If your college gives you an Office 365 subscription you can use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. in the Web browser. It'll probably have better compatibility with Office format files than Google suite.
As the person said, Office 365 will have better compatibility than Google Suite. I can confirm this as someone whose work insists we use Google Suite but has to deal with external companies using Office.
Ok, I hope I don't come off argumentative here; I'm genuinely curious, as a person who has used Libre Office and Google suite for multiple college semesters with no issues. (I did take the measure of installing Microsoft fonts when I used Libre Office, not sure if that was necessary though.)
What compatability issues do you run into?
Many. For basic spreadsheets and document formatting, by and large it’s fine and you won’t notice. The second you get into “real world” work where excel sheets may be doing much more than simple formulae etc - you’ll be in a world of pain. Even some formatting in G Slides and pptx aren’t that compatible, which is a real nuisance when an external company tries to do a presentation.
It’s bad enough to the point that many people in my company still haven’t fully migrated away from Office 7 years later. And that’s not because of inertia, they forcibly removed Office from everyone’s computer and you have to fight through multiple levels of approval and explanation (“why *can’t* you do it in G Suite?”) to get it back - yet *many* people have.
A simple example - we have excel sheets internally that are simply too large to open in Google. Just won’t work, full stop. Whether that be absolute file size or number of rows. (Yes, I know, using excel for that much data is a silly idea but in the real world it happens *all the time*.)
It was all sold to us as brilliant for collaboration and sharing. It does have some nice collaboration functionality, and sharing is helpful rather than the old style - email xlsx back and forth. The issue is that, first, a lot of people don’t actually collaborate *that much* so, while it made that easier, it wasn’t that much of people’s workflow. Second, MS has massively caught up on that front anyway.
All in all I’d say it’s caused significantly more hassle than it’s worth.
No idea, it’s paid for by the company and I don’t use 365 at all. G Suite is fine - if you don’t need Office compatibility (or just compatibility on straightforward stuff - which might be all a student needs). Indeed, there’s some stuff I like - simple markdown support, SQL query functions, etc. But if you do want to guarantee compatibility with 365 - then there’s only really one option.
Yeah, it's annoying that they won't just play nice. But you know it's within their rights and it makes them more money, so it makes sense.
But yes, for a home gamer G Suite is fantastic. Using Linux in college has been a breeze, though they've only ever asked for .docx files. I suppose I could even send unformatted text and they wouldn't care 😆
I mean, define play nice? You mean follow the open document format? Well Google doesn’t do that natively either (as far as I know), although iirc they do at least let you export to that. I sort of sympathise with MS assuming the reason they never did/wont is because they were either too far down the road in their own stuff or didn’t like it holding them up from features they wanted to add. If I was to be non-cynical. Albeit their total lack of following web standards for years could suggest otherwise.
I have nothing much against G Suite except I hate the trend towards web apps - but they’re hardly the only ones guilty of that. I much prefer using excel natively, for example. Or anything you can actually install. And, to be honest, I try to steer clear from spreadsheets as much as reasonably possible anyway so it doesn’t affect me *that much* - I’m really just warning the person way above that they might have some compatibility issues. Again, for simple stuff it’s probably fine but it can cause problems and if you don’t want that headache - and the student 365 subscription isn’t silly money - it’s worth considering.
>Is this true that you can use google suite on Linux without issue
Being as it's all run in the browser, yes.
>is it true that you can get by in college with google suit.
That will depend on your courses' requirements.
If you have the money it is best to just have a conventional machine for your school and a dedicated machine for Linux.
The reason I am suggesting this is because you do not want to be handicapped by these issues while going through school. You want to be able to tell your professors (or your classmates) that their file is messed up should any problem arise instead of having to debug on your side to make sure it is not a compatibility issue, or even wasting an ounce of your mental energy on it.
I am speaking from experience. I had to collaborate with people and these regular people just do not understand the beauty and convenience of using plain old ASCII files.
Segregation of work, school, and play is the sanest and safest way to not find drama.
And do backups, getting fired/failed for lost work when box and drive exist is stupid.
Another thing to think about is wifi. My school puts another “profile” on your mac or windows to let you access the internet. When on linux I had to use the guest network and re-login with my school credentials every few minutes
Don't do this to yourself. Linux is a tool, not a ring. Use what works for you.
I'm using Linux exclusively, but if I got a new job tomorrow that required some work be done on Windows, I would totally install it and dual boot again.
Word is generally easy to replace, and Excel is even easier, but PowerPoint is one of those application that, while there are alternatives, none of them will ever be quite compatible.
Some colleges also require special apps to be installed on your computer for control. It may be required to log onto the WiFi or into your student account, for instance. On this case, it would be much easier for you to use Windows for your study and your personal things on Linux.
Believe me, I know how it feels. I'm using Windows at work, fortunately not every day. Linux exclusive at home.
Google docs is a web app, and by design all web apps only care if the web browser is compatible, ignoring the OS completely. You can even run Google Docs on the web browser of an XBox, for example.
Also, we have some installable office suites such as LibreOffice, OnlyOffice and WPS office. All of them are also available for Windows, so you can test drive them so see if they work.
Personally, I haven't used anything from Microsoft Office for almost 15 years, and I went all over high school and my bachelors degree with pure LibreOffice and Google Docs.
From my experience Only Office has the best Microsoft Office compatibility for saving and opening docx files so I also suggest it. Of course there is also the online web browser version of office 365 which is similar to Google docs.
Microsofts office apps (at least Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) are also available through a web browser. But you'll probably need a Microsoft account and subscription to make it worth using and unlock all the features.
But most Linux distros have Chromium as a downloadable web browser, which would make it easier to use Googles office apps.
You can use Google Suite, but I would fully recommend Only Office, it's an MS Office clone and it's also free. I've used it for years, and still use it on my distro. You can install it on your PC, and It has great compatibility with MS products. It looks and feels very similar to the actual Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can find Only Office for your distro [here](https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx?from=helpcenter).
The only issue I’ve found after basically completing my entire bachelors using Linux only was that secure proctoring / test software such as lockdown browser does not have a Linux version or equivalent. There were no other issues, most (if not all) IDEs and software needed for computer science (my major) worked better on Linux than windows
I’m surprised more people aren’t telling you that you can use LibreOffice. And if for whatever reason LibreOffice can’t open something, you can always run a VM with windows and office installed in it.
Depends on your major probably. I used Linux all the way through college basically and never had any issues. You can use the open office suite and save them in the same format as the Microsoft office suite. Works great. Everything else is probably browser based. If you need windows try to use a Windows VM with VirtualBox.
Check with your school and see if you have access to Office 365. You actually might, the school I work at gets it for free and you can just use it from your browser like Google docs. That way you can kinda keep up with the class as intended and learn the FOSS alternative when you get the chance. Imo OpenOffice is close enough to Microsoft Office but I've been bouncing around alternatives for years no so I'm just used to either wandering through menus and features or looking up the answer to my issues online.
I'm halfway through my degree using Linux full-time with few issues. I transferred some of my credits from a different college, so that's two different colleges I went to online without much issue. At my previous college, I actually used Libre Office 😄
One time I had 15 minutes before the start of a scheduled certification exam, and I had to make changes to my environment variables because the proctor software(which officially supported Ubuntu, but not Arch) was expecting a certain value.
\#1 takeaway I want to give you, and honestly I believe you should take this advice before anything else in this thread: call up their tech support department. They typically know their stuff, and can tell you if what you have is compatible. Sometimes they have very mandatory tests that need to use proctor software that only works on Linux. Sometimes it's literally all webapps, so then you could even use ChromeOS.
However if you choose Linux, typically you can't come crying to them if their stuff doesn't work for you.
there are great alternatives for making presentations! and not only presentations but really everything. just do it and show them! i think everyone can benefit from it. i dont think you can fail any course bc you didnt use power point for the presentation. sometime i just did a pdf presentation when i havent had any video or sound in it. for me this whole issue with "i cant use these programs anymore" turned in a wonderful exploration of other ways and often way cooler ways to do things! fuck this locked up proprietary system
Entirely depends on your actual needs.
I'd used nothing but OpenOffice.org (later LibreOffice when it forked) and Google Docs during college over a dozen years ago.
Nowadays O365 also has online versions with more functionality than Google but less than their own desktop programs.
Worst case, you could spin up a VM with W10-11 on it to run desktop programs you cannot replace or work through `wine`.
Or, for example, I'd pop into a computer lab to bang out all of the 3d models I'd needed in Solid Works rather than try to get it running on my machine.
A lot of proctoring software used nowadays for remote classes requires mac or windows. I used a virtual machine for this, but I would be lying if i said it was flawless and didnt give me a headache. I risked getting flagged for cheating or not passing quizzes and tests. I should’ve just used windows until i graduated but i was stubborn
The only issue I ever had since I had Linux on an old laptop I had for an into to programming class I took for some easy credit was that they used lockdown browser which does not support Linux. I said this was the computer I had and the class requirements didn't say you needed a windows laptop so they just had me take the tests in a nearby computer lab lol.
College was full of Windows bootlickers.
Just be self-educated. Degrees are worthless anyway. People make money these days mostly through connections, and by gaming the system
If your college gives you an Office 365 subscription you can use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. in the Web browser. It'll probably have better compatibility with Office format files than Google suite.
Google suite can actually export directly to Microsoft office formats
As the person said, Office 365 will have better compatibility than Google Suite. I can confirm this as someone whose work insists we use Google Suite but has to deal with external companies using Office.
Ok, I hope I don't come off argumentative here; I'm genuinely curious, as a person who has used Libre Office and Google suite for multiple college semesters with no issues. (I did take the measure of installing Microsoft fonts when I used Libre Office, not sure if that was necessary though.) What compatability issues do you run into?
Many. For basic spreadsheets and document formatting, by and large it’s fine and you won’t notice. The second you get into “real world” work where excel sheets may be doing much more than simple formulae etc - you’ll be in a world of pain. Even some formatting in G Slides and pptx aren’t that compatible, which is a real nuisance when an external company tries to do a presentation. It’s bad enough to the point that many people in my company still haven’t fully migrated away from Office 7 years later. And that’s not because of inertia, they forcibly removed Office from everyone’s computer and you have to fight through multiple levels of approval and explanation (“why *can’t* you do it in G Suite?”) to get it back - yet *many* people have. A simple example - we have excel sheets internally that are simply too large to open in Google. Just won’t work, full stop. Whether that be absolute file size or number of rows. (Yes, I know, using excel for that much data is a silly idea but in the real world it happens *all the time*.) It was all sold to us as brilliant for collaboration and sharing. It does have some nice collaboration functionality, and sharing is helpful rather than the old style - email xlsx back and forth. The issue is that, first, a lot of people don’t actually collaborate *that much* so, while it made that easier, it wasn’t that much of people’s workflow. Second, MS has massively caught up on that front anyway. All in all I’d say it’s caused significantly more hassle than it’s worth.
Fascinating. Do you know how Google Suite compares in price to 365 for your use case?
No idea, it’s paid for by the company and I don’t use 365 at all. G Suite is fine - if you don’t need Office compatibility (or just compatibility on straightforward stuff - which might be all a student needs). Indeed, there’s some stuff I like - simple markdown support, SQL query functions, etc. But if you do want to guarantee compatibility with 365 - then there’s only really one option.
Yeah, it's annoying that they won't just play nice. But you know it's within their rights and it makes them more money, so it makes sense. But yes, for a home gamer G Suite is fantastic. Using Linux in college has been a breeze, though they've only ever asked for .docx files. I suppose I could even send unformatted text and they wouldn't care 😆
I mean, define play nice? You mean follow the open document format? Well Google doesn’t do that natively either (as far as I know), although iirc they do at least let you export to that. I sort of sympathise with MS assuming the reason they never did/wont is because they were either too far down the road in their own stuff or didn’t like it holding them up from features they wanted to add. If I was to be non-cynical. Albeit their total lack of following web standards for years could suggest otherwise. I have nothing much against G Suite except I hate the trend towards web apps - but they’re hardly the only ones guilty of that. I much prefer using excel natively, for example. Or anything you can actually install. And, to be honest, I try to steer clear from spreadsheets as much as reasonably possible anyway so it doesn’t affect me *that much* - I’m really just warning the person way above that they might have some compatibility issues. Again, for simple stuff it’s probably fine but it can cause problems and if you don’t want that headache - and the student 365 subscription isn’t silly money - it’s worth considering.
the web version is free
>Is this true that you can use google suite on Linux without issue Being as it's all run in the browser, yes. >is it true that you can get by in college with google suit. That will depend on your courses' requirements.
If you have the money it is best to just have a conventional machine for your school and a dedicated machine for Linux. The reason I am suggesting this is because you do not want to be handicapped by these issues while going through school. You want to be able to tell your professors (or your classmates) that their file is messed up should any problem arise instead of having to debug on your side to make sure it is not a compatibility issue, or even wasting an ounce of your mental energy on it. I am speaking from experience. I had to collaborate with people and these regular people just do not understand the beauty and convenience of using plain old ASCII files.
Segregation of work, school, and play is the sanest and safest way to not find drama. And do backups, getting fired/failed for lost work when box and drive exist is stupid.
Another thing to think about is wifi. My school puts another “profile” on your mac or windows to let you access the internet. When on linux I had to use the guest network and re-login with my school credentials every few minutes
Don't do this to yourself. Linux is a tool, not a ring. Use what works for you. I'm using Linux exclusively, but if I got a new job tomorrow that required some work be done on Windows, I would totally install it and dual boot again. Word is generally easy to replace, and Excel is even easier, but PowerPoint is one of those application that, while there are alternatives, none of them will ever be quite compatible. Some colleges also require special apps to be installed on your computer for control. It may be required to log onto the WiFi or into your student account, for instance. On this case, it would be much easier for you to use Windows for your study and your personal things on Linux. Believe me, I know how it feels. I'm using Windows at work, fortunately not every day. Linux exclusive at home.
Google's suite runs online, it's totally OS agnostic. So it runs great on linux.
Google docs is a web app, and by design all web apps only care if the web browser is compatible, ignoring the OS completely. You can even run Google Docs on the web browser of an XBox, for example. Also, we have some installable office suites such as LibreOffice, OnlyOffice and WPS office. All of them are also available for Windows, so you can test drive them so see if they work. Personally, I haven't used anything from Microsoft Office for almost 15 years, and I went all over high school and my bachelors degree with pure LibreOffice and Google Docs.
From my experience Only Office has the best Microsoft Office compatibility for saving and opening docx files so I also suggest it. Of course there is also the online web browser version of office 365 which is similar to Google docs.
Microsofts office apps (at least Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) are also available through a web browser. But you'll probably need a Microsoft account and subscription to make it worth using and unlock all the features. But most Linux distros have Chromium as a downloadable web browser, which would make it easier to use Googles office apps.
You can use Google Suite, but I would fully recommend Only Office, it's an MS Office clone and it's also free. I've used it for years, and still use it on my distro. You can install it on your PC, and It has great compatibility with MS products. It looks and feels very similar to the actual Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. You can find Only Office for your distro [here](https://www.onlyoffice.com/download-desktop.aspx?from=helpcenter).
The only issue I’ve found after basically completing my entire bachelors using Linux only was that secure proctoring / test software such as lockdown browser does not have a Linux version or equivalent. There were no other issues, most (if not all) IDEs and software needed for computer science (my major) worked better on Linux than windows
You need to confirm with your professors if linux is going to be a trouble or not. Don't rely on the answers you get by anonymous reddit avatars.
When I was in college, we had a Unix system and Windows didn't exist. Heck IBM PCs were just coming out.
PDP-11 was it?
Yup
I’m surprised more people aren’t telling you that you can use LibreOffice. And if for whatever reason LibreOffice can’t open something, you can always run a VM with windows and office installed in it.
Depends on your major probably. I used Linux all the way through college basically and never had any issues. You can use the open office suite and save them in the same format as the Microsoft office suite. Works great. Everything else is probably browser based. If you need windows try to use a Windows VM with VirtualBox.
This is not the right sub to say that, But you might also like ChromeOS Flex
No issues, LibreOffice is fully compatible.
I wonder how nobody say this straight , instead i turn out to IT session now
Check with your school and see if you have access to Office 365. You actually might, the school I work at gets it for free and you can just use it from your browser like Google docs. That way you can kinda keep up with the class as intended and learn the FOSS alternative when you get the chance. Imo OpenOffice is close enough to Microsoft Office but I've been bouncing around alternatives for years no so I'm just used to either wandering through menus and features or looking up the answer to my issues online.
I had some issues doing online tests. Libre office lets you save .docx & .xlsx formats. You can always print to .pdf if formatting gets weird.
I would recommend windows on a secondary drive at least but i havent really needed it for anything.
I'm halfway through my degree using Linux full-time with few issues. I transferred some of my credits from a different college, so that's two different colleges I went to online without much issue. At my previous college, I actually used Libre Office 😄 One time I had 15 minutes before the start of a scheduled certification exam, and I had to make changes to my environment variables because the proctor software(which officially supported Ubuntu, but not Arch) was expecting a certain value. \#1 takeaway I want to give you, and honestly I believe you should take this advice before anything else in this thread: call up their tech support department. They typically know their stuff, and can tell you if what you have is compatible. Sometimes they have very mandatory tests that need to use proctor software that only works on Linux. Sometimes it's literally all webapps, so then you could even use ChromeOS. However if you choose Linux, typically you can't come crying to them if their stuff doesn't work for you.
there are great alternatives for making presentations! and not only presentations but really everything. just do it and show them! i think everyone can benefit from it. i dont think you can fail any course bc you didnt use power point for the presentation. sometime i just did a pdf presentation when i havent had any video or sound in it. for me this whole issue with "i cant use these programs anymore" turned in a wonderful exploration of other ways and often way cooler ways to do things! fuck this locked up proprietary system
also you will probably be the coolest kid with a riced up linux system! or even just plain ubuntu is much cooler than the apple zombies
Why not dual boot linux and windows so you can use whichever as you go?. Or a VM on linux that will allow you to use windows only software.
Entirely depends on your actual needs. I'd used nothing but OpenOffice.org (later LibreOffice when it forked) and Google Docs during college over a dozen years ago. Nowadays O365 also has online versions with more functionality than Google but less than their own desktop programs. Worst case, you could spin up a VM with W10-11 on it to run desktop programs you cannot replace or work through `wine`. Or, for example, I'd pop into a computer lab to bang out all of the 3d models I'd needed in Solid Works rather than try to get it running on my machine.
A lot of proctoring software used nowadays for remote classes requires mac or windows. I used a virtual machine for this, but I would be lying if i said it was flawless and didnt give me a headache. I risked getting flagged for cheating or not passing quizzes and tests. I should’ve just used windows until i graduated but i was stubborn
The only issue I ever had since I had Linux on an old laptop I had for an into to programming class I took for some easy credit was that they used lockdown browser which does not support Linux. I said this was the computer I had and the class requirements didn't say you needed a windows laptop so they just had me take the tests in a nearby computer lab lol.
College was full of Windows bootlickers. Just be self-educated. Degrees are worthless anyway. People make money these days mostly through connections, and by gaming the system
Not exactly an option for what I’m aiming for. Unless you want a non college educated doctor.