this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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Are there good Microsoft word alternatives that support Linux (I don't mind closed source)? Libreoffice is meh and only office is quite good, but are there any better ones? Also, is there a way to install word on Linux using wine? When I do that my laptop just overheats and loses internet connection.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

DSL doesn't do bandwidth sharing, so unless your provider's backbone is over capacity, the amount of users is not relevant to you. Certainly not the ones in your apartment complex.

Mobile reception is hit or miss depending on your provider. Where I live, I have essentially no reception whatsoever on my work phone which has a Vodafone sim. My private one with a Telefonica sim is better but still bad with the phone usually getting 4g but with a bad signal, so Internet is decent but calls aren't too good when I'm not on my WiFi. My wife's Telekom sim on the other hand works perfectly, so maybe just try different providers? My wife's using congstar (Telekom's no frills brand) because she doesn't need 5g. We generally pay between 15 and 20 bucks per month for our contracts, which all have more bandwidth than we need (20gb for me), which I think is manageable and not unreasonable at all. How much do you pay?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Thats why i talked about vdsl (vectoring) which is very common in germany as our Cooper cables are Quite shitty.

Fact is: every evening the internet goes bad (latency up, bandwidth down). at work times or at night it works fine. This is not only true for me but for all neighbours.

I don't know every technical detail of why this happens, the technician from the Telekom said it is because of interferences in overused and bad in shape cables due to vectoring not having enough failsaves/checksums/something like that.

That on the topic.

On a personal level: This is a discussion about alternatives to word. I would like to transition to linux, because i value the moral/ethical aspects of Foss software. I state here reasons which keep me from transitioning (as always its a tradeoff between security and convenience). One of this arguments is "the internet where I live is not good enough for online office, so it can't be proclaimed as an solution for every situation" You telling me "the amount of users is not relevant for you" implying "your internet is not bad, you are hallucinating this" is not really helpful or appropriate.

P.s. I am a student with limited money so I have an 1gb 4g contract for 3,99. In my part of the city you only get 3g though. Also university is a metal building where mobile works unreliable AF, most days campus WiFi works fine, but enough days it doestn. I can't afford not being able to write texts in those situations.

Sure if you get 5g and have money to pay for lots of data volume on your phone its not that bad, but this is not viable for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Dude, calm down.

I wasn't trying to be condescending. If a technician has looked into it then I guess there isn't much you can do. The issue usually not coming from copper cables was just supposed to maybe give you other ideas on where to look for an error. Like, maybe your router sharing its WiFi frequency with too many neighbours or something.

Also, I'm not saying you should spend more money on mobile. I just don't think the pricing is as bad as it was ten years or so ago... Getting mobile broadband for 20 bucks is cheaper than most landlines and if the reception is decent it might be an alternative. If it isn't for you that's fair, too.

If LibreOffice isn't an alternative then maybe try to run your office in wine? For things that aren't games the setup is usually manageable. If that doesn't work then maybe a VM might be a solution? I think most modern VMs offer modes where they keep the boot process of the guest OS hidden and just show you a single window. Like, you get an office icon on your desktop in Linux and if you click it the system boots a windows wm that directly launches an office window but only shows you this window once it's there, which should seamlessly integrate into your Linux desktop. If you're a student I think there are cheap or free ways for you to get a windows license to try this, but it's been some time since I studied so don't take my word on this.