Manjaro 18.1 Released With Choice Of Office Suite

[tildearrow]

While something can be said for the user's choice of office suite. Allowing the user to choose at installation between an open source office suite and a proprietary one because it features better compatibility with MS Office shows a lack of commitment towards open source and generally harms the adoption of open office suite standards. It remains a poor choice by the Manjaro team and I hope they reverse this decision, especially since they'll be starting a commercial entity, which in the Linux space are more easily scrutinised by Linux enthusiasts.

We should contribute to LibreOffice and improve its compatibility to encourage them to drop the proprietary option.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

Xfce 4.14, KDE Plasma 5.16, and GNOME 3.32 are the desktop versions availale for Manjaro 18.1.

[Britoid]

Manjaro has always put practicability over dogmatism. Imho the right way. If you want to commit to open source but use distros that feature blobs and unfree codecs, you have chosen practicability anyways.
I think of it more in terms of "showing that Linux can be a viable option, even if you are forced to have ooxml documents". Its not like they are forcing it, so i see no harm if there is the choice on installtime.

It's not just about dogmatism, RHEL/Fedora can't ship with certain codecs because they're patented, and shipping them makes them liable to have to pay royalties. Certain distros can get away with this because they go under the radar or they're not based in the US so the validity of software patents on them is questionable, however Red Hat would certainly be a target for any legal trouble to come out of shipping patented codecs.

If we want everyone to use desktop Linux, I'd rather we do it legally, even if the law sucks.

[Vistaus]

While something can be said for the user's choice of office suite. Allowing the user to choose at installation between an open source office suite and a proprietary one because it features better compatibility with MS Office shows a lack of commitment towards open source and generally harms the adoption of open office suite standards. It remains a poor choice by the Manjaro team and I hope they reverse this decision, especially since they'll be starting a commercial entity, which in the Linux space are more easily scrutinised by Linux enthusiasts.

At least Softmaker is German, so privacy is pretty much guaranteed, and they have been making their office suite since the 80's, so they're in it for the long run and have enough money built up.

Also, if you really care about open source the way you do, you shouldn't even be coming near Manjaro as it features proprietary blobs and whatnot in its kernel, just like most distros. They are all harming open source by including that stuff in the kernel.

[Termy]

While something can be said for the user's choice of office suite. Allowing the user to choose at installation between an open source office suite and a proprietary one because it features better compatibility with MS Office shows a lack of commitment towards open source and generally harms the adoption of open office suite standards. It remains a poor choice by the Manjaro team and I hope they reverse this decision, especially since they'll be starting a commercial entity, which in the Linux space are more easily scrutinised by Linux enthusiasts.

Manjaro has always put practicability over dogmatism. Imho the right way. If you want to commit to open source but use distros that feature blobs and unfree codecs, you have chosen practicability anyways.
I think of it more in terms of "showing that Linux can be a viable option, even if you are forced to have ooxml documents". Its not like they are forcing it, so i see no harm if there is the choice on installtime.

[Britoid]

While something can be said for the user's choice of office suite. Allowing the user to choose at installation between an open source office suite and a proprietary one because it features better compatibility with MS Office shows a lack of commitment towards open source and generally harms the adoption of open office suite standards. It remains a poor choice by the Manjaro team and I hope they reverse this decision, especially since they'll be starting a commercial entity, which in the Linux space are more easily scrutinised by Linux enthusiasts.

But $$$

or €€€ in this case.

[WolfpackN64]

While something can be said for the user's choice of office suite. Allowing the user to choose at installation between an open source office suite and a proprietary one because it features better compatibility with MS Office shows a lack of commitment towards open source and generally harms the adoption of open office suite standards. It remains a poor choice by the Manjaro team and I hope they reverse this decision, especially since they'll be starting a commercial entity, which in the Linux space are more easily scrutinised by Linux enthusiasts.