5 ms·

Honest question: is LibreOffice still relevant? In the days of Google Drive and MS Office being available on pretty much any OS and device, do we still need an

Honest question: is LibreOffice still relevant? In the days of Google Drive and MS Office being available on pretty much any OS and device, do we still need an old school desktop office suite?

ipunchghosts 10y ago
Came here to ask the same thing.
- copperx 10y ago
  Someone should create a LaTeX class for that...
tcfunk 10y ago
Depends on how passionate people are about keeping their information out of the hands of Google & Microsoft. I would say that, for anyone using linux as their daily driver, LibreOffice is still very relevant.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  I'm on a personal mission to get my stuff off Google which is why I use LibreOffice on my home computer, but for work, there are some documents I could get in trouble for uploading to the cloud. I've used nothing but LibreOffice for over a year and haven't had to fall back on Office even once. To be fair, I don't usually author spreadsheets or docs for other people to see, so I can only attest to how well it opens files.
UncleSlacky 10y ago
It is if you care about privacy, and/or offline availability.
Jedd 10y ago
There are plenty of times that you're not attached to the network, or people who don't wish to be attached to a network in order to edit a document, or don't want Google owning their work, or even having access to it. MS Office is not available on the OS I use (not sure what 'pretty much any' means here), and even if it were I would not feel comfortable stumping up cash for it, or, more to the point, running it on my machines. Why the pejorative 'old school' appellation? It's younger than Microsoft Office.
lucaspottersky 10y ago
i know from my friends that it's very hard to write a scientific paper that follows ABNT (brazilian standards) on anything else that is not MS Word.
herge 10y ago
If you are managing spreadsheets of any appreciable size, Google Drive is unusable, and MS Office isn't available on linux.
Gregordinary 10y ago
As others have mentioned, being in control/possession of your own data is a factor. Anyway, I wouldn't call this ready for prime time, but there is an online version of LibreOffice: https://owncloud.org/blog/libreoffice-online-has-arrived-in-owncloud/ https://owncloud.org/blog/libreoffice-online-has-arrived-in-...
davidgerard 10y ago
Speaking as someone who uses Google Docs at work, I am delighted that LO 5.2 works seamlessly with Google Drive and two-factor authentication. Because Google Docs' word processor and spreadsheet are absolutely terrible for anything beyond the basics, and unlike GDocs, LO can decode OOXML with pretty good fidelity. Everyone goes on about LO and OOXML - you'll see a standard troll comment elsewhere on this HN post - but nobody ever mentions what a hash GDocs makes of even quite basic OOXML. I keep having to open email attachments with LO instead. (I filed bug 87938, which was to get Google two-factor working. I am enormously happy with this. https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87938 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87938 )
zeveb 10y ago
> In the days of Google Drive and MS Office being available on pretty much any OS and device, do we still need an old school desktop office suite? Neither Google Docs nor Microsoft Office's web offering are terribly powerful. Neither respects its users' privacy. Using neither is particularly wise should one wish to compete with either company, nor if one is doing anything which any country those two companies operate in might object to. So yeah, a local office suite is necessary if one wants to do office-suite-style computing. I'd argue that style of computing is inappropriate, but others are free to disagree and do what they wish.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  I am honestly not familiar with the ToS for either of these services, but I can't imagine a situation where Google would steal trade secrets from a competitor via Google Drive and not get into a carapton of trouble for it. Has this actually happened? Also, have there been cases of Google or MS snooping into users' documents? I honestly don't know. As far as being available on any OS, MS office has a browser based version of their office suite, as well as native apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. I believe that covers a "pretty much any OS" description. Of course if you want to stay offline, there is no question. And I guess LibreOffice is still very relevant for the places where ubiquitous Internet access hasn't happened yet. But I would argue that the average consumer in the developed world has already overwhelmingly voted for the cloud, and outside of some communities such as HN, the question of "does Google read my docs/email/etc.?" has been completely dropped.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > I can't imagine a situation where Google would steal trade secrets from a competitor via Google Drive and not get into a carapton of trouble for it. Has this actually happened? I don't believe it has happened, but that it can — and because it can, eventually it will. > As far as being available on any OS, MS office has a browser based version of their office suite, as well as native apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. It's a convenient browser-based augmentation of an Office installation, but no more than that; there are far too many features missing. It can't even completely edit a Word document; for some things you have to open the document in Word itself to edit certain parts! > I believe that covers a "pretty much any OS" description. There's Linux … > the question of "does Google read my docs/email/etc.?" has been completely dropped. The question has been dropped, but reality remains the same. That folks don't discuss the elephant in the room doesn't make it disappear.

Honest question: is LibreOffice still relevant? In the days of Google Drive and MS Office being available on pretty much any OS and device, do we still need an old school desktop office suite?

ipunchghosts 10y ago

Came here to ask the same thing.

copperx 10y ago
Someone should create a LaTeX class for that...

tcfunk 10y ago

Depends on how passionate people are about keeping their information out of the hands of Google & Microsoft. I would say that, for anyone using linux as their daily driver, LibreOffice is still very relevant.

jasonkostempski 10y ago
I'm on a personal mission to get my stuff off Google which is why I use LibreOffice on my home computer, but for work, there are some documents I could get in trouble for uploading to the cloud. I've used nothing but LibreOffice for over a year and haven't had to fall back on Office even once. To be fair, I don't usually author spreadsheets or docs for other people to see, so I can only attest to how well it opens files.

UncleSlacky 10y ago

It is if you care about privacy, and/or offline availability.

Jedd 10y ago

There are plenty of times that you're not attached to the network, or people who don't wish to be attached to a network in order to edit a document, or don't want Google owning their work, or even having access to it. MS Office is not available on the OS I use (not sure what 'pretty much any' means here), and even if it were I would not feel comfortable stumping up cash for it, or, more to the point, running it on my machines. Why the pejorative 'old school' appellation? It's younger than Microsoft Office.

lucaspottersky 10y ago

i know from my friends that it's very hard to write a scientific paper that follows ABNT (brazilian standards) on anything else that is not MS Word.

herge 10y ago

If you are managing spreadsheets of any appreciable size, Google Drive is unusable, and MS Office isn't available on linux.

Gregordinary 10y ago

As others have mentioned, being in control/possession of your own data is a factor. Anyway, I wouldn't call this ready for prime time, but there is an online version of LibreOffice: https://owncloud.org/blog/libreoffice-online-has-arrived-in-owncloud/ https://owncloud.org/blog/libreoffice-online-has-arrived-in-...

davidgerard 10y ago

Speaking as someone who uses Google Docs at work, I am delighted that LO 5.2 works seamlessly with Google Drive and two-factor authentication. Because Google Docs' word processor and spreadsheet are absolutely terrible for anything beyond the basics, and unlike GDocs, LO can decode OOXML with pretty good fidelity. Everyone goes on about LO and OOXML - you'll see a standard troll comment elsewhere on this HN post - but nobody ever mentions what a hash GDocs makes of even quite basic OOXML. I keep having to open email attachments with LO instead. (I filed bug 87938, which was to get Google two-factor working. I am enormously happy with this. https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87938 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87938 )

zeveb 10y ago

> In the days of Google Drive and MS Office being available on pretty much any OS and device, do we still need an old school desktop office suite? Neither Google Docs nor Microsoft Office's web offering are terribly powerful. Neither respects its users' privacy. Using neither is particularly wise should one wish to compete with either company, nor if one is doing anything which any country those two companies operate in might object to. So yeah, a local office suite is necessary if one wants to do office-suite-style computing. I'd argue that style of computing is inappropriate, but others are free to disagree and do what they wish.

IgorPartola 10y ago
I am honestly not familiar with the ToS for either of these services, but I can't imagine a situation where Google would steal trade secrets from a competitor via Google Drive and not get into a carapton of trouble for it. Has this actually happened? Also, have there been cases of Google or MS snooping into users' documents? I honestly don't know. As far as being available on any OS, MS office has a browser based version of their office suite, as well as native apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. I believe that covers a "pretty much any OS" description. Of course if you want to stay offline, there is no question. And I guess LibreOffice is still very relevant for the places where ubiquitous Internet access hasn't happened yet. But I would argue that the average consumer in the developed world has already overwhelmingly voted for the cloud, and outside of some communities such as HN, the question of "does Google read my docs/email/etc.?" has been completely dropped.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > I can't imagine a situation where Google would steal trade secrets from a competitor via Google Drive and not get into a carapton of trouble for it. Has this actually happened? I don't believe it has happened, but that it can — and because it can, eventually it will. > As far as being available on any OS, MS office has a browser based version of their office suite, as well as native apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android. It's a convenient browser-based augmentation of an Office installation, but no more than that; there are far too many features missing. It can't even completely edit a Word document; for some things you have to open the document in Word itself to edit certain parts! > I believe that covers a "pretty much any OS" description. There's Linux … > the question of "does Google read my docs/email/etc.?" has been completely dropped. The question has been dropped, but reality remains the same. That folks don't discuss the elephant in the room doesn't make it disappear.