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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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Including starting LibreOffice Writer. This is on a 5400RPM HDD and Writer was definitely not cached, since I haven't opened it in days.
Now how long did it take to start MS Word on my laptop again?
I think you and many of the downvoters are missing my point:
If the default setting leads me to an UI, where I, an average user, needs so long to find such a basic function, then the UI is bad. And I am very patient, but if you want to convince the average MS Office user, that Linux + LibreOffice is an alternative, then it needs to be better then this.
And I am obviously disappointet that they hired someone with a focus on MacOS and not Linux, where a big UI/UX overhaul would be needed. It sais in the article, that the new hire will also look at overall improvements beside MacOS, but that won't be enough to polish the UX to the point where people would prefer LibreOffice over MS Office.
Can you remember the first time you used any MS office software ? Yeah that's right, like a toddler trying to stand up and walk for the first time...
We are so used to MS that we can't switch to anything else, because evey other software doesn't do it the "same way as MS".
It's not a question if LibreOffice works the same as MS Office, but how much time you're willing to invest to learn a new tool that isn't Microsoft.
If your 30 years MS experience isn't able to switch paradigm with that change, that's okay... Just stay with Microsoft and let the newer generation take the lead :)
I am not sure about that.
The default UI is similar to the old MS Office Word and the new alternative (which from what I remember, LibreOffice actually asks you to choose from in a dialogue on first start, so you don't need to look through menus to set your preference) uses the newer tabbed paradigm.
And while I do prefer the new one, I didn't find the old one any harder than MS Office Word 2003 or the older version that came around Win 98.
The only thing that made me different from the average user back then, was that I actually read and understood user prompts before clicking "Next" or whatever.
To add one datapoint: I actually installed LibreOffice just now just to try it out. I went via
Format > Page Style > General [this tab was open by default] > Orientation: Landscape
If that is the correct way, then it was, IMO, hard to miss and fast to find. If it was the wrong way*, however then I'd say I find the menu labels misleading.
*I am not quite sure, because the dialogue had the Title "Page Style: Default Page Style", so I would have expected pages in new documents to now start out in landscape orientation, but I opened a new document, and the page was in portrait orientation. So, I think I did what I tried to do in spite of that (misleading?) dialogue title.