Re: comment from g00se
Firstly I didn't mention Windows, you have assumed that – correctly but still an assumption.
We are a business primarily and we use our computers as a tool to help the business to run, we need the desktop and applications to be as stable and predictable as possible to seamlessly enable the staff to get on with their work. Windows OS generally lasts 10 years before end-of-life, most Linux servers are EOLd after only five years and the desktops much less. The various GUI desktop releases undergo more frequent design changes and even more frequent tweaks, moving things around and changing behaviour. Libre Office is pretty good but again the lifecycle is too short between releases, it is being tweaked and you can't always be sure it will behave in the same way over the years. Excel is rock solid in that respect. WSUS is great for centralised patch management, I'm not aware of something that works as well to centrally handle the myriad of Linux Distro and Libre Office patches.
Lets have a look at the LibraOffice 5.0 release schedule
Release 5.0.0 Aug 3, 2015
Release 5.0.1 Aug 24, 2015
Release 5.0.2 Sep 21, 2015
Release 5.0.3 Nov 2, 2015
Release 5.0.4 Dec 14, 2015
Release 5.0.5 Feb 8, 2016
Release 5.0.6 May 2, 2016
End of Life May 29, 2016
For 5.1 it is scheduled for first publishing next week and then the 5.1.6 EOL date is November. Less than 10 months birth to death.
Is that really something which you would want to support in a business environment?
This is before we start talking about bespoke applications, many commercial tools are Windows only. I suspect a lot of this is because of the stability of the platform, it is not continually being updated and the behaviour is well known and fairly stable. A vendor can say with reasonable certainty that their tool will run on a specific list of Windows versions, not so easy to do with the variety of distros and desktops in the Linux world.
Linux is a great idea, LibraOffice is great for a lot of things but I feel that for a stable work environment the Windows infrastructure is a wiser choice. We need office tools which will perform the same and give predictable results in a few years time and users can consistently operate.