Apache OpenOffice – other Free ‘n Open Source Office Suites – ‘Bye-bye Microsoft Office?!?‘ – Linux Newbie

I’ve been happy using Microsoft Office for at least 20 years – really just one complaint until recently: 1) Having to go thru Microsoft’s Interrogations each time I tried to legally re-activate a legal license or licenses.

I had a full Microsoft Office 2000 license ‘n then purchased a Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 version that has 3 licenses. Microsoft never Interrogated me when I gave them my money for their products, but they treated me like a criminal each time I tried to renew a legal license on a new PC or newly built PC. Why take my money ‘n then treat me like a criminal?!

I grew *REALLY* tired of the Microsoft Interrogations around mid-2019…tired of worrying about having to go thru those Interrogations even as I was just planning to build a new computer. At that point, I started looking for alternatives, e.g. Free ‘n Open Source Office Suites.

I mainly just use the word processor, but most word processors come wid an Office Suite. I even started the Office Suites ‘n Word Processors page to help me keep up wid my search results for a new word processor. However, Free ‘n Open Source just wasn’t working out…at that time.

Microsoft’s Word is a difficult word processor to replace, or it was until they started moving Word to the Cloud and/or a Software as a service (SaaS) model ‘tHiNGiE‘:

SaaS is considered to be part of cloud computing, along with infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), desktop as a service (DaaS), managed software as a service (MSaaS), mobile backend as a service (MBaaS), datacenter as a service (DCaaS), integration platform as a service (iPaaS), and information technology management as a service (ITMaaS).

“Desktop as a service”!?!?! Anyway, the search/es for a new replacement word processor became even more difficult for me, after my 3/04/2021 Microsoft Office Home & Student 2016 CD Key purchase ($33.46) from URcdkey. The 2016 version of Word just wasn’t as good as my 2000 ‘n 2007 versions of Microsoft’s Word were. BTW, URcdkey doesn’t seem to offer Microsoft Office anymore or at this time.

Search for Open Source Office Suites Intensifies

2021 introduced me to all kinds of Office suites ‘n word processors besides the plain old Open Source and/or Proprietary ones I had tested earlier. Online types of Office suites ‘n word processors had apparently become popular since those earlier 2019 searches, and they cluttered up the searches in such a way that searching time more than doubled when trying to weed them out. Sure, you could type in “Offline” Office suites ‘n word processors for your search, but those Online ones would still be there.

“Free” also didn’t mean the same thing in 2021 as it did in 2019, e.g. FreeOffice is not “Free” & Not so “Free” FreeOffice. FreeOffice is just one example of “Free” software that ends up not being free at all and/or just a window for distracting advertisements.

Then there’s the ever *HIGHLY* Hyped LibreOffice…geez! They are the AMD of Office Suites!!! Main focus is on non-stop Hype ‘n a distant secondary focus is on the actual product. Gave LibreOffice another try this time, and it failed…again.

Nothing was working as well as that $33.46 2021 Microsoft Office Home & Student 2016 CD Key purchase back on 3/04/2021, so a month later (4/07/2021) I purchased another $33.46 2021 Microsoft Office Home & Student 2016 CD Key from URcdkey.

The search still continued, but recently, I needed to either accept that I would have to pay Microsoft a monthly subscription fee or a Pay only once plan that requires you ‘to pay again to upgrade‘ it!?! Second option was to bite-the-bullet ‘n move on from Microsoft’s Word. Why was this necessary? Windows 11 was going to be coming out around 10/05/2021 (WIN11 will be even GREATER than WIN10) – *AND* – I had recently purchased a Dell XPS 13 9310 laptop (new arrival date is now 10/01/2021) that will need a word processor.

Open Source Office Suites – OpenOffice ‘On Deck‘!

OpenOffice isn’t perfect, but their Apache OpenOffice Writer word processor has been the easiest Open Source word processor for me to switch to, to make setting changes to, to actually work in, etc. Copy ‘n Paste is requiring some getting use to, but other Open Source processors had that same problem.

Microsoft’s Word is impossible to replace…the best you can do is just to move on from it or pay their asking prices.

Yesterday, I made an image backup of this main ‘Apevia‘ computer that OpenOffice is on, then downloaded the new Apache OpenOffice 4.1.10:

The old 4.1.9 version wouldn’t do an automatic upgrade (for some reason?!), and I wanted to see if it could handle a manual upgrade without losing settings ‘n such. Apache OpenOffice handled it perfectly, and I am now confident in using it.

Am I’m really leaving Microsoft’s Word behind? Well, I haven’t even opened Word for 2 days now, and have already made an OpenOffice folder for OpenDocument Text (.odt) posts. Have another folder inside that folder, labeled “PWs,” for all newly converted password Word DOC and DOCX files. Just opened the DOC and DOCX files wid Apache OpenOffice Writer, and then saved them as OpenDocument Text (.odt) files in a new folder…fast ‘n easy!

So, yeah, I have already moved on from Microsoft Word: