About a year ago I made a video about my experience of switching my laptop over
to Linux for a couple of weeks. Spoiler: it didn't work out, although there were
definitely things I liked about it. However, a lot of you got in touch with your ideas so I
thought I'd revisit some of the pain points to see if maybe they could be improved upon.
Welcome back to the Pro Tech Show. Right at the start of the last video I made it clear that I was
evaluating the experience of my specific use case on this specific device. That's still the context
we're talking about; so for anyone who suggested that I'd have had a better experience if I bought
a new laptop that was sold with Linux support explicitly listed by the manufacturer, or if I
stopped interacting with anyone who used Microsoft software, or if I didn't care about encryption...
you're right. You also kind of missed the point! It was never Linux or bust. It was "Does it do a
better job for me than Windows, for what I need to do with this laptop?" Your experience will obviously
be different, based on your own requirements and circumstances. There's one element of feedback I'd
like to address first. A few people suggested the source of all my problems was that I was
using Fedora, and Fedora is far too complicated and difficult. I don't get that... at all. Maybe
it's because the first Linux system I ever used was Fedora Core back in 2003 or 2004, maybe
it's because the majority of the Linux servers I use are Red Hat based, but I don't understand why
people have this idea that Fedora is somehow more scary than other distros. For me, it's familiar. I
find Ubuntu more confusing! But in any case, my deal-breaking issues were not unique to Fedora.
I tested them on more than 10 distros before publishing the video just to be sure, and all
of them were the same. That point made, let's talk about my issues. There were a lot of niggles that I
shared but I solved most of them... even if I had to go trawling through the source code to do it. The
deal-breakers for me were the office applications and the audio. Now, the audio is really interesting.
On this laptop I think it will just always suck on Linux, but I think I know why now and it's really
flipping clever! Before we get to that, let's talk about my issues with the office applications. The
reason I had trouble is that I work with Microsoft Office a lot. More importantly: the people I
interact with work with Microsoft Office a lot. This isn't about which is your favourite office
suite. This is a simple reality that the documents I'm using are saved in the Microsoft format and I
can't just decide I'm going to use something else, because I'm sharing them with other people and
they're using Microsoft. I require compatibility. LibreOffice had some issues. There were a couple
of occasions I'd save something in Fedora and it would be messed up when it went back to Windows.
I also didn't like Evolution. It felt archaic to me. Like going back in time, and not in a fun retro
way. Finally, there is no OneNote client for Linux. I know there are OneNote alternatives but I need to
share actual OneNote notebooks. For the email client and OneNote I just used the web apps instead. Some
of you suggested Geary; but whilst I agree it does feel more modern it doesn't have proper support
for Microsoft Exchange, and I have mailboxes on three different Exchange platforms so that is an
issue for me. Those aren't deal-breakers, though. I do hate being forced to use web apps but it's the
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint compatibility that broke it for me. Some of you suggested that if
Microsoft compatibility was really important to me I should give ONLYOFFICE a try, instead.
Then ONLYOFFICE got in touch to ask if they could sponsor a video... you see where this is going! I get to try out
your suggestion and ONLYOFFICE gets to pay for it, so that's a win-win! I'm going to show you a
couple of issues that tripped me up in LibreOffice and then try them again in ONLYOFFICE because
some of you genuinely seemed to think I was making it up! This way you can go ahead and recreate
it at home if you need to prove it to yourself. I'd also like to be clear that I am not trying
to make any sort of assertion that one office suite is categorically better than the other
in a general sense. I've not compared these feature-for-feature to see which is "the best".
I'm only interested in whether my documents open, edit, and save reliably. That's what I care about.
The first test is an Office 365 user satisfaction survey. I swear I'm not trying to trigger anyone! I
wanted to find a spreadsheet that you'd be able to download as well and I figured that if anyone
had a bunch of publicly available Excel files... it was probably Microsoft! So I searched Google
for Excel file extensions on microsoft.com and this was literally the only result. At least it
should be easy to find, right? In any case, this is what it looks like in Microsoft Office. Note
the formatting on the table. I'm going to open it in LibreOffice and you'll notice the formatting
has disappeared. There's actually a typo here so I'm going to fix that and save the file.
I didn't add the typo, by the way. Download the file yourself - that's all Microsoft. Let's go back to
Windows and you'll see that all of the formatting is gone there too. The data is still fine but if
I opened this in LibreOffice I wouldn't be able to see the formatting so I wouldn't even be aware of
the changes I was making when I saved the file. You can imagine if I was reviewing this for someone
they'd be pretty upset if I nuked their formatting. Now let's give it a go using ONLYOFFICE.
This time the file opens just fine, with all of the formatting intact. If I correct the typo and
go back to Windows it still displays correctly. This is a perfectly workable, compatible scenario.
And, oh yeah: I am going to mention the interface! I think it's fair to say they've taken some design
cues from Microsoft. I can't help but laugh at how blatant it is but you know what? If you're coming
from Microsoft Office this actually helps a lot! This might be an unpopular opinion, but I like the
Microsoft ribbon interface. I know LibreOffice has a ribbon mode as well but it's not quite the same.
ONLYOFFICE's UI designer on the other hand was clearly using tracing paper. They've even matched
the colour schemes on the menu bar: green for Excel, blue for Word, red for PowerPoint. They're clearly
trying to make this an easy drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office, and to be honest it works.
I didn't have to spend time looking for buttons. If you're used to Microsoft they're exactly where you
expect them to be. So... good job? I'm not even sure if I'm complimenting ONLYOFFICE or Microsoft right now!
That's one example but I'll give you another one. This time I'll create a blank PowerPoint
presentation. I'm not going to do anything fancy here. I'm just going to add a whole bunch of
bullet points. This is actually how I plan my videos. I used to have my laptop set up
to prompt me, and whilst I no longer use it like that I found it just happened to work out that
one slide equates to about one minute of video if it's at a readable font size on my laptop. Anyways,
there's a slide. Let's make another and this time I'm just going place a bit of text inside a box -
pretend I'm actually trying to draw something. I've not done anything fancy here. No templates.
This is vanilla as it gets. I've not even changed the font. I'd like you to note it's Calibri. That
will be important in just a moment. I'll save, then jump over to Fedora and open it in LibraOffice.
The first thing I want you to notice is the font. It's Calibri. A lot of you thought that perhaps
my problems might be due to missing fonts, and that's a fair suggestion because out of
the box Fedora won't have the Microsoft fonts installed; and this will cause inconsistencies
in how the text gets rendered. That wasn't my problem, but thanks for the suggestion because
I can imagine that does actually happen a lot. In my case the fonts are installed
and everything looks good. I'll add more bullet points to this slide, and the other one as well,
then I'll save it.
Good. No problem... until I go back to Microsoft-land. Now we have a problem.
It's a basic example but I'm sure you can appreciate how this would be an issue if
I were to tweak a presentation on Fedora, then load it up on a Windows PC to present it, and
suddenly my text is in the wrong place or it's the wrong size and it's disappeared off the screen
or something. Now let's try the same presentation in ONLYOFFICE. It loads fine. I can add some text here.
I can add some text here as well.
I save it.
Still fine on Windows.
Anybody who replied to my last video suggesting I try ONLYOFFICE (and there were a few of you)... award
yourself a gold star. That was a good suggestion; on this... this works for me. ONLYOFFICE seems to
deliver the compatibility I need, and as a bonus it feels modern; and for someone coming from the
Microsoft world it's instantly familiar. I think we solved this problem now let's talk about the
sound. This one's really interesting. As a recap if you didn't watch or can't remember from the
earlier video, this laptop's speakers sound rubbish on Linux. There is no bass at all and the frequency
range is horrible. To be clear I'm not expecting studio quality sound, here. It's a laptop and an
old one at that which wasn't exactly high-end to begin with; but it sounds fine on Windows.
It sounds better with my headphones on, obviously; but the speakers are fine for watching a YouTube
video. Not so on Linux. It's too painful to try and listen to anything. Like it actually causes
me discomfort if I try! I don't have a good way to capture it so here's a simulation of
what it's like. This isn't real audio from it. I'm just trying to communicate how it sounds to me.
This only applies to the onboard speakers. if I stick my headphones and it's fine, so Fedora
is generating the correct signal. It's also not the case that it's missing a speaker somewhere.
I know there have been similar cases where a laptop had a subwoofer that needed some manual
tweaking in order to enable it in Linux. That's not what's happening here. I tried fiddling with
a manual EQ but it was pointless. Anything even remotely on the low end just didn't exist, and
I don't just mean what you'd normally consider to be base - a chunk of the mid-range is missing,
too. So, what's going on? How can Windows generate these frequencies, but Linux can't? Well, it turns
out Windows can't either! The hardware simply isn't capable of it. But if the speakers can't
generate the frequencies how on Earth am I able to hear them? The answer is psychoacoustics... or at
least I'm 99% convinced it is. I can't take credit here. It was one of you guys who got in touch with
this idea. Unfortunately, I can't find the actual email to credit the individual so feel free to
say hi in the comments if it was you. I'm going to do my best to explain this, but this is outside my
field of expertise so please don't kill me if I mess it up a bit. When you create a sound there
are a whole pile of different frequencies that are created beyond just the one you were probably
aiming for. Like say you play middle C on a piano. Middle C has a frequency of 256 Hz.
If you were to look at the waveform of that middle C audio there will be a lot of other frequencies
there as well as your 256 Hz. These are called harmonics. The 256 Hz is called the fundamental
frequency and the harmonics are multiples of that fundamental frequency. You get this with
all instruments. In fact, it's the main reason why different instruments have different tones. If
you play middle C on a trumpet then it's still 256 Hz but you can tell it sounds different
in tone to the piano. This is because the mix of harmonics is different. How does this apply to my
laptop? Dell and Waves collaborated on the audio for this. Whilst at first I thought there must be some
kind of additional proprietary hardware feature that the Linux driver didn't know to activate,
it seems like the difference is all in software. The Waves software knows that these speakers
are limited in terms of the frequencies they can actually generate; so when you try and play a low
frequency sound the software can look at it and go "Nah. That ain't gonna work!" What it does then is it
says to itself "Theoretically, if we were able to play that frequency... what sort of harmonic
frequencies might it create?" These harmonics are multiples of the fundamental frequency, remember,
so although the fundamental frequency is outside the range that the speakers are able to produce
these harmonics aren't. The software then mixes these harmonics into the audio signal to send the
speakers, and what the speakers actually produce is this weird output that has the harmonics without
the actual fundamental frequency our application was trying to create in the first place. This is
the signal that's hitting my ears. There's still no bass in it, but the magic really happens when
my brain starts to interpret it. Your brain is basically an organic computer with autonomous
signal processing, filtering, and error correction capabilities. This is how you're able to have a
conversation with someone in a crowded room. The audio signal of the other person's voice
is being corrupted by background noise but your brain automatically filters and corrects to help
you understand the speech. Back to the laptop. When that weird signal reaches my brain it recognises
the harmonic pattern. It recognises that there's a fundamental frequency that should be associated
with this pattern and it basically error-corrects the signal, so I perceive the fundamental frequency
even though it never actually reaches my ears. The psychoacoustic algorithm is tricking my brain
into hearing frequencies that aren't there. When it knows Windows is asking for a frequency the
speakers cannot produce, it cheats by creating a pattern for which my brain will fill in the
gaps to create the desired sound inside my head. That's really clever and it works so well I had no
idea these speakers were so useless until I tried to run it on Linux and there was no psychoacoustic
magic to track my brain. Unfortunately, this is highly proprietary. There is no Linux version
of this and Waves dropped their limited support for Linux on the MaxxAudio software
this is based on a long time ago. So the chance of them resurrecting it and then back-porting
the technology to create a psychoacoustic Linux driver for a laptop this old? That's not going
to happen! So where does that leave me, today? Of the deal-breaking problems, we have solved the
most impactful one. ONLYOFFICE lets me jump back and forth between Windows and Linux and share
documents with Microsoft Office. That's a win for the core office apps. The non-core apps (Outlook and
OneNote) are still an issue, but they weren't deal-breakers. Having to use Evolution or the
web apps is a degradation to my user experience; but remember we've only talked about problems in
this video. In my original video there were quite a few things I liked about Linux, so whilst this is a
degradation it is cancelled out by the benefits I experienced using Linux. The audio, though...
I can't do it! It is physically uncomfortable just to watch a YouTube video without Waves'
funky brain trickery compensating for the speakers. Oo Windows is staying... on this laptop, at least. It is
getting old. There will be future laptops. Future laptops that are not reliant on psychoacoustic
black magic. Linux keeps getting closer to being a usable desktop operating system for me. It's not
going to replace my desktop computer - I have far too many dependencies there; but my next laptop?
I guess you'll have to subscribe to find out! In the meantime if you're wondering
why someone might choose one or the other here are five reasons Microsoft is too good
to ignore, and here are 5 reasons Linux is too good to ignore. Be greedy: use both!