It's not necessarily a "drop in" replacement but I've found the Proton suite of Docs and now Spreadsheets works relatively well... Is that's all you need.

But other than that, G Suite is hard to quit...

I like only office and yes Linux is great to switch to. With nostr, you’ll get a lot of answers to questions fast to help you transition to Linux.

nostr:npub10hpcheepez0fl5uz6yj4taz659l0ag7gn6gnpjquxg84kn6yqeksxkdxkr is an alternative to ChatGPT

Great question. I’m curious to hear what others have to say.

I have many of the same questions as nostr:nprofile1qqstcqhq5mq0qxkeedt69v8ca7pyr0zll9uuu3zje60zg00y2a6kwfgpzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue0qyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtczumau6 I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Thanks! 😀👊

#asknostr

nostr:nevent1qqswlfgcahauya6qyfqyl92yh4reppt4m7cnjeqzl0xl7ymjgt0y25qpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgn0gw8v

Use libreoffice! I'd highly encourage you to orient yourself to the goal of moving as many docs & workflows as you can into plain text so you may ascend to computational wizard 🧙‍♀️

another vote for Maple AI. Please don't let Sam Altman harvest your thoughts 😫

One of my goals this year is to wean myself from Google Docs for all professional data if at all possible so I'm curious to see how Libre (or alternative) goes for you.

Try a Linux Mint live cd

Don’t expect a replacement equivalent to Windows but doing everything is possible

libre office is great. you can run it on Linux MINT and it's a Windows like experience anyway. installation is easy if you have a spare USB stick lying around.

I'd use PPQ.ai to whine at chatGPT. at least then you have a privacy buffer in between you and the model. so you're doing it through the browser rather than a dedicated app.

you can use a graphene phone to replace Google but I pick just one of these things and do it first. either the phone or the laptop.

just take a small step to start with and then when your life seems normally livable again, do the next thing.

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7ct4w35zumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6qg0waehxw309ahxjup3xuhxxmmdqqsdngef474mycag4usksw8tghslqnxrqqrsg3jfglztjplphm6cp4c7auuy5 and I would recommend looking at LibreOffice for sure. Depending on if you're writing novels or not, we can also recommend Obsidian with Longform (as that's what we use for our novels we wrote separately).

As for Linux, I'd take a look at Mint, Pop_OS!, or probably Fedora. Don't use a WM (window manager, or keyboard-driven environment) at this point.

When it comes to Google, I'd highly recommend taking a look at Proton or Tuta, though Tuta actually censors based upon German law (as they're German). Proton is good, however, they have some corporate baggage.

I'd switch out of ChatGPT to something like Qwen or Grok, considering that GPT is unethical out the wazoo.

Either one of us would be happy to help you out with the rest.

Swapping over to Linux may be good, but comes with user experience caveats like having to update packages and "coding" in the command prompt.

Libre office is a great alternative to Office.

My biggest reason for not switching is because I play games and they don't run great on Linux, even in 2026.

Love the initiative ! Keep it up!

Linux is easy enough, you can install it side by side to Windows until you feel you can completely make the switch!

I have used Mint and Ubuntu, both very good options for beginners.

Libre Office, Browser, E-Mail are mostly all I need, so no need for Windows at all.

Just play around with it, totally worth it!

I switched from Windows / Office to Linux Mint / Libre a couple of months ago. It's all good. You can use them side by side before you decide to go all in on Linux. Libre is fine for word processing and spreadsheets.

If using just for general life management Linux mint it great, comes preinstalled with libreoffice and thunderbird (opensourse Mozilla email client that will likely be compatible with your email set up).

I manage all of my personal affairs with libreoffice. Works great.

A piece of advice, install on an older machine, or if buying a new machine don’t buy the latest and greatest. You will likely get hardware compatibility issues. It takes time for Linux drivers to catch up.

If you use Linux mint, install it on hardware that is say 2 years old, and you are reasonably good at using AI to troubleshoot, it should be a relatively easy to change over.

Before jumping from one powerful word processor to another, you might try something simpler and see if it works for you. I'm a huge fan of Typora, which is a clean, minimalist app that lets me focus on writing and not on aligning bullet points or tab stops. It works on Windows and Linux. It uses markdown for formatting like boldface (easy to learn), and it can export to Word, PDF, HTML, and other formats, as well as importing Word etc.

I agree with people who say using a GrapheneOS phone for a while is a good step toward Linux. You get used to using a lighter, cleaner system on your phone, and you start to want the same experience on your computer.