LibreOffice is good. While people don’t like learning new things, I found it does everything I could want.

I actually switched years ago because I didn’t want to pay for MS Office.

Have you seen any traction with Framework in the corporate space? They are mostly marketed at individuals, but since you specifically mention people wanting higher quality machines, Framework fits the bill.

It was possible to skip Vista and go straight from XP to 7. You could even use the same PC.

It was possible to skip 8 and go straight from 7 to 10. You could even use the same PC.

This time around, Microsoft is forcing Windows 11 as the only option, forcing people to throw away their machines, and it is backfiring on them. People are rejecting it and the competition (Linux) has never been as good as it is today.

The executive also noted that 500 million PCs don’t meet Windows 11’s system requirements

So much unnecessary e-waste. I never want to hear about how ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ Microsoft is again.

Ok, breaking this into a separate post:

Have a friend who does hiring for his team. He told me a story of an interview for an entry level IT position. Obviously the interviewee is not expected to have strong skills for the job, it being entry-level. However, the interviewee had worked as an assistant studying wildlife issues, so my friend asked him various things about that. Unfortunately, the interviewee was unable to share what he did there in any real detail, as if he didn’t fully grasp it himself. That lost him the job, because it was clear he wasn’t able to pick up and retain information.

I ask a bunch of questions about the company, working environment, etc and essentially make them pitch the job to me instead of me pitching myself as an employee.

This is a pretty big deal. It’s a sign you are taking it seriously and intend to stay longer than a year when you find out x thing isn’t what you wanted, because you never bothered to ask.

There is also a social side of this, the other participant feels better about you the more they talk. That isn’t an interview-specific thing, simply a ‘how humans work’ thing. But it’s quite pronounced in interviews because very often the interviewer is doing very little talking.

I have also had good experience asking the interviewer at the very end what I could have done better. I don’t think they get asked that question often as they are normally taken aback a bit, and tend to give very solid feedback, which is critical to improving.

One change I made: I put a skill on my resume I’m only somewhat knowledgeable in, a skill that was only tangential to the job. However, the interviewer happened to be knowledgeable on that and naturally focused on it. When it quickly became obvious I wasn’t terribly knowledgeable on that side thing, it resulted in that lack of knowledge being generalized to everything else. I took that side skill off my resume, and only mention it in passing during the interview to make it more clear that everything on the resume is something I’m solid on, but also I have some side skills which are helpful.

For an external drive? I guess I have never experienced that since external drives are already pretty slow.

Yeah, you will generally have a better time with exFAT, which is a format both Windows and Linux works with well. All my external drives get formatted as such.