There's a free Microsoft Office option for Windows now, but it comes with ads

26 February 2025
That's not even the only caveat.

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Remi, 26 Feb 2025Glad I switched to Linux and LibreOffice a very long time a... moreAnd all of this for the company that actually invented the idea of such software and developed it for more then 40 years, while libreOffice is not bad, it also exists because of microsoft idea and implementation, it actually still developes arround microsft office developement, so why the hate? Ignorance? Most probably.

    Anonymous, 27 Feb 2025 I used GNU/Linux for 10 years so all the criers just STF O... moreWell, just because you have no idea how to use software it does not mean, that they are evil. Actually never enountered a situation where Microsoft forces users to save their private data in the cloud, that would be more like an apple or a google thing, i like how people "side" against this and that and talk only rubish with 0 experience an -1 knowlege.
    I mean i am not an Microsoft advocate, but windows is just better then linux and mac in enterprise, profesional and home appliances. It does not have short-commings and is fast. It is THe computer OS that does not struggle to get data from an usb stick, nor does an usb stick need to be mounted, and that's scratching the surface. Also windows 11 has quite a big security, and together with tpm2 i have never heard of an infaction that made the clients breake or free to look in for the attaker. This propriety systems made the world we live in now, and not the other way around, because of them there is linux and open source. Do i praise them? No. But do i deny them, also no. To complain aboit microsoft while holding a google os or apple os in hands and in home, is like puting a door in the middle of the desert and then complain about the neighbor's fence. Hypocritical and ignorant.

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      • 27 Feb 2025

      llx, 26 Feb 2025Opensuse microOS cannot be broken, windows doesn't eve... moreExactly what I was talking about.

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        • nwR
        • 27 Feb 2025

        Why, I should move from adfree LibreOffice to MS Office with ads?
        Is that Trump will and order?

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          • 27 Feb 2025

          Anonymous, 27 Feb 2025P.P.P.S. : Nevermind All the Security Issues with those Une... morePlease get yourself help.

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            • 27 Feb 2025

            hi, 27 Feb 2025Microsofts ai phi 4 is so stupidly bad why is the product ... moreIt's not up to the level of performance of o3 or Gemini 2, but it's quite competitive with LLaMA 3.x in terms of something you can run locally.

              harianilchandran, 27 Feb 2025This is far better than online free version of ms office as... moreNow there is no need to be logged in a browser continuously

                This is far better than online free version of ms office as onedrive files can be backed up offline to PC

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                  • Anonymous
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                  • 27 Feb 2025

                  Jab, 26 Feb 2025For the record for Linuxites here... OnlyOffice and Libre O... moreHow generous you are !

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                    • Anonymous
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                    • 27 Feb 2025

                    Meta Everything : Just use NextDNS and check somewhere there 'Windows.' It would make the entire World happier. (call me in the Court to justify this one.)

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                      • Anonymous
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                      • 27 Feb 2025

                      Anonymous, 27 Feb 2025P^nS : Have you ever compared how much time it takes to ful... more***I actually flashed the entire 'C:\' partition, to make it clear. It was tremendous faster. Something that, I guess, 'rsync' does but not for Windows... That cancer can't be saved. It's Failed by Design.

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                        • Anonymous
                        • SvB
                        • 27 Feb 2025

                        P^nS : Have you ever compared how much time it takes to fully upgrade a Linux Distro with a proper package manager compared with all those .cab rollbacks and cumulative crap ? It's simply insane how much time I wasted with that abomination of software.

                        21 years ago I used Norton Ghost to simply flash the up-to-date Windows XP, properly, everything, instead of fullishly reinstalling it, it took 5 minutes and we talk about 2004, HDDs with 100MB/s read/writes..

                        Maybe, merging all the subjects, this is how everyone should flash theirs, not 'OTA's(zipped crap; not even 'zstd'ed), so Fastboot should be Imperative. Other kind of back-ups don't backup properly all the .configs.

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                          • 27 Feb 2025

                          Anonymous, 27 Feb 2025 I used GNU/Linux for 10 years so all the criers just STF O... moreP.P.P.S. : Nevermind All the Security Issues with those Unencrypted Clouds.

                          The Economic System is built on Blunt Stupidity, otherwise the Austrian School of Economics would have been the only Economics School 'alive. (it's impossible to have a Free Market with Milenia of Unfairness and Pure Madness to think otherwise -- that Free Markets will correct those milenia of unfairness --which, btw, also implies how your brain is developed!)

                          The cure is Education but not only intellectual one. It's more important to learn how to control your instincts, everything that makes you crave things, compare with others. It's not imperative to know neurology for that, even though it greatly helps to know at least the basics.

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                            • Anonymous
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                            • 27 Feb 2025

                            P.P.S. : Actually, allowing Microsoft to buy Github was the greatest unsupervized Mistake(maybe only following allowing Zuck to buy Instagram&Whatsapp, it's competition, which would have make Fb. dead by now, which would have been a great think for the Free Market Capitalism), because it allow them to steal other's free work, implement it into their closed-source-cancer and messing the licence afterwards, multiplied by the fact that they steal that code with their 'AI'(Copilot), the world IP was never been more stolen that it is today, even though the Thieves are shouting for the IP rights, when are theirs, so, let's sumerize :

                            1. EEE(Embrace, Extend, Extinguish), that why the docs are incompatible, not any other way around. They simply hate Open-Source.
                            2. Seeing how much Open-Source code Microsoft uses, underline their incompetence.
                            3. Actually, all the 'Magnificent' Empires you see today have their groundings into Open-Source, otherwise, none would be what they are today.
                            4. Free stuff often comes with pain: Seeing written ' I used Manjaro but the repos won't sync made me sick' ; How about Updating Microsoft for 15 years ? Nothing is worst than that. I even have .gov friend that cries every year about how almost every update breaks their prints. (nevermind everything else this cancer always does)
                            5. The Game is Rigged and Rotten, it has only one way : Down.
                            Seeing how Stupid everything 'AI' is and considering how much your-parents-pension-funds-and-everything-between have been thrown into it just to avoid Inflation(another Rigged Game, actually, Read Dean Becker's 'Rigged', it's Free! for a Bootstrap) just underlines that the entire Financial System with everything implies is under a matter of time to Collapse.

                            To cite Obama: "That money wasn't real money in the first place" --after bailing out for a trillion all the top Banks in US --which actually means that the US People now Own Them !

                            So... Enjoy the Law ; they always use it to avoid fragrant illegalities(watch how Meta justifies pirating 80TB to train their models, models that will break Intelectual Property each time they serve a query !) so, maybe it's time that the entire Planet should know their Rights.

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                              • Anonymous
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                              • 27 Feb 2025

                              Anonymous, 27 Feb 2025 I used GNU/Linux for 10 years so all the criers just STF O... more*sorry for the typo.

                              **Should I underline that I tried everything relevant @distrowatch ? Linux is the best, period.
                              Let shareholders feel the hunger, they deserve their full blow. Wasting money into money washing machines instead of proper R&D is what cancer does with useful resources to any organism it encounters. ;)

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                                • Anonymous
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                                • 27 Feb 2025

                                I used GNU/Linux for 10 years so all the criers just STF Off.
                                It was a time when I hated that all distros came with LibreOffice installed(because I don't use it and I had poor R/W USB sticks: making ISOs with 'dd', extremely FF), stil, Arch is the best considering the PKGBUILDs might. (just set makepkg.conf to 'native' and O3 and you're ready to go)

                                On-topic: Microsoft is a meta-cancer which the entire Planet should avoid.
                                They will let you save your private documents only to their heavily analyzed clouds(AI data hungry) which tells enough.

                                Actually, all the Evils in IT comes from closed-source and reinvented wheels.

                                P.S. : I actually found peace with 'systemd', so ...

                                  potato4k, 27 Feb 2025Have you tried using the cloud version of Office? Quite a few times over the years. Along with the usual web app issues and general downsides compared to a proper desktop program, it always appeared to be incompatible with the current version of the real thing, so I'd get destroyed formatting, pictures positioned wrong, slightly different font rendering etc., kind of like editing a Word document in LibreOffice or OpenOffice, where such things are understandable; incompatibility between two current versions of Word not so much.

                                  At best one can somewhat reliably use e.g. the Word web app as Notepad, that tends to work fine.

                                    Its Microsoft's wish to make a software free.

                                    Its my choice to still ignore it and use free alternatives like Libre Office or Kingsoft's older version, no ads or anything in these.
                                    Plus, Word Excel Powerpoint is not all MS Office has, it has Publisher, Outlook, Access, etc. and if they're not offering these, then free alternatives rule anyways!

                                      User935, 26 Feb 2025Because web apps are the worst possible way to use any service? Have you tried using the cloud version of Office?

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                                        • 27 Feb 2025

                                        Microsofts ai phi 4 is so stupidly bad why is the product being launched at all

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