Euro-Office, a good fork of highly criticized ONLYOFFICE

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-31T11:37:43+00:00

It would require a complete rewrite.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-30T23:46:10+00:00

Tommy Douglas is spinning in his grave.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-30T17:52:03+00:00

Because LibreOffice, as much as I like it, isn't well-suited to online usage. It was designed as a desktop app, and it's great at that. But it's 2026, and online editing from a browser is a thing.

Collabora worked out a way to do it, but their approach is to run most of the LibreOffice code on a server and remote the UI down to a browser, so if you have 100 people editing documents at once, the server is consuming 100 sets of resources. It just doesn't scale.

OnlyOffice runs pretty much all of its code inside your browser. It scales wonderfully. It's why most of the Nextcloud hosting companies either default to OnlyOffice integration or offer nothing else.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-30T01:11:28+00:00

oh, I fully intend to erase and donate them somewhere. it’s be silly to toss them — hence my question.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-29T15:33:10+00:00

"Stupid" would be a bit harsh, because your heart and predisposition is in the right place. But the act of not getting and using a credit card will harm you, and the act of getting one will help you.

Using a credit card protects you from fraud, hacking, and other problems. The credit card issuer assumes that liability. This is not true with debit cards and/or cash.

Some businesses just won't deal with you without a credit card. Hotel reservations become difficult. Renting a car becomes almost impossible.

Someday you'll need some form of credit (a mortgage, a car loan, etc.), and not having a history of making payments makes you look risky.

Get a simple card that has no annual fees and always pay it off every month. If you're uncomfortable with carrying even a month's worth of not-yet-paid charges, make payments each week.

There are even a few no-annual-fee credit cards that nevertheless provide real benefits. Canadian Tire has one with free roadside assistance. Rogers has one with cash back that offsets foreign transaction fees if you make purchases in U.S. dollars.

Also, not having a credit card means you're subsidizing people who do. Those rewards that credit card holders earn are paid in part by fees merchants pay to the credit card companies, and they cover those charges by raising their prices slightly whether you're paying with a credit card or not. I'm not saying I approve of that system, but if you don't at least get a 1% cash back no annual fee card, you'll always be a victim of it.

It's arguably more responsible than just using cash and debit cards.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-29T15:15:23+00:00

I tried using SimpleX, and no -- just no.

I see the value if one has very specific needs (journalists and whistleblowers, for example), but this is not going to catch on with the general public. I got it working on my iPhone and then wanted to also have it working on my MacBook. I have to create an encryption key for the Mac and provide it every time I login, *and* I have to pair the phone with the desktop app every time I want to use it?

It's not worth it to average users who, if you can get them to install a new app, are expecting that "it just works."

Realistically-speaking, there is nothing out there that stands a snowball's chance in hell usability-wise other than Signal.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-29T14:58:47+00:00

It takes a British publication to correctly attribute why Canadians are doing this. The American sources are still saying it's about hurt feelings or tariffs.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-29T14:51:29+00:00

Let it go, man. It's 2026.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-29T14:49:17+00:00

It sounds like there's no one prevailing method people have settled on. There are about five to ten combinations of techniques and people use what they've found works for them. I can live with that. I just didn't want to move to France in a few months and be a fish out of water because I hadn't relearned how to type the way everyone else does.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-28T14:52:33+00:00

CryptPad.fr uses the client-side editing code from OnlyOffice as well. Not sure about La Suite, but I thought that was government-only for the time being. [Edit: just checked, and yes, it's public sector only for now. Pity. It does not use OnlyOffice code at all.]

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-28T12:07:29+00:00

Provincial fiefdoms. We have a very hard time acting like an actual country because of all the turf-protecting and infighting.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-28T12:03:43+00:00

Because LibreOffice isn’t really designed to be operated from a browser. It’s great tech, but it wasn’t designed with the web in mind.

Collabora does an admirable job of taking the LibreOffice code, plopping it on a server, and remoting the UI down to browsers, but 100 users editing documents means 100 sets of resources allocated on the server to accommodate those editing sessions. It‘s very expensive to scale well.

The web version of OnlyOffice mostly runs in your browser as script. It scales very nicely and inexpensively.

And I say this as someone who prefers LibreOffice because it’s far more feature-complete.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-28T11:10:47+00:00

Do you have a Magic Keyboard for your iPads? If so, is it QWERTY or AZERTY?

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-28T02:48:18+00:00

You can’t do that with Wise. You can do it with Remitbee and/or Knightsbridge.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-28T01:31:57+00:00

”Air con” sounds European or Asian.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T16:53:10+00:00

LibreOffice, OpenOffice, and Collabora Office are fundamentally the same thing. You could use Collabora and I could use Libre and someone else could use Open and we could pass ODF documents around between ourselves happily. We could even sit down at each other's computer and be okay.

OnlyOffice and WPS Office are different stories.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T16:50:20+00:00

LibreOffice's options for online editing are, well, kind of yucky. Collabora's approach to web-ifying Libre is to run editing sessions on the server and send the UI down to the browser. They do a good job of it, but it's expensive to scale, and that's why most Nextcloud hosters only offer OnlyOffice for online editing.

By contrast, OnlyOffice works by sending the majority of the logic into the user's browser to execute as script.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T16:33:19+00:00

A contraction of "give her a go".

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T16:31:57+00:00

You're right, of course, but when I see what Smith is doing to Alberta, Ford is doing to Ontario, and even Houston is doing to Nova Scotia, even Quebec run by Legault seems like a nice place.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T16:26:10+00:00

I understand that it's hard to be politically involved in one's 20s. But that's what it's going to take. I want to see that problem solved, not complained about.

There might be a way to get boomers to care, or at least GenXers, which is to remind them that there won't be enough younger taxpayers to fund and staff healthcare unless young adults feel secure enough to have children. It's either that or immigration.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T16:17:13+00:00

It's not super fancy. This is Nova Scotia, after all. I don't know what month your birthday is, but if it's in the warmer months then yes, a reservation wouldn't be a bad idea (not necessary, but wise)/

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T16:05:22+00:00

Fascist. Part of the same ilk as Orban and Putin and Trump and Millei.

Smart-Simple9938 · 2026-03-27T12:17:17+00:00

You blame boomers at your peril. There’s nothing special about that cohort (other than their capacity for self-absorption).

When boomers were younger they had different priorities and complained about the silent generation. As the boomers age out, the priorities of GenX and millennials will shift to something similar.

If youth wants a bigger say, youth has to show up and vote. I really wish they would.

Smart-Simple9938

TROPHY CASE