The story so far: Rosamund’s father has become ensnared by Mr. Shabby’s extraordinary personal magnetism. Bob and Janet have eaten Mr. Farquar’s goldfish during an Oxfam lunch, and Mrs. Elsmore’s marriage is threatened by Doug’s insistence that he is on a different level of consciousness. Louise’s hernia has been confirmed, and Jim, Bob’s brother, has run over the editor of the ‘Lancet’ on his way to see Jenny, a freelance Pagoda designer. On the other side of the continent Napoleon still broods over the smoldering remains of a city he had crossed half the earth to conquer…

I am not, but can you lend me a bob until next Thursday to mend the shed? I am expecting a postal order and can pay you back as soon as it comes. Love, Ewan.

If I had money, I promise I’d do something useful with it. Like putting up a shed in my garden.

That’s so weird, I’m 7 years older and I still look like a child, comparatively

LibreOffice is good. Very good even. I just wish Calc always had a 1-to-1 feature parity with Excel for it’s formulas, it would make it so much easier to collaborate on a spreadsheet with others. I think I had to wait a few years on e.g. XLOOKUP.

Interesting, how would that work if your corporate IT department uses an (Azure/Entra) active directory system? Can you use a bare metal Linux OS on a Microsoft-based domain service? Asking out of ignorance and curiosity.

As an engineer, all my jobs so far have used niche internal corporate software which would only be available for Windows. This would be Document Management Systems (DMS’s), internal reporting tools (progress and hour keeping), software distribution programs etc.

And of course the engineering tools themselves are often only built for Windows, whether it’s proprietary PLC programming environments or CAD software.

That said, I can run both WSL and a corporate-approved Debian VM on the same work laptop as a compromise, for whatever makes sense for the task. Still sucks though! At home I’m a Debian fanboy 4 lyfe.