Libre Office Calc is pretty similar to Excel for general use. For importing csv files it has always been superior to Excel. Some niche areas in Calc are also better than Excel. Inflexible users are locked into Excel, but for general purpose use Calc is all you need.

For legacy spreadsheets, you're 100% correct. I'll need to keep a version of Excel around forever. If they price me out of 365 by making me pay for Copilot shit I don't use or want, a perpetual license to Office 2019 runs about $20 and will do that job for me.

For new work that I might have otherwise done in Excel, there are good options. Collabora works. Libre Office works. Google sheets works. And Grist is quite good, and self-hostable.

Open Office, Libre Office, Only Office to start.

Google Docs works fine for most people though (not FOSS, but most Office customers don't care).

Or power point. I had to make some slides for the first time in a decade. I was in Google Slides for 5 minutes, then I tried to import an SVG.

That was the moment I booted into windows for the first time in 4 months. I started up Power Point and sure enough SVGs are no problem.

Shameless plug: Row Zero has real enterprise traction. AWS uses us.

2B row limit, connected, eliminates the Excel security risk because it's hosted.

But for many of Excels use cases