linux takes over work desktop environments, the degree of slop that MS puts into windows is getting more and more over the years. In linux it is infinitely easier to get a machine do what you want once you get to understand some basics wrt how to configure stuff (and now with llms is much less steep curve to get relevant info). In windows you have to constantly dance around whatever horrible UX each version brings upon you.
dncornholio|8 months ago
forinti|8 months ago
_joel|8 months ago