You're clearly doing something wrong if you're running a VM of Windows just to create simple documents. It really sounds like you need to take inventory of how you're doing things. Since we're talking anecdote, I have never had a problem editing Dropbox-saved documents in QuickOffice, or having them magically messed up when I email them. I went to a couple of different schools that allowed students to submit documents in formats supported by open source formats. You're right that in the first half of the 2000s using proprietary pay software formats was a requirement, but in the last ten years schools and instructors have started accepting others, and the last couple of years I went to school I didn't submit any document in a proprietary format. The fact is that Microsoft Office is an enormous cost to consider versus something like the equally powerful and less obtuse LibreOffice. Also, your "Microsoft Office is the solution" makes you sound like a shill, seriously.

His example was creating a document in OpenOffice, editing it later in QuickOffice, and then having the recipient open in it Microsoft Word. He is absolutely correct that what the recipient opens in Word will have formatting discrepancies and not look like what he thinks he submitted. It might not even be the fault of QuickOffice, it's more of an issue that it wasn't created and edited in the target/destination environment (Word). This isn't even a new or unforeseen issue for people who work with a lot of office documents.

More broadly, in the business world, Microsoft Office is still very dominant. If your clients & business partners collaborate with Word documents, or Excel workbooks, or PowerPoint presentations, or whatever the case...running a VM so you can run MS Office and collaborate with them isn't "wrong" or something the parent needs to reevaluate- It's a business requirement and to ensure professionalism! It isn't nearly as uncommon of a use case as you think. I don't think he's shilling, he's being a realist given his needs.

If you think I'm doing it wrong at work, you should talk to my boss. I'm sure you can either convince him that Office (including Project and Visio) runs just fine on RHEL or that all the security consultants should be using Windows. He's gonna feel silly when he finds out he's been buying Windows and Office licenses for nothing.

But there's one thing he does know: sending an OpenOffice document to a client that is going to open it in Word is the fastest way to lose that client's business.

The issue is that you have to submit your papers as a Word file. When I was in college we would just turn in a physical paper, so it didn't matter what software we used. I'm surprised they don't let you submit your assignment in PDF form.

It's very bizarre to me that you're required to submit your assignment in a format which is only (truly) supported by paid software, as that would require all students buy said software. Certainly you could make the case that they could use the software available in libraries and such, but I see no reason that they wouldn't embrace more equality if not given the opportunity.

Why is that an issue? Word is the standard format for this type of submitting papers in and not just educational but at many companies of different sizes as well. There is no other format that works as well as Word, especially with change tracking that works when you're working in a group.

When I was in college, we didn't have to pay for anything to get MS products. The college paid for a "MSDN" library that provides students with access to many tools in MS's collection. MSDN is in quotes because that's effectively what it was but I recall it under a different brand for our college.

For IT students, we also had free access to all servers and client OSes, Office, Visio, etc etc etc. We never had to pay for anything.

This was true for the faculty, they also had free access to everything and that's why they require the students to submit specific formats.

Word can not even open their old Word version documents correctly. LibreOffice opens them better.

Therefore "There is no other format that works as well as Word" is completely wrong. Relying on closed document formats and proprietary Software is shortsighted.

I had the opposite experience in college. Most of my professors were pretty adamant that submitting .doc or .docx (or .pages or .rtf or .tex) files wasn't acceptable. You were supposed to export whatever your source file was to PDF, and submit that. Especially the case in my CS courses. Word was more common in the humanities courses, but I never had a problem submitting a PDF in those either, it just wasn't required.

Besides accommodating profs who don't use Word (the CS dept had a small but vocal minority of Unix graybeards), the other main motivation was to avoid having to deal with version compatibility issues. Opening a document created on one version of Word in another version would often (depending on the version pair) mangle some things, especially references and cross-references. And some files just wouldn't open at all. Things might be better with that now; I haven't had occasion to investigate in a few years. In the 2000s, there was a huge mess with the .doc/.docx transition, as well as compatibility issues between the Windows and Mac versions of Office.

when in school, Office is $25 dollars. Virtually every teaching assistant wants a word document and thats it. they don't want to give a list acceptable formats, they want it standardized.

When I was in school ~ 5 years ago, handing in anything not produced in LaTeX was an automatic fail for the assignment. This was a department rule. I majored in physics though. Never paid a dollar for Office nor Windows (since I don't use them), and I don't ever plan to.

you didnt have classes outside the physics department?

I use latex and create pdf's. They look exactly the same everywhere.