- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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This is very upsetting to me–more as a point of principle than in fact–but I appreciate that it doesn’t bother younger generations at all. I just had a small argument with my 11 year old about how not-a-big-deal-who-cares this is, and it basically ended with us agreeing to disagree since it’ll be his problem and his kids’ problem.
And the problem is normalizing the notion that an OS doesn’t need to include a non-subscription word processor. The entire point of this move is to shift the OS Overton Window in favor of consumers accepting and expecting that features like word processors, spreadsheets, etc., should be installed separately and paid for on a subscription basis despite previous iterations of the same software being feature complete on install and purchased at a set, non-recurring fee.
WordPad hasn’t been anybody’s first choice for a word processor in years, but it was included with Windows and did the bare minimum for unsophisticated users. Now we’re entering an era in which those users will as a matter of course buy off-the-shelf computers that come pre-installed without WordPad, but rather with a trial of Office Fuck-You-Pay-Me Edition. Those users may well discover that after their first six months with their new computer (that has made Microsoft more money selling their data than they paid for it), they suddenly get a pop-up informing them that their trial is up and MS wants $99.99 to release the documents they’re holding hostage.
It’s a step backwards for consumers in general, so even for the sophisticated of us who are least likely to be personally affected by this change, there’s definitely cause for alarm.
I get where you’re coming from but I think you’re overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it’d be a big deal. Now it’s rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.
Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.
I’m less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it’s products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That’s the real problem - not losing WordPad.
At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it’s allowed to get away with abusing it’s dominant position to force it’s products on consumers.
Does liber office make .docx files and export to pdf?
Yes.
Does liber office make .docx files and export to pdf?
It does. It’s fine as a replacement for Word, but no one has an answer for Excel. LibreOffice Calc is fine for a basic spreadsheet, but Excel is in a completely different universe than Calc with anything beyond that.
To be fair though, Excel is in a completely different universe than literally any other competing product.
Just use SQL. Even SQLite.
I built a new PC two months ago and it’s the first time I didn’t get Office. Libre Office has everything I need and it’s free.
Advertise and push Foss substitutes like libreoffice.
could go a step further and bin windows altogether.
granted, it’s a big step for most.
Love Linux, love windows. 'ate mac, simple as.
Be part of the 3%! Join today!
Likely scenario, honestly.
I really don’t worry about it, though.
Not to brag, but it doesn’t bother me.
Understand, there is a solution.
X marks the spot.(Yeah, I know, that’s kind of stupid. But it seemed funny in my head.)
I can’t read you
I’ve given everything, but you seem distant
I can’t feel you
Your heart is somewhere else, it’s missin’
What if I read back to you?
You have a piece, but there’s two
Someone please get this reference.
I disagree. I don’t think a rich text editor should be part of the OS as it’s not there to operate the computer. An OS should be the tools to run applications and manage your computer. There are a bunch of apps which are so small that it makes sense to include them - like a calculator and text editor, but everything else should be optional.
There should be an OS out there for you which doesn’t come with a rich text editor. [If there is ever a time to mention GNU+Linux in a MS thread then now is that time.] For most people however, not including it is a needless barrier to entry.
Then they ask their grandson or work it dept what they should do and both will answer libre office is free
Why in gods name don’t you use libre office. It’s so much better than word and excel for rent
Because libre office is not compatible with many others. You can open it sure but there’s no guarantee that opening .doc or .docx will have broken formatting. Not good for those in the academia or workplace where formatting are strictly enforce.
Absolute bullshit. Microsoft moved to the Open Office document standard after they were forced to and Libre is renown for its ability to open Microsoft’s documents without issue. I have opened countless personally.
Do yourself a favour and get off the junk office suite that hasn’t received a functional update in the last 10 years that wasn’t to improve its rent charging capacity.
I used it for my damn resume because I didn’t have word, didn’t need office. I also liked it because when friends asked me to review a document I could open word documents with it, I would do that sometimes even when I had office because WordPad opened faster and I didn’t need perfect formatting.
I think it is safe to say that your 11 year old is factually wrong lol. But it is okay that they don’t understand how bad this is because the concept of how multiple businesses have switched to subscription based models even in places we wouldn’t expect, like a monthly subscription allowing already installed hardware in your car to actually function, cause it’s just 11 year Olds don’t have a great concept of bills and money at that level yet. I say wait for their first complaint of it as an adult and then put on your carefully choreographed and practiced “I told you so” dance
Okay kidding aside I think it is absolutely wonderful this is something you didn’t just have a conversation with your young kid about but that you had to agree to disagree, you sound like a fantastic parent who actually fosters a relationship with their kid. And probably only rarely says I told you so.
Honestly, what is the point of Wordpad when you have Notepad and Word?
Not all of us have Word, and Notepad doesn’t have rich text or the ability to open .doc files.
Abiword is FOSS and would be my choice over Wordpad anyway.
It has been literally twenty years since I last heard any mention of Abiword!
I probably haven’t thought if it for like 10 years myself but this post reminded me of it. I remember maybe 15 years ago using a portable version of it on a USB drive, and it was amazing.
Honestly I’m not too bummed, especially with open-source solutions like Notepad++, but it’s the end of an era! Also, Word is paid, and so Windows not having a built in free RTF editor is notable
I’m a little surprised they didn’t kill it sooner.
Also try editing unix or Mac line endings in notepad
lightweight notes with margins
I use notepad super often as a copy edit paste aid. It loads in a millisecond.
of course, gotta push more people to that godawful office 365 crap somehow
Seriously, the market share of Wordpad users is so small Microsoft absolutely does not care
This place really hates MS. Can’t believe some of the comments here.
MS has a history which informs what their fututre actions are likely to be. If you can’t believe the comments here perhaps you have not heard that history. If you have then consider that lemmy is free software and so you’re more likely to find that way of thinking here.
My goto for distrust of MS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Thank you for the link to embrace, extend, extinguish. You really can’t point it out enough because it’s become the de facto business plan for so many tech companies.
As for myself, after 30 years on MS starting with DOS and fifteen on Mac (concurrent, lol), I’m finally exploring Linux with the end goal of getting off both in terms of desktop computing. I am absolutely convinced MS is trying to head toward an OS subscription model if there’s any possible way they can get away with it, and I want to get off any dependency on their products before they do. Apple hasn’t been nearly as bad for me personally, but as long as I’m moving in a FOSS direction I might as well do those too. Plus, Linux is so light you can run it on truly old hardware, like the 13 year old Macbook with 4 GB of RAM I’m using as a test box.
Cool thing is that Linux believes in live trials, so you download your distro for free, load it up on a thumb drive, and spin it around without installing a thing until you want to, doing this as many times as you like without cost. And the experience is unbelievably full and fast on the most minimal hardware imaginable.
I haven’t decided on a distro yet, still testing them out, but I’m honestly starting to wonder why I waited so long to start exploring the alternatives, because they’re appealing as hell, much more so than yet another disappointing ad-filled Windows release.
My goto for distrust of MS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
There’s not a single reference on that page that’s less than 20 years old. Yes, Microsoft did some anticompetitive stuff back when Bill Gates was CEO, but it’s absurd to suggest that that still “informs what their future actions are likely to be”. A lot has changed since the 1990s.
What has changed which means they should be forgiven or trusted during these 20 years? What does a Linux subsystem for Windows prove? They want users to run Linux apps in Windows so their users will be less tempted to not use Windows… so they can add more anti features for profit.
I guess you are completely unaware of the fact that a huge chunk of the Azure infrastructure runs on linux now. MS also knows that in the enterprise space, companies use linux in their server infrastructure also, so their employees need to be able to work in linx as well. MS has versions of SQL and I believe also exchange that run on linux. WSL isn’t just about appease neckbeard wannabes.
I don’t understand why MS using Linux gives you trust in MS. MS leaked documents (over 20 years ago too) showed they considered free software a serious competitior (including Linux). Makes sense they would use it, so what?
I was working in the industry like I do now when that happened. I was disappointed the antitrust trial didn’t break up MS into three companies. Things have changed there. I guess we should dig into your past and hold everything you’ve did 20 years ago against you?
Ballmer was the driving force behind that mentality and he’s been gone from MS for a very long time.
Would breaking up big tech software companies have the same effect as it does with regular companies? I can’t shake the idea it won’t really work. People don’t want the 2nd best free (gratis) mapping software.
I guess we should dig into your past and hold everything you’ve did 20 years ago against you?
If one has not tried to sincerely make amends or doesn’t appear to have changed then it’s resonable take past actions into consideration?? I still see Microsoft making anti-consumer moves and they ain’t making Windows free software (free as in freedom).
Apple is a LOT worse than Microsoft these days
Not to mention the amount of people who think this is about notepad.
I would have never thought so many people would be pissed about Wordpad. Fucking Wordpad! It’s terrible! And Ms isn’t killing it to get office subscriptions because no one fucking uses it! They’re killing it because it isn’t worth the effort to maintain. There are so many free alternatives that are better.
I don’t like Apple but they ship their devices with everything a basic user needs and if a high quality, completely for free. When you get a MacBook you don’t need to worry about finding and downloading an external app for almost anything - from viewing any kind of file, to basic photo and video editing, to document processing, etc. And they don’t track every minute thing you do and act like malware to try to make you use their products.
Except for a calculator on iPads.
Indeed
" And they don’t track every minute thing you do and act like malware to try to make you use their products."
LOL ok
And they don’t track every minute thing you do
You sure about that? I just bought my mom a new iPad Air yesterday and the setup process was maddeningly privacy invading. Name, address, and phone number just to install anything from the Apple store. Both me and my mom, who’s not tech savvy at all, thought it was crazy the amount of info we had to put in just to get a usable device.
and act like malware to try to make you use their products.
There was also so many preloaded garbage apps installed by default. Why are apps like Measure there? Yes when I want to measure something…I reach for an iPad…instead of…you know…a tape measure… Just because they’re first party apps doesn’t make this okay. Also, Apple’s ecosystem is famous for vendor lock-in.
They may not be as blatant about it as Google is, but they’re every bit as bad tbh.
Tracking I will give you (based on current information…).
But Microsoft has semiregularly been investigated for antitrust and monopolies over baking too much into the os. Hence splitting it out
They weren’t investigated for antitrust for baking stuff into the OS - it was for monopolizing various sectors and strong arming users and competitors. They’re allowed to have their own browser preinstalled, they just have to let you switch easily and remove it etc.
They are literally in the process of needing to unbundle Teams from office in Europe.
Regardless of the reasoning, MS has had eyes on it since the 90s and need to be incredibly careful what they do and don’t bundle together or preinstall. Whereas Apple can do whatever they want. That is why Apple comes with a bunch of shitty office products that only one person at any given company uses and Windows comes with a link to download them.
Lol overpriced locked down PoS os
Am completely expecting this to be due to falling office sales or fear that people will realize they don’t need expensive Office every few years when WordPad has 90% of functionality for daily use.
I expect this will make a lot of people very angry since I know many users of WordPad.
If you think WordPad is a replacement for Ms word then the reality is that you don’t do anything that requires word/write.
And I am assuming you just mean word and not excel or PowerPoint because… Yeah
They changed their licensing and specifically for robot users so I suspect it’s to funnel those users into licenses which is a lot more than consumers.
Microsoft announced today that it will deprecate WordPad with a future Windows update as it’s no longer under active development
I wonder what changes they’ve made to wordpad over the last 10 years… how many people have been working on it and stuff.
This sort of implies that Notepad is still under active development. That’s weird to think about.
Notepad is, in fact, under active development. They recently upgraded find and replace so it works 90% of the time instead of 30% and added some annoying restore session by default feature. not to mention tabs
I hadn’t noticed tabs! I’ll have to check that shit out!
I’d never had an issue with find and replace, but then I tend to install notepad++ straight away.
I am forced to use windows 11 in some capacity for work and the notepad on it is actually really nice.
I can see a notepad update that quietly comes with a system update then turns on one drive without asking you and then uploading every text file on your computer to the cloud for them to train their bing AI bullshit on and scrape for data they can use to add to your advertising profile.
it will deprecate WordPad with a future Windows update as it’s no longer under active development
It doesn’t need “active development” because it is perfect the way it is. Unix/Linux has tons of useful programs that haven’t been in active development for 40-50 years.
I haven’t been using Wordpad for 20+ years. Notepad could do everything it does already. Then, you also have Firefox’s built-in inspect to tinker with code on the fly.
They must not be able to spy on people thru it
Only thing I used it for was when older versions of Notepad couldn’t handle larger text files. Now it can. So, no loss to me. Notepad going away would suck, that does at least get occasional use although Notepad++ is far superior.
Genuinely curious—why would someone choose to use notepad++ over something like VSCode in 2023?
I can’t say I’ve used n++ in over a decade when I switched to sublime around 2010, moved again to VSCode about 5 years ago
VSCode uses electron so it’s not exactly a lightweight text editor, way overkill if you just want to read a simple .txt. Add on the fact if you got way too many extension, it will be even heavier.
NP++ is more lightweight and has some useful stuff builtin and easier to justify to IT dept to than a full IDE 🤷
Personally I prefer pycharm and Atom for my home needs.
Justifying it to IT makes a lot of sense actually. Particularly if you need extensions. I’m lucky I get admin on my laptop where I work
Interesting you’re using atom, actually! Is it still getting much love? I assumed development would go by the wayside once Microsoft bought GitHub a few years ago (as VSCode is almost an identical product)
Yeah it’s on my personal machine, I use it alongside pycharm but it’s (atom) not my main IDE, I keep it because of a few things it does. I disagree vscode is the same, it’s a poorer implementation of pycharm IMHO. Just my opinion though everyone is different in workspace.
I’m interested in what differs from atom about VSCode in your opinion.
Wasn’t VSCode a fork of atom originally?edit: apparently not! When I was picking between the two about 5 years ago, they seemed almost identical to meI’m personally not a big fan of heavy IDEs like the jetbrains products, so VSCode being lighter than pycharm (or any of the IDEA products) is a bonus to me.
Look at Atom community. Speed to load is night and day.
For me, Vscode feels like a cheaper pycharm which is my primary IDE and wouldn’t change as I’ve tried vscode as an alt and it wasn’t good enough for how I work.
Fair play, everyone’s different, I work with another guy who swears by the jetbrains stuff, but it just seems very clunky to me every time I’ve tried it.
I’ll have to give atom another look then, though I’d say VSCode starts in about a second on my machine, so startup time alone probably wouldn’t be a reason for me to switch
N++ can search for a string in a directory full of files, that’s what I use it for. Also helpful for showing unprintable characters like linefeeds or changing bit order mode, I’m not sure vs code can do any of that.
For writing code, though, I do use vs code
IIRC you can do both of those with VSCode, I think even without any extensions too!
The search sidebar has include and exclude fields for directories to search in.
For showing unprintable characters, I think it’s split into two settings: one for whitespace one for control characters like null and bell
I wasn’t aware of that, I’ll have to check it out. Thank you.
Honestly, this blows. WordPad fills a niche between a full blown text editor and notepad. Most of my random daily notes use WordPad still when not OneNote.
Notepad++ was a good alternative when I was running Windows
That’s an alternative to Notepad, not for Wordpad that has basic word processing formatting.
Wow someone was using this?
I recently started using a markdown based note taking program called Joplin, that might be useful for you
I don’t get why they aren’t retiring notepad instead. WordPad is just as light and fast while having more features.
Not that I really care, I never touch either ever since MS basically stopped developing them 25 years ago. Notepad++, atom, etc, there are so many superb lightweight editors out there.
Probably don’t use Atom though seeing as it was sunset at the end of 2022
RIP WordPad coders.
Not to worry my dear Wordpad coders: Neovim is a good alternative. One can always set wrap and the default font to Times New Roman.
I used WordPad so much growing up. I fucking HATED Word and the office applications as a kid, WordPad just worked and just did writing, which is what I wanted to do.
As long as they leave Notepad. I use it almost daily.
It was lighter than word or libre and had formatting, unlike simple word editors like notepad++. Bummer to see it go but surely there is (or will be) an alternative
If they remove sticky notes I’m going to lose my shit.
