You Don't Need Microsoft in Your Life
THE generation that I grew up in was not a 'Microsoft zombie' generation. As kids, we mostly used DOS, and not even Microsoft DOS (MS-DOS). Windows became widely used much later, for nefarious reasons covered here in past years, and schools began conflating computer education with training for Microsoft, typically targeting something like "Word" or "Excel" based on self-fulfilling prophecies of "required skills" for "the real world" (business). That was the early- or mid-90s.
30 years later we are told to use "apps" and "clown computing" with "clown storage". People choose browsers, not file formats, and they send files by sending links instead. The surveillance/nanny state loves it!
Computing in general deteriorated greatly. This morning in IRC we spoke about how CD-ROM drives could play music CDs at the hardware level without an operating system. Even some very young people are fascinated by such prospects. Why did attractive and useful facets of technology get phased out? To whose benefit? Also, do we need ports and wires with DRM in them? Whose interests are served? The same goes for the World Wide Web...
Digital texts used to be handled just fine in LATEX, or some front end to it like Kile and LyX (very good for scientific papers). Some people have long preferred OpenOffice.org and then LibreOffice. Some dinosaurs still use Microsoft Office, or some Web-based garbage you pay rents on (which they misleadingly name "Office" or "360" because of poor uptime).
Microsoft is rapidly losing its old dominance, but it is still dangerous. Amid mass layoffs (there's probably plenty more coming towards the end of this month; they're batching them so that it doesn't get noticed for long) we've been seeing several attempts to infiltrate bodies, including but not limited to Free software/"Open Source" (openwashing) organisations.
People generally don't need Microsoft and not many people use Microsoft unless an employer or school compels them to. █