Nobody Cares about Tech Support

[Clara D.]

I'm more annoyed at a client forcing me to use Word, and would prefer to use Notepad and raw HTML. The ".doc" file is a cancer.

I don't mind Word. In fact, I kinda like it. THERE. FINE. I SAID IT.

People use Word? *laughs in Libreoffice*

 

[Clara D.]

In before the inevitable vi vs. emacs flamewar starts...

Hides in the corner with pico.

 

[Clara D.]

The inhabitants of some remote village in the UK have been experiencing bad internet connection every day after 7 am on their cable modems. It only took the cable company 18 months to find the reason why, but they found it: a shabby second hand TV set that was not shielded enough for radiation interferences.

This TV set belonged to somebody whos habit it is to turn it on every morning at 7 am - which in turn turned off the fast internet for the rest of the village every day.

A good piece of detective work; on the other hand this village will be getting fiber optics later this year.

Second-hand TV wipes out broadband for entire village

Openreach’s most experienced engineers turn detectives to solve 18-month mystery that’s plagued the broadband connections of residents living in the rural village of Aberhosan near Machynlleth, Wales. (Fersiwn Cymraeg isod / Welsh version below)

www.openreach.com

Back in the day troubleshooting DSL was a pain because everything got picked up by the copper phone lines. One of the troubleshooting steps was to figure out if something came on or was being used when it cut out. Streetlights (when the lights were on the power poles, which are also where the phone lines are), solenoids in sprinkler systems (electrically noisy bastards), vaccuums, and microwaves were the most common culprits.

 

[Free]

People use Word? *laughs in Libreoffice*

People use LibreOffice PROFESSIONALLY? (Though it's certainly a better option than OO.)

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

I'm thinking there must be a far better way,

Yes, there's a far better way, except Windows doesn't do it that way.

Ooh! Here's a question .... is there a program that will make a list of everything I have installed?

/me does a simple "sudo dnf list installed"

The solution is repositories. Say I install Fedora on a new machine, I do not have to go out and find install packages for applications I use that don't come with the base distro.
All I have to do is make a list, and I can just feed that list to dnf, which will also grab any pre-requisites.
And if I upgrade to a new version of Fedora, it upgrades in place.
But generally, there isn't much that I need to install separately, it doesn't take long.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

People use Word? *laughs in Libreoffice*

LibreOffice has the same broken design as Word because it has to roundtrip broken word documents.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

LibreOffice as well as OpenOffice have the same ancestor: StarOffice. This was produced by the German software company named StarDivision GmbH in Hamburg from 1985 until 1999. Founder Marco Börries started this company when he was 17 years old, so he's born in 1968. When he sold it to Sun Microsystems he probably earned a nice two digit million number of dollars, the price was never disclosed.

Sun then open sourced this thing, and rebranded it as OpenOffice. And here we are.

If you need to use Docx files and don't want to use Microsoft Office nor Libreoffice, you can also use Softmaker Office. This is a proprietary office suite developed since 1987 by German software company Softmaker GmbH based in Nürnberg. It's shareware, and you have got a 30 day trial period. It's available on Windows, Linux and MacOS. Full license price is 50 Euro, so it's not really expensive.

A big focus of Softmaker Office has always been maximum compatiblity with Microsoft Office; in fact their Docx import and export functionality is light years ahead that of LibreOffice. Where LibreOffice just displays utter garbage on import or export, Softmaker Office displays exactly the same as in M$ Word.

So there are people out there who don't want to use M$ Word nor Libreoffice, but need maximum compability with Docx and instead use this. The office suite contains a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program.

SoftMaker Office and FlexiPDF: Alternatives to Microsoft Office and Acrobat

SoftMaker Office: GDPR-compliant privacy. The alternative to Microsoft Office for Windows•Mac•Linux•iOS•Android. PDF editor FlexiPDF as an alternative to Acrobat.

www.softmaker.com

And no, not working for them, nor affiliated whatsoever.

 

[Kokoro Fasching]

Ooh! Here's a question .... is there a program that will make a list of everything I have installed?

Alternative uninstaller for Windows 11 / 10 / 8 / 7 / Vista

View installed applications on Windows 11 / 10 / 8 / 7 / Vista and optionally uninstall them. You can view the uninstall list on local system, remote computer, or external drive

www.nirsoft.net

A good free program that makes a handy list.

 

[Clara D.]

People use LibreOffice PROFESSIONALLY? (Though it's certainly a better option than OO.)

Fair point, unless it's an unlocked work-issue laptop, no.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

If you need to use Docx files and don't want to use Microsoft Office nor Libreoffice, you can also use Softmaker Office.

I edit in raw HTML in vi by preference and rename the files ".doc" when I share them. Word is happy to open an HTML file with a .doc suffix.

I do not *want* maximum compatibility with Word, because that requires following Microsoft's appalling design decisions so you can round-trip it. You might as well use Word at that point.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I edit in raw HTML in vi by preference and rename the files ".doc" when I share them. Word is happy to open an HTML file with a .doc suffix.

I do not *want* maximum compatibility with Word, because that requires following Microsoft's appalling design decisions so you can round-trip it. You might as well use Word at that point.

HTML does not work well when you are trying to make a printed document with page breaks, footers and headers.

 

[Free]

HTML does not work well when you are trying to make a printed document with page breaks, footers and headers.

There's always PDF.

/me runs!

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I edit in raw HTML in vi by preference and rename the files ".doc" when I share them. Word is happy to open an HTML file with a .doc suffix.

I do not *want* maximum compatibility with Word, because that requires following Microsoft's appalling design decisions so you can round-trip it. You might as well use Word at that point.

There was a time when I was comfortable creating/editing LaTeX and PostScript documents in vi.... but I think I've clobbered those brain cells to death since. I can still muddle along in html just fine though.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

There was a time when I was comfortable creating/editing LaTeX and PostScript documents in vi.... but I think I've clobbered those brain cells to death since. I can still muddle along in html just fine though.

You can still use LyX, if you want to. Never been too fond of it, but it should do its job for not too complicated LaTeX documents just fine.

 

[Khamon]

can't get past Jopsy and LaTex and yes I know it's a word processing program but still

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

HTML does not work well when you are trying to make a printed document with page breaks, footers and headers.

I don't understand, "printed document"? Like something from the dark ages?

 

[Essence Lumin]

I don't understand, "printed document"? Like something from the dark ages?

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

can't get past Jopsy and LaTex and yes I know it's a word processing program but still

Twitches at the words "word processing" applied to LaTeX.....must resist the akshully....gives in to the akshully.

It is a document preparation and typesetting system.

 

[Casey Pelous]

My experience of Word is that it is a lot like someone who comes into your kitchen while you're cooking and, without asking, starts Doing Things to Help.

*shudders*

 

[Casey Pelous]

Update on The Build:

Thanks to a link Free passed along, I did "Win+R->WinVer" and, lo and behold, I have a full retail version of Windows 10 already on the machine to be upgraded. Ages ago, I must have bought a full retail version of Windows 7 which got upgraded to 10. Very uncharacteristic of me, but that's the only explanation I can think of.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to clone the current drive disc to the new one then upgrade the hardware and carry on. Fingers crossed!

Oh, and all the boxes came from Newegg yesterday. I think the 'rona isolation/boredom must be worse than I thought -- looking at the pile of boxes, it felt like Christmas morning! LOL!

Thanks again, Free, Veritable, and everybody else who answered.