I only use LibreOffice and don’t tell anyone. It has only been a problem once when a client wanted me to use Word so she could keep track of changes. As a freelancer I wasn’t about to go and use Word for one client. I just submitted the work as a PDF and they never brought it up again.

I haven’t really looked into it, but what are the options for VBA macro writing in excel alternatives?

Most of the time I use MarkDown and export as PDF, if I need more complex layouts I’ll use Libre Office

I don’t. I just export to PDF if I need them to see formatting the same.

I will use whatever they will provide me. If i am to use Microsoft products, so be it. Not only that, but I don’t give a flying fuck for the company’s data i work for. They asked for it 🙃

Thanks to the behaviour of the American Government the past year, it has become really easy. Everybody suddenly understand and respect the argument of boycotting american products and software.

I don’t owe my co-workers any explanation.

Does this actually cause compatibility issues? If not, no need to explain

Depends on how long you’ve been working. After some amount of time like a year or two you can drop it into a conversation when helping a person “oh, I actually use libre office so I’m not sure where MS put that, let me check” and if they want more info they’ll ask. Sometimes they might be surprised that you can actually do this stuff on Linux.

I practically never need to. I’ll find a way to make things work one way or another.

Literally no one will care. Just make sure that your documents works well for them.

The better question asked is:

How do they explain to you that they don’t?

Why would it be awkward? Most non-technical people are so thrown by my white-text-on-black desktop theme that they can’t even tell what software I’m using, and the few technical people around know that I have Opinions about software and aren’t interested in talking about it. Keeping everything adequately compatible with the company-issued software is my problem.

“Ewww, Windowsssss!”

Pinch my nose, spray my fingers with hand sanitizer, then walk away from their desk.

You don’t. Enjoy better, faster and more effective software and laugh when their shot breaks.