So then what? Use different messengers internally and externally?

I do usually end up asking my team to do this.

The external one is usually Slack or Teams.

I figure it’s worth it for the faster turn around of communication with key clients.

Thankfully, both have web interfaces that work fine on Linux.

Fair enough!

Conversion

First, I haven’t yet encountered a pre-existing document on Linux that didn’t turn into a nice PDF when fed into “Print - Save as PDF”, which I have found to be present by default on Gnome and KDE (the two most popular desktop environments). So for the majority of distros, Print to PDF is pre-installed and available.

For advanced use cases, there’s Pandoc. Pandoc can convert most document formats to many other formats, and gives fine grained control over every step.

Authoring PDFs

For authoring a quick PDF, there’s LibreOffice and OpenOffice.

And of course there’s GnuImp, Krita, and so many more options for editing some images to add in.

Most distros ship with LibreOfffice or OpenOffice, and at least one image editor.

But I do recommend investigating some free and open image editors. There’s many use cases and twice as many options. If the default isn’t for you, what you need may be one (free) Software search away.

But can I just use plain text? (Yes)

For control freaks like me, there’s also a whole ecosystem of tools that work well with Markdown, ASCIIDoc, LaTex, and ReStructuredText.

For the curious, start by trying VSCodium with a Markdown extension.

You can tune your extensions here, but I think I recall “Markdown All-In-One” getting me all the way from raw text to nice enough looking PDFs in one command. Maybe it was two, using the built in “Print to PDF” dialog.

Once again, PanDoc is the powerhouse of this use case, and many excellent tools are available.

Office 365 and teams work fine on Linux in Chrome or Firefox, including voice calls, video calls and screen sharing, and notifications with pop-ups and sounds.

Excel, in particular, is 100% inside Office365 in the browser when I have to interact with it. In the past, I have created Excel files in LibreOfffice and uploaded them to Office365 to convert. Though I haven’t been tempted to do so in a few years.

Most of my coworkers are not aware that I run Linux at work. My boss knows and doesn’t care. My peers are just surprised when I mention it, because I use the same tools without issue.

Zoom works great on Linux, as well, both in bowers and as the native app. Many corporate VPNs are compiant with open standards, and so don’t even require any additional install. Cisco’s isn’t made right, but they provide a Linux client that works fine.

Slack works fine in browser, including full first class notifications. I haven’t sought out a dedicated client app, but I recall having some options.

DropBox and Google have particularly decent Linux client applications, and of course, fully functional web tools.

There’s also some excellent ways to run Android apps nearly seemlessly inside an Android emulator of Linux. In theory, I could resort to those, but I haven’t because everything I need works in a web browser now.

I’ve heard that the two glaring exceptions are AutoCad and Adobe Creative Suite. I understand that neither works on Linux or in a browser (per other threads on Lemmy).

Oh yeah, and Linux has more and better ways to produce nice PDFs than Windows does, and of course reads them without issue

Oh, and yes, mandatory compliance stuff like antivirus tools and CrowdStrike also have compliant options for Linux. Some of the really shitty spyware level invasive stuff probably hasn’t been ported to Linux, but the “keep me virus free” stuff seems pretty available - because they want to sell copies for Linux servers.

Edit: If this seems needlessly thorough, it is because I worked to independently verify all of these details before my upgrade. I figure my notes might help someone making the case to switch, or just researching whether they need to not switch.

Yes. I’m inclined to avoid Cloudflare, if I’m able, for now.

Cloudflare feels like they’re doing the same kind of “were too big and cool to pay our staff or think about uptime” that I’ve been suffering from under AWS, recently.

Haha. Yes, I’m looking for a DNS service, at the moment. Thanks anyway!

Thank you!

Thank you!

I need to find out more about Minecraft and hosting a server sounds like a good idea

I’ve hosted both Minecraft and Luanti (free open source Minecraft). Either is a great idea!

That said, I found setting up a Luanti server slightly simpler (because no need for everyone to have a Microsoft account, and no Java dependencies to worry about): https://docs.luanti.org/for-server-hosts/setup/

Luanti has lots of options, but a good default choice is Mineclonia: https://content.luanti.org/packages/ryvnf/mineclonia/

I screw up my own system way more often than that lol

Same! But the ones I cause don’t count.

It does feel like the major outages are growing closer together.

I want to blame plugging AI where it doesn’t belong, but I suppose that putting everything into the same couple of server closets could be the primary root cause.

but I guess the actual cause of the outage was a config file generated in response exceeded the max size

So it was automation, but that automation might have been stupid the normal computer way, rather than stupid in the new LLM enhanced computer way.

I’m sure it was, and I’m sure they will not admit it.

So I’ll throw this into the “conspiracy theory, but probably true” pile; and I’ll try to remember to check snopes.com in 20 years to see if I was somehow wrong.

“Did Vibe coding really routinely break half the Internet is the 2020s?” …assuming the Internet and I are still both around by then…

Edit: I’m already wrong. It sounds like it was computers being stupid is old tried and true ways; not computers being stupid in new trendy ways.

It would be funny if it was because of some AI coding

It is. Sometimes the big secret turns out to just be what we all thought was happening.

Dang. I had to look it up, but CrowdStike taking down a huge percentage of Windows PCs was so last year, I guess.

How did they squander being the name in autonomous vacuum devices…?

Letting a picture of a customer using the bathroom leak onto Facebook cannot have helped.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-irobot-robot-vacuums-artificial-intelligence-training-data-privacy/

This thread is largely just basic computer skills advice that is necessary on Windows and Mac as well. (And that is great!)

So I’ll add the ones we skipped that have nothing to do with OS at all, but are the usual issues for new PC users:

• Give a quick overview of what the mouse is for.
• Talk about or just disable the CAPSLOCK key.
• Show them where to find and how to read the “do I have Internet?” icon (usually in the lower right, regardless of OS)
• (If not a laptop) Teach them that the monitor and the PC have separate power buttons. Maybe leave a sign out that says “Push both buttons to turn on.”

And as others have said:

• Show them how to search for and add software using the software center, (rather than download from random websites)

That it is another OS. It’s not Windows.

I used to feel that mattered, but today websites will detect your OS when it matters and just pick the right page (i.e. downloading something).

Then I double click the download to install it.

I, a tech nerd, forget what distro I’m running and eventually have to look it up, when I’m doing something weird enough that it matters.

For day to day stuff, I’m not sure that knowing my OS comes up anymore.

What version of Linux are you talking about?

I haven’t been recycle bin free in…any recent distro or desktop environment that I can remember.

Oh, that’s good to know! I’ve always installed KDE on Debian before, but I thought it was only because I just really liked Debian. Thanks!

Cinnamon is a great choice. It’s the default on Linux Mint for good reason.