For me, it's a bit of a disconnect because I've been using Linux for so long (since 1998) that I have no need to care one whit about MS Office compatibility. At work, we pretty much use Google Docs for everything. Personally, my files were converted to Star Office, then Open Office, and now LibreOffice a long time ago.
Maybe a lot of us came to Manjaro from this perspective: we finally found a Linux distro that successfully combined the concepts of rolling and stable. We're the old timers; the people who've been here from the beginning.
But there are only so many of us to go around.
At some point, Manjaro needs to grow, to attract new users: refugees getting booted from Windows 7 and who don't want to install Windows 10, or maybe people who just want to switch to get better performance out of their machines. To attract these users, you have to respond to their needs. Unfortunately, MS Office compatibility seems to be one of those needs the Manjaro team has identified that they're trying to respond to, first with the MS Office online thing (which I uninstall), and now with FreeOffice.
I don't see a problem with this. If it makes it easier for Grandma to use the OS, isn't that better than having her continue on Windows? Migration is hard. You don't just do it in one step. It can take years to do fully and successfully. So maybe it's better to look at the FreeOffice thing as an aid to migration. It's a tool you can use or not use. Because most people aren't starting from scratch with their computers, they have to migrate.
For people starting from scratch with a new machine, yeah, this doesn't seem like a great decision. I like the suggestion of a dialog during the install where you pick your office suite. That might be a way to serve everybody, not just new users migrating from Windows. But ultimately, those of us who migrated long ago know how to fix our systems, so even if they don't add that, it shouldn't be a huge hurdle to get over.
