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Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?
https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/
The only thing keeping me with google is gdocs. But I'd rather not keep my private data with them. Libre office online does not appear in google search an an alternative and hn has mostly ignored it. Is it not ready for prime time?
- pbreit 9y agoNo. GDocs is one of the best pieces of software in existence. Each component is very capable on its own. The sharing turbo charges it past all others. You’d have to really be a google hater to choose not to use it.
- saagarjha 9y agoWhat? The only thing I like about Google Docs is the sharing part. The rest of it is a slow, bloated web app that is limited in the number of features it has.
- miaklesp 9y agoThe best pieces of software is Office 365. GDocs just free but vendor-locked.
- pbreit 8y agoHow is gDocs more vendor locked than Office?
- zeth___ 9y agoOr just need a good spread sheet program.
- philliphaydon 9y agoMaybe if you’re a chrome user. But using Firefox I hate Google docs.
- sandGorgon 9y agoSoftmaker Office is pretty good. And works on all platforms (including Linux). http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office
- hpcjoe 9y agoOne specifically negative thing about gdocs ... well ... gsheets ... is that if you create a document with many (e.g. > 5 or so) charts on a single page ... it will slow waaaaaaayyyyy down. Multi second latency/response times for things like scrolling, cell interaction, etc. It becomes effectively unusable. Gdocs as a whole are ok, though you are giving Google the right to read your docs as I remember (in their terms of service).
- LibraMelody 9y agoApparently google search is also what's tying you to google. I say that to say google will have measures to stifle competition (no matter what they say otherwise). Also, what's the issue with just running LibreOffice on your computer? They also have portable versions which you can just put on your thumb drive
- ams6110 9y ago> what's the issue with just running LibreOffice on your computer The key advantage to Google Docs, an otherwise ordinary if not fairly lightweight word processer, is the ease of sharing (even if only with yourself on multiple devices) and collaborating with others. I've never heard of LibreOffice online, but depending how well it does those things, it might or might not be viable. As a word processor alone, Google Docs is nothing special and LibreOffice probably has more features.
- njarboe 9y agoDropbox does file sharing better than anybody, I think. Share with yourself and others. Pay a small fee for a better product and know it they have an incentive to please you. You can use any software products when sharing with Dropbox. I have been happy with it for many years and have never had any problems, knock on wood.
- PeterisP 9y agoFor me, the key point of sharing documents in google docs is that it solves the simultaneous editing problem, which simple file sharing (Dropbox and others) does not. You can easily have three people editing the same paragraph in google docs; whether libreoffice online is a viable alternative depends on how it handles that.
- rlvesco7 9y agoEase of sharing is precisely why it's so powerful. I can send a link to a shared spreadsheet without the person having to login. Very little friction. Also, being able to co-edit in real time is very powerful. I think libreoffice offline is great, but for 80% of my use cases, gdocs is more convenient and useful. But I'm no longer comfortable with google having so much of my personal and business life.
- askvictor 9y agoOther options include Zoho Writer, Apple Pages (has web-based version), MS Word Online. I seem to remember an OSS effort to make one (other than libreoffice online) but can't remember what it was.
- cetra3 9y agoSurprised noone has mentioned OnlyOffice here: https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/. We use it via the integration I wrote for Alfresco: https://github.com/cetra3/onlyoffice-alfresco https://github.com/cetra3/onlyoffice-alfresco
- rlvesco7 9y agoNever heard of OnlyOffice! They had a good comparison between them and libreoffice/collabora: https://medium.com/onlyoffice/onlyoffice-vs-collabora-a-critical-comparison-18a5ba0dee62 https://medium.com/onlyoffice/onlyoffice-vs-collabora-a-crit...
- aepiepaey 9y agoThat's not a good comparison. It's just an advertising piece bashing Collabora. If it had been a good comparison, it would have listed pros and cons of both solutions, rather than only pros for one, and only cons for the other. The "comparison" really only points out three issues: Collabora runs an instance of Libreoffice on the server. This must be taken into account when considering resource limits when scaling, and latency and bandwidth to the client(s). Collabora's handling of OOXML (.docx/.xlsx/.pptx) is much worse than OnlyOffice's. You must take them at their word for this! For collaborative editing, modes (bold/italic/font sizes etc), Collabora uses the same state for all clients. You must take their word for this. I also tested Collabora very briefly (using NextCloud's demo[1]), and the toolbar is client side, which means it could very well be that modes are not shared. Of course, none of this is particularly surprising considering it was posted by OnlyOffice themselves. [1]: Instant trial on https://demo.nextcloud.com/ https://demo.nextcloud.com/
- akkat 9y agoFYI they do not support RTL languages yet https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/19 https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/19
- JackPoach 9y agoOnlyOffice is pretty good.
- blendergeek 9y agoLibreOffice Online is a viable alternative in my opinion. It integrates with NextCloud and allows you to easily share and collaborate. You can even get a "share link" for your documents like in Google Docs. There are some caveats though. Latency is unacceptable. Google Docs renders documents client side allowing characters that you type to immediately echo to the screen. LibreOffice renders documents server side with a noticeable lag. LibreOffice has the benefit of better interoperability with MS Word than Google Docs has. I would also recommend trying OnlyOffice as some have recommended.
- elmigranto 9y ago"Viable alternative" with its "unacceptable latency" amounts to being just a viewer, which are dime a dozen, including most phones doing that out of the box, countless JS libraries and browser extensions, and every storage service like Dropbox having, if not basic editor, then at least very competent viewer. I guess it's a start…
- blendergeek 9y agoI am willing to put up with the latency because I really do want to do anything with Google. And I only recently learned about OnlyOffice which seems a more viable solution going forward.
- nkkollaw 9y agoLibreOffice is one of the software I like the least. It's super-ugly, doesn't have hidpi support on Linux, it's slow, it has a confusing UI. Google Docs is about 100 times better.
- nikosmme 9y agoA full suite of SaaS open source tools there : https://framasoft.org/ https://framasoft.org/
- newsat13 9y agoYou should ask reddit's /r/selfhosted. HN crowd is not much into self-hosting
- kqr 9y agoFor Google Docs-like tasks I prefer a combination of Org and git. Org is a powerful-but-easy-to-learn document structuring language. You ca write it in any editor, but in an Org-aware editor your document really comes alive. The oldest, most feature-complete implementation is in Emacs. Org documents can be exported to virtually any final format. I don't specifically recommend git so much as any distributed VCS, to share changes with collaborators in a controlled and structured way. I find it much easier to catch up on other's work when it comes as a self-contained, clearly labeled commit in the correct branch rather than a jumble of tiny edits here and there. If you are working with lazy people who don't want to learn stuff, you may want to consider whether you'd be okay with keeping your private data with GitHub instead. If your Org document lives in a repo there, anyone with commit access can edit it in the GitHub web editor, with a formatted preview available.
- joelchrist 9y agoThis is assuming that the people you're collaborating with know how to use git ... That's a big assumption to make
- kqr 9y agoBarely any git knowledge is required to cowboy commit onto the default branch on GitHub using their web editor. The result is no different than what it would be using Google Docs. (Though, every person on the team who wants to learn git is a strict incremental improvement – both over Google Docs and cowboy committing on GitHub.)
- rubidium 9y agoHaving gone down a similar path with a team "Barely any git" is still a stretch for non-programmer types.
- zakk 9y agoYour comment implies that there are other editors, besides Emacs, supporting Org mode... Could you please elaborate on this?
- krptos 9y agoNot sure if anybody mentioned Zoho Writer (https://writer.zoho.com https://writer.zoho.com) I find it has more formatting features than Google Docs. Best of all: no Ads and document reading bullshit.
- known 9y agoDiscussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11563009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11563009
- davidgerard 9y agoIt's had considerable development in the past two years.
- hennsen 9y agoWhy does the title not contain a link as normal hn posts? The link below is not clickable, must be copied and pasted manually... no fun on mobile...
- tinus_hn 9y agoThis is intentional: How do I make a link in a question? You can't. This is to prevent people from submitting a link with their comments in a privileged position at the top of the page. If you want to submit a link with comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- captainbland 9y agoThere's also NextCloud, although you'll need to pay for it or host it yourself.
- illlogic2 9y agoHonest question, can you just run simple symmetric encryption on your data before uploading to gapps?
- juliangoldsmith 9y agoOP's use case for Google Docs seems to be editing. Encrypting your document would mean that you wouldn't be able to edit it using Google Docs.
- jdanielricher 9y agojust use graphitedocs.com