I think the main difficulty in migration from windows XP to linux is leaving word, excel, outlook, ie and powerpoint. If users have already migrated to open alternatives (libre office, ...), the OS switch is almost transparent.
I don't think Microsoft Office is any better than LibreOffice for general users. Most of the Indian government officials are tad computer illiterate. They would not know what they use.
even basic things in Excel are not supported in libreoffice, such as validations.
I recently attempted to move everyone in my office to libreoffice where possible and was met with a very large resistence from people who's spreadsheets simply did not work.
it's hard telling people that they have to edit functions/macros that were set up by someone smarter than them 10 years ago.
I think you should not club the two points together. Your first point makes a lot of sense because even if you say that the Indian government officials were "tad computer illiterate", LibreOffice is still not an acceptable replacement majorly due the UI and the loss of basic features.
I think LibreOffice UI falls into acceptable category. It might not be the most polished UI but it gets the work done efficiently. There is not much difference in productivity in two acceptable UIs.
A UI can be thought of being easy-to-use with the frequency of usage. I have been using Linux for many years. Now, whenever I use Windows the only thought in my mind is how can someone use a software so clumsy.
