This is what is needed to push back on Microsoft.

Why libreoffice instead of OnlyOffice or NextCloud?

Libre is the GOAT

Personally, I missed the shortcut Ctrl + D too much in OnlyOffice sheets, but does it really matter?

Man... every time I use LibreOffice I curse. I'm dyed in the wool pro open source, but LibreOffice has just never cut it for me. I suppose if I had a job to do and that's what I was given it would work.

Maybe they don't want to move to a cloud-based system.

I don't want a cloud-based office package, and I can imagine that the same might apply to them.

Same. I have to tinker with it a lot to make it less frustrating to use. I like how customisable it is but man I don't really want to customise everything anymore.

I want a UX that is great out of the box in terms of theming, functionality, and ease of use. I want sane defaults.

It seems like they are doing this to push back on mono-culture. Probably just to save money really. Using 365 saved our small office a lot of time, but it is pretty expensive since it is a constant subscription. I already switched away from Adobe at to Wondershare for PDF editing since we can get a single purchase from Wondershare and have to pay a subscription to Adobe. I would be tempted to do the same thing with 365 but we do a lot of traveling and the integrated sharepoint files is pretty useful.

Maybe because OnlyOffice is Russian-made and cannot be guaranteed safe

It’s open source….

Push back against what? All of these countries’ governments moving away from MS are doing it for digital sovereignty, nothing else. They want to be in control of their data.

Nextcloud has a similar file storage like SharePoint/OneDrive minus the content types and taxonomy trees, but I doubt you need those. If you use Only Office as online Office App in Nextcloud, you have a comparable UI to Microsoft and it uses Office Open XML (docx, pptx, xlsx) as standard file system.

I don’t know what a paid hosting for your team would cost, but it could be worth it.

Of course, but it sets an example, proves to people that Linux can be mainstream and usable well beyond the corners where that mindset already exists.

It’s excellent advertising and promotion.

I luckily only really use Calc. Ive had no problems with that, but my use cases are fairly primitive probably. What kind of issues did you have while using it and which one Writer/Calc/Draw?

The best thing about all these organisations moving away from Microsoft is it incentivizes further development and QA. Or at least I hope all these governments switching to OSS are also funding people to keep a close eye on all the PRs coming in from state-sponsored hackers...

Yeah, OnlyOffice is a lot closer to the MS experience which would make it easier for people to transition.

I use both and usually prefer OnlyOffice.

Thank you, I'll give it a look.

Unfortunately change is difficult. If it was just me and my controls team we would probably do something like that, but my boss is a little older and I had hard enough time getting him to work on the cloud as it is, and he works in 2 cities, so he isn't always in reach to help him. If it doesn't behave exactly like windows folders, it might be a lost case.

The other people in the office I could train easier. It's a small office with less than a dozen people on the system at any one time. I am "head of IT" but that isn't my main job. Having something that installs and sets up quickly is a boon. Not that the sharepoint folders update all that quickly, it takes almost a full day for all the files to show up properly, especially if it is a new user. And if onedrive chokes on any one file it completely stops updating file changes until you fix that. Not a problem for anybody with some savvy, but half the people don't even notice until their files have diverged and somebody calls them and asks why they don't see some change or another.

All that being said, if I can save a few hundred dollars a month I could probably eventually talk them into moving over to something cheaper like I did with the Wondershare PDF editor. That was an easy move because it works exactly like Adobe but doesn't crash on large files nearly as often. It is sort of a shame that Adobe is worse at handling their own file format than nearly any other PDF editor.

They could spend 1~2% of the cost of their microsoft licenses to create their own plugins/development to make the UI more usable for their applications and workers, rather than relying on Microsoft themselves or creating plugins on outdated and proprietary frameworks.

It probably won't save money in the first year. The transition will likely offset any gains.

It likely will save money every year after that. For everyone. More users means more interest means a smoother experience for everyone, generally.