6 ms·

LibreOffice 5.3.0

73 points by ronjouch 10y ago

ronjouch 10y ago
Linking to the release notes; downloads live at https://www.libreoffice.org/download/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/
elyrly 10y ago
Great alternative to Office
- gima 10y ago
  I think anything is a great alternative to the Office at this point. In hindsight, LibreOffice's name must've been chosen by a fortune-teller..or a <strike>pessimist</strike> realist ;)
  - symlinkk 10y ago
    what's so bad about Office? I just switched from LO to Office and it's felt like taking a huge weight off my shoulders - all the weird little UI quirks and bugs are gone, and everything just works.
    - gima 10y ago
      My apologies. My reply was an attempt at political humor. No connection to the LibreOffice software.
  - kyriakos 10y ago
    LibreOFfice its playing catch up with MS Office actually. I am all for open source but Office is something that Microsoft really gets right and now with their subscription model it became very cheap for everyday users so unless you are on Linux you have very little reason not to use Microsoft's suite.
    - keithpeter 10y ago
      Why on earth would I want to pay each month for software? I'd rather just pay one cost and use the product.
      - sp332 10y ago
        It gets regular updates. There is a version that you can just buy once, but it only gets updates for (I think) a year and then you have to buy a new one whenever you want an update.
        jmanderley 10y ago
        The problem with this is: Office is pretty much feature complete for most uses, people don't need regular updates to their word processor. Microsoft has even removed quite a few features since the Office 97 days. Retail Office gets updated about every three years. That's plenty, buying a subscription for Word seems hardly worth it.
      - nxc18 10y ago
        Because the price is the same as buying it outright in the long run (assuming you use the newer versions as most do), its at least as good a deal as the outright purchase. For things that create value over the term of ownership, a subscription makes a lot more sense than a large up front cost. We do this model, but with more middlemen & machinations, for just about everything nowadays (houses, cars, student loans, etc.). The only difference is Microsoft isn't screwing you. The value-add here is that Office comes with cloud storage, really great built-in sync, and a continuous stream of improvement. Amazingly, Office is still getting better, but now improvements are released by the month, not every 3-4 years.
        jmanderley 10y ago
        It's more expensive to get the subscription even if you do upgrade regularly. And I don't think most people buy the latest version of Office with every release. And what "monthly improvements" are even needed? Office seems pretty feature complete for most use cases.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  Another good alternative is WPS Office Free. It looks better than Libre Office and Microsoft Office IMO and is very lightweight in terms of memory and storage space. The download weighs in at about 73MB and it's available for Linux and Windows. https://www.wps.com/office-free https://www.wps.com/office-free
  - cJ0th 10y ago
    Looks superb but I am a bit iffy as to whether or not I can trust this piece of software. It's proprietary and from China :/
- boondaburrah 10y ago
  I'm actually about to try out Calligra now that they've finally updated to Qt5. I live in Qt5 land (I'm convinced KDE 5 is the best desktop right now, features and design wise), mostly because Qt5 has been my favourite UI to program for. I hope it goes well.
chrisballinger 10y ago
> Firebird has been upgraded to version 3.0.0. It is unable to read back Firebird 2.5 data, so embedded firebird odb files created in LibreOffice version up to 5.2 cannot be opened with LibreOffice 5.3. Since a future version of firebird will have a backwards compatibility module, some future version of LibreOffice (embedding this future version of firebird) will also be able to open these older files. > ODB files created by LibreOffice < 5.3 can be manually converted to LibreOffice 5.3 format by using Firebird 2.5 to convert the data to archive format, and replacing the database data within the ODB by the archive format version. To do this, install a stand-alone Firebird 2.5, and use its "gbak" tool to convert the file "database.fdb" to "database.fbk" within the odb file. Don't forget to remove the .fdb file. I don't use this feature so I don't know how popular it is, but it seems like this could cause a lot of problems for people. They probably shouldn't have updated to Firebird 3.0.0 until they had an automated migration process in place, instead of instructing end users to manually convert their old files from the command line.
- tracker1 10y ago
  Agreed, that part stood out to me a LOT as well.. though I'm not sure if they've had similar issues in the past as I also don't use the feature. Wasn't aware that it was using FB for data, but it does make sense... FB is a pretty nice db option.
- grandinj 10y ago
  Firebird was experimental in 5.2.x so it's unlikely there are many such files in the wild.
coolspot 10y ago
Using it every day. Great product!
compsciphd 10y ago
So I want to like libreoffice, but its really terribly maintained. features come and go, practically at whim. For instance, custom motion paths seem to come and go at whim (still not fixed in 5.3, and as this bug shows has been a recurring problem) https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916 It's hard to rely on it when basic functionality constantly breaks.
- dublinben 10y ago
  I would hardly call that "basic functionality." I've been using LO as my primary office suite through several schools and jobs, and never felt like it was broken.
  - compsciphd 10y ago
    to me custom paths are a basic function of making interactive/dynamic presentations.
    - keithpeter 10y ago
      I agree with both comments up the tree. I use LO daily under Linux to produce handouts, simple screen based materials and spreadsheet models for teaching. My colleagues are blissfully ignorant of the fact that the materials they sometimes use where not produced in MS Office on Windows. I would really like a stable interface for creating interactive materials, but I'd settle for being able to export a full range of hyperlinked objects in Impress as a pdf file so that the hyperlinks work. That would get me 95% of where I would like to be.
- eisa01 10y ago
  You're always welcome to file a bug/confirm a bug is present/reopen a previous bug!
  - compsciphd 10y ago
    see the bottom comment in the link i provided
shmerl 10y ago
Did breeze-dark icons make it in?
hysan 10y ago
Have the fixed the missing grow/shrink feature in the GUI? [1] The bug that's now a decade old? No? Well that's disappointing... I'll keep using LibreOffice, but I still can't recommended it to my non-technical friends who seem to love that effect. [1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918
- ac29 10y ago
  Not fixed. Just tested in 5.3.
brianzelip 10y ago
OT; there's a recent Changelog podcast[0] that features the dev who translated LibreOffice to the native tongue of Paraguay. [0]https://changelog.com/podcast/235 https://changelog.com/podcast/235
znpy 10y ago
My complaint against openoffice/libreoffice is about their programming/scripting interface: it is a total mess to deal with. A couple of weeks ago I had the task to dynamically update the value of two cells in a calc spreadsheet. I did it, but ended up using a library that build on a library that builds on ... that build on UNO or whatever it's called. The api is a mix of C++ and Java, documentation is pretty much non-existing and code examples are incomplete and ridiculous. If I had been using excel I could have been using the win32 com api and get it done in a couple of hours at most. But don't get me wrong: when doing non-programming stuff it works great!

73 points by ronjouch 10y ago

Linking to the release notes; downloads live at https://www.libreoffice.org/download/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/

elyrly 10y ago

Great alternative to Office

gima 10y ago
I think anything is a great alternative to the Office at this point. In hindsight, LibreOffice's name must've been chosen by a fortune-teller..or a <strike>pessimist</strike> realist ;)
- symlinkk 10y ago
  what's so bad about Office? I just switched from LO to Office and it's felt like taking a huge weight off my shoulders - all the weird little UI quirks and bugs are gone, and everything just works.
  - gima 10y ago
    My apologies. My reply was an attempt at political humor. No connection to the LibreOffice software.
- kyriakos 10y ago
  LibreOFfice its playing catch up with MS Office actually. I am all for open source but Office is something that Microsoft really gets right and now with their subscription model it became very cheap for everyday users so unless you are on Linux you have very little reason not to use Microsoft's suite.
  - keithpeter 10y ago
    Why on earth would I want to pay each month for software? I'd rather just pay one cost and use the product.
    - sp332 10y ago
      It gets regular updates. There is a version that you can just buy once, but it only gets updates for (I think) a year and then you have to buy a new one whenever you want an update.
      - jmanderley 10y ago
        The problem with this is: Office is pretty much feature complete for most uses, people don't need regular updates to their word processor. Microsoft has even removed quite a few features since the Office 97 days. Retail Office gets updated about every three years. That's plenty, buying a subscription for Word seems hardly worth it.
    - nxc18 10y ago
      Because the price is the same as buying it outright in the long run (assuming you use the newer versions as most do), its at least as good a deal as the outright purchase. For things that create value over the term of ownership, a subscription makes a lot more sense than a large up front cost. We do this model, but with more middlemen & machinations, for just about everything nowadays (houses, cars, student loans, etc.). The only difference is Microsoft isn't screwing you. The value-add here is that Office comes with cloud storage, really great built-in sync, and a continuous stream of improvement. Amazingly, Office is still getting better, but now improvements are released by the month, not every 3-4 years.
      - jmanderley 10y ago
        It's more expensive to get the subscription even if you do upgrade regularly. And I don't think most people buy the latest version of Office with every release. And what "monthly improvements" are even needed? Office seems pretty feature complete for most use cases.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Another good alternative is WPS Office Free. It looks better than Libre Office and Microsoft Office IMO and is very lightweight in terms of memory and storage space. The download weighs in at about 73MB and it's available for Linux and Windows. https://www.wps.com/office-free https://www.wps.com/office-free
- cJ0th 10y ago
  Looks superb but I am a bit iffy as to whether or not I can trust this piece of software. It's proprietary and from China :/
boondaburrah 10y ago
I'm actually about to try out Calligra now that they've finally updated to Qt5. I live in Qt5 land (I'm convinced KDE 5 is the best desktop right now, features and design wise), mostly because Qt5 has been my favourite UI to program for. I hope it goes well.

chrisballinger 10y ago

> Firebird has been upgraded to version 3.0.0. It is unable to read back Firebird 2.5 data, so embedded firebird odb files created in LibreOffice version up to 5.2 cannot be opened with LibreOffice 5.3. Since a future version of firebird will have a backwards compatibility module, some future version of LibreOffice (embedding this future version of firebird) will also be able to open these older files. > ODB files created by LibreOffice < 5.3 can be manually converted to LibreOffice 5.3 format by using Firebird 2.5 to convert the data to archive format, and replacing the database data within the ODB by the archive format version. To do this, install a stand-alone Firebird 2.5, and use its "gbak" tool to convert the file "database.fdb" to "database.fbk" within the odb file. Don't forget to remove the .fdb file. I don't use this feature so I don't know how popular it is, but it seems like this could cause a lot of problems for people. They probably shouldn't have updated to Firebird 3.0.0 until they had an automated migration process in place, instead of instructing end users to manually convert their old files from the command line.

tracker1 10y ago
Agreed, that part stood out to me a LOT as well.. though I'm not sure if they've had similar issues in the past as I also don't use the feature. Wasn't aware that it was using FB for data, but it does make sense... FB is a pretty nice db option.
grandinj 10y ago
Firebird was experimental in 5.2.x so it's unlikely there are many such files in the wild.

coolspot 10y ago

Using it every day. Great product!

compsciphd 10y ago

So I want to like libreoffice, but its really terribly maintained. features come and go, practically at whim. For instance, custom motion paths seem to come and go at whim (still not fixed in 5.3, and as this bug shows has been a recurring problem) https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76916 It's hard to rely on it when basic functionality constantly breaks.

dublinben 10y ago
I would hardly call that "basic functionality." I've been using LO as my primary office suite through several schools and jobs, and never felt like it was broken.
- compsciphd 10y ago
  to me custom paths are a basic function of making interactive/dynamic presentations.
  - keithpeter 10y ago
    I agree with both comments up the tree. I use LO daily under Linux to produce handouts, simple screen based materials and spreadsheet models for teaching. My colleagues are blissfully ignorant of the fact that the materials they sometimes use where not produced in MS Office on Windows. I would really like a stable interface for creating interactive materials, but I'd settle for being able to export a full range of hyperlinked objects in Impress as a pdf file so that the hyperlinks work. That would get me 95% of where I would like to be.
eisa01 10y ago
You're always welcome to file a bug/confirm a bug is present/reopen a previous bug!
- compsciphd 10y ago
  see the bottom comment in the link i provided

shmerl 10y ago

Did breeze-dark icons make it in?

hysan 10y ago

Have the fixed the missing grow/shrink feature in the GUI? [1] The bug that's now a decade old? No? Well that's disappointing... I'll keep using LibreOffice, but I still can't recommended it to my non-technical friends who seem to love that effect. [1] https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918 https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48918

ac29 10y ago
Not fixed. Just tested in 5.3.

brianzelip 10y ago

OT; there's a recent Changelog podcast[0] that features the dev who translated LibreOffice to the native tongue of Paraguay. [0]https://changelog.com/podcast/235 https://changelog.com/podcast/235

znpy 10y ago

My complaint against openoffice/libreoffice is about their programming/scripting interface: it is a total mess to deal with. A couple of weeks ago I had the task to dynamically update the value of two cells in a calc spreadsheet. I did it, but ended up using a library that build on a library that builds on ... that build on UNO or whatever it's called. The api is a mix of C++ and Java, documentation is pretty much non-existing and code examples are incomplete and ridiculous. If I had been using excel I could have been using the win32 com api and get it done in a couple of hours at most. But don't get me wrong: when doing non-programming stuff it works great!