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Microsoft Office 2019 Will Only Work on Windows 10 (theverge.com)
Microsoft on Thursday provided an update on Office 2019, in which it revealed that the apps will only run on Windows 10. From a report: In a support article for service and support of Windows and Office, Microsoft has revealed you'll need to upgrade to Windows 10 if you want the latest version of Office without subscribing to the company's Office 365 service. It's a move that's clearly designed to push businesses that are holding off on Office 365 into subscriptions, as the standalone Office 2019 software will only be supported on Windows 10 and not Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 machines. Microsoft is also altering the support lifecycle for Office 2019, so it will receive 5 years of mainstream support and then "approximately 2 years of extended support."
By showing a "better" (ahem) OS, then kill it off by writing your "best" (cough) software to only run on your newest OS.
Been that way for decades from MS. Nothing new.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I can't imagine business standing for this. I'm sure many would run Office 2016 for 10 years if they had to.
Will Microsoft have Windows on a subscription model soon?
They already do for bigger businesses, it's called "software assurance". Believe you me, if/when they could figure out how to force smaller business users into subscription Windows they will. There's a reason that the commercial software publishers (Adobe, Autodesk, etc.) are all going subscription based, hint, it's not because it's better for consumers. It's because it's much more lucrative for them. These people are in business to make money, which means taking yours. They've just gotten better at it.
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protip: it works very well with older MS formats, e.g. Office 97 Excel/Word documents... docx and xlsx formats.... not so much. My experience has been that it tends to crash pretty often with those, so consider saving a working copy in either native or old-microsoft formats.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Well I guess you may be able to take a few days to get Wine setup to handle it.
However that is what my experience is.
The Boss gets a document to you and it is slightly screwed up (off fonts, or spacing) they Demand that they send it in that format. You open the file and save it and it goes off again.
Then they find out that you are not Using the newest version of office. So you have an option, upgrade to Office, or downgrade your job.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
From my cold dead hands
Google docs has some advantages but overall is imperfect. For home use I see nothing wrong with LibreOffice. I think the dominance of MS Office is nearly over. If I still ran a small office I might even be able to use LibreOffice these days.
ZIP
Each successive version of every piece of Microsoft software becomes more and more useless. I don't see any point in upgrading, ever.
If I have a boss that demands I use the latest version of Microsoft Office for producing documents, and does not provide that to me on the company provided computer, then I believe you've created a false dichotomy with "upgrade to Office, or downgrade your job". Most any job would be an upgrade from that.
My work experience has been primarily in educational institutions and large technology centered corporations. In both settings there was a strong leaning on Microsoft technologies, and also a strong tendency to avoid the upgrade treadmill. Skipping versions was the norm. If Microsoft comes out with a new OS and/or Office suite every three years or so, and provides support for six years, then we'll see an upgrade on new systems every six years. New computers that come in with the latest Microsoft product would be downgraded to the standard or the company would simply tolerate supporting the last two (or even three) versions of Microsoft products. If my boss in one of these companies demands that the latest and greatest version of a Microsoft product be used then I'd point to the company policy on supported file formats. He cannot demand the use of the latest and greatest as that would mean half the company would be unable to open the file and read it as intended.
Even with these companies I've worked for having a strong leaning on Microsoft there is enough corporate memory on past efforts of supporting proprietary file formats that any document of any importance must be archived in a standardized format. This usually means ASCII text. If there is a need for some formatting then the text will have markup in LaTeX, HTML, or be stored as a PDF.
That's your experience compared to my own. The question I have, and pose to the reader, which is more likely for others to experience? Your situation, or my own? In my experience the computer and software I needed was provided to me at company expense. It appears that in your experience the boss would demand the use of a proprietary and fresh off the shelf file format, and demanded that you pay for the software yourself on a computer that I also assume you had to buy as well. If he expects you to buy the latest Microsoft software from your own pocket then, again, most any job would be an upgrade from that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Using LibreOffice (and previously OpenOffice) for over 10 years here.
Dealing with a bunch of other businesses (I do consulting) and never an issue here.
I get that there are certain features that some companies use (like VBA macros in spreadsheets) that dont work, but really for the vast majority (i'd say 85%+) LibreOffice is good enough. If you want pixel-perfection Word is not the solution in any case.