7 ms·

The first stable release LibreOffice 3.3

56 points by Uncle_Sam 16y ago

callumjones 16y ago
This is great news, I too have been upset by the lack of ugly office suites. I am glad there is another product on the market flying the flag for open source and great user interfaces.
- teilo 16y ago
  This is not a "me too" product. It is a fork of Open Office by former Sun employees and community contributors who have had an active role in Open Office before the Oracle acquisition. There is now more active development under this liberated model than there was when Sun was the steward of the project. The project is moving forward as never before. This is a good thing. If you don't care for Open Office, then there is nothing here for you here. But for those of us who do care, and use Open Office every day this is good news. It means that the project will not be impeded by the heavy hand of Oracle, a corporate interest who is only interested in promoting open source in so far as it keeps away the bad press. FWIW: Libre Office finally displaced Neo Office on my Mac, which is to say that the code base has improved quite substantially.
ddfall 16y ago
A bit more background: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/LibreOffice-3-3-final-released-1176425.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/LibreOffice-3-3-final...
greyman 16y ago
In my opinion (and personal experience), if they want to endanger the monopoly of MS Office, they would need, first of all, to provide 100% compatibility with the MS Office formats [read them and write to that format flawlessly]. At least for me, that was the reason my repeated evaluation of OpenOffice always failed - it couldn't handle more complex MS Word files I received from my colleagues, and it just didn't make sense to use both suites. I gave it a chance again and again, but it never worked for me despite my honest attempts to like OO.org.
- omh 16y ago
  This doesn't seem like a realistic possibility. There isn't 100% compatability even between different versions of Office itself.
  - ericb 16y ago
    I think the point is valid and the possibility realistic if we don't assume a literal interpretation of "100% compatibility".
    - gloob 16y ago
      "Not assuming a literal interpretation of 100%" seems about as sensible as not assuming a literal interpretation of "the coin flip came up heads". Presumably if the poster had meant 80% (or whatever number) they would have said that instead.
      - ericb 16y ago
        "The coin flip came up heads" is provable. I'm not certain 100% compatibility with an MS product is provable. I don't expect an arbitrary precision like "98.3%" to convey wanting full compatibility because I understand statement's intent. To each their own though.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        > I'm not certain 100% compatibility with an MS product is provable. In order to be provable, you would require it to be properly defined. I don't think even Microsoft has an adequate definition of what an Office document should look when stored on disk.
        mdaniel 16y ago
        I believe the on-disk is pretty well defined nowadays by their open document promise. However, HTML is a published standard, too, yet every copy of IE renders in its own special way. I think that is a far better analogy of what is expected here.
nervechannel 16y ago
Dear gods, please, someone give it a better name. Sadly, superficial things like names are important if you want to compete with better-known products. I can't even pronounce LibreOffice fluidly -- there are no words in English (I think) with a schwa followed immediately by a short 'o' sound, so no native English speaker is phonologically equipped to deal with it.
- davnola 16y ago
  "leeb-roffis" works for me
- rdtsc 16y ago
  Does it even need to have the word 'office' in the name? They could have just picked a short web 2.0 missplelled-on-purpose-with-missing-vowels name, that's easy to say and search for.
  - mathnode 16y ago
    Libr?
  - thomas11 16y ago
    Then MS Office users who aren't computer geeks wouldn't associate it with MS Office at all. In the IE vs. Netscape battle it probably was a big factor that "Internet Explorer" had the work "internet" in it - if a computer-illiterate person wants to surf the internet, which icon will they click?
    - rdtsc 16y ago
      Good point. I have seen some linux distros rename apps according to functionality. So instead of a "Firefox" entry in the application menu they'd have "Browse The Internet" or just "Internet".
- omouse 16y ago
  It's a great name, it prominently displays Liberty. This is much better than Open because the word 'open' is being used for all kinds of software that isn't (Open Document Format vs Office Open XML)
codelust 16y ago
If you are on Snow Leopard, it is imperative to install this one. NeoOffice and OpenOffice (Goo or otherwise) have struggled on Snow Leopard with either extreme sluggishness or an inability to reasonably render all documents with acceptable loss of fidelity. Things have been considerably better with LibreOffice 3.3 so far.
shareme 16y ago
If on Ubuntu 10.04 x86: Install via update script will fail. Manually install one deb package than re-run update script which fixes the problem.
mdaniel 16y ago
I will also remind our technically savvy readership that they offer BitTorrent downloads, if you wish to save them some hosting costs (and speed up the downloads for your neighbors). Interestingly enough, they offer torrents for the source code, too, but per archive, which is kind of a drag. Transmission and I are seeding until 300%.

56 points by Uncle_Sam 16y ago

This is great news, I too have been upset by the lack of ugly office suites. I am glad there is another product on the market flying the flag for open source and great user interfaces.

teilo 16y ago
This is not a "me too" product. It is a fork of Open Office by former Sun employees and community contributors who have had an active role in Open Office before the Oracle acquisition. There is now more active development under this liberated model than there was when Sun was the steward of the project. The project is moving forward as never before. This is a good thing. If you don't care for Open Office, then there is nothing here for you here. But for those of us who do care, and use Open Office every day this is good news. It means that the project will not be impeded by the heavy hand of Oracle, a corporate interest who is only interested in promoting open source in so far as it keeps away the bad press. FWIW: Libre Office finally displaced Neo Office on my Mac, which is to say that the code base has improved quite substantially.

ddfall 16y ago

A bit more background: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/LibreOffice-3-3-final-released-1176425.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/LibreOffice-3-3-final...

greyman 16y ago

In my opinion (and personal experience), if they want to endanger the monopoly of MS Office, they would need, first of all, to provide 100% compatibility with the MS Office formats [read them and write to that format flawlessly]. At least for me, that was the reason my repeated evaluation of OpenOffice always failed - it couldn't handle more complex MS Word files I received from my colleagues, and it just didn't make sense to use both suites. I gave it a chance again and again, but it never worked for me despite my honest attempts to like OO.org.

omh 16y ago
This doesn't seem like a realistic possibility. There isn't 100% compatability even between different versions of Office itself.
- ericb 16y ago
  I think the point is valid and the possibility realistic if we don't assume a literal interpretation of "100% compatibility".
  - gloob 16y ago
    "Not assuming a literal interpretation of 100%" seems about as sensible as not assuming a literal interpretation of "the coin flip came up heads". Presumably if the poster had meant 80% (or whatever number) they would have said that instead.
    - ericb 16y ago
      "The coin flip came up heads" is provable. I'm not certain 100% compatibility with an MS product is provable. I don't expect an arbitrary precision like "98.3%" to convey wanting full compatibility because I understand statement's intent. To each their own though.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        > I'm not certain 100% compatibility with an MS product is provable. In order to be provable, you would require it to be properly defined. I don't think even Microsoft has an adequate definition of what an Office document should look when stored on disk.
        mdaniel 16y ago
        I believe the on-disk is pretty well defined nowadays by their open document promise. However, HTML is a published standard, too, yet every copy of IE renders in its own special way. I think that is a far better analogy of what is expected here.

nervechannel 16y ago

Dear gods, please, someone give it a better name. Sadly, superficial things like names are important if you want to compete with better-known products. I can't even pronounce LibreOffice fluidly -- there are no words in English (I think) with a schwa followed immediately by a short 'o' sound, so no native English speaker is phonologically equipped to deal with it.

davnola 16y ago
"leeb-roffis" works for me
rdtsc 16y ago
Does it even need to have the word 'office' in the name? They could have just picked a short web 2.0 missplelled-on-purpose-with-missing-vowels name, that's easy to say and search for.
- mathnode 16y ago
  Libr?
- thomas11 16y ago
  Then MS Office users who aren't computer geeks wouldn't associate it with MS Office at all. In the IE vs. Netscape battle it probably was a big factor that "Internet Explorer" had the work "internet" in it - if a computer-illiterate person wants to surf the internet, which icon will they click?
  - rdtsc 16y ago
    Good point. I have seen some linux distros rename apps according to functionality. So instead of a "Firefox" entry in the application menu they'd have "Browse The Internet" or just "Internet".
omouse 16y ago
It's a great name, it prominently displays Liberty. This is much better than Open because the word 'open' is being used for all kinds of software that isn't (Open Document Format vs Office Open XML)

codelust 16y ago

If you are on Snow Leopard, it is imperative to install this one. NeoOffice and OpenOffice (Goo or otherwise) have struggled on Snow Leopard with either extreme sluggishness or an inability to reasonably render all documents with acceptable loss of fidelity. Things have been considerably better with LibreOffice 3.3 so far.

shareme 16y ago

If on Ubuntu 10.04 x86: Install via update script will fail. Manually install one deb package than re-run update script which fixes the problem.

mdaniel 16y ago

I will also remind our technically savvy readership that they offer BitTorrent downloads, if you wish to save them some hosting costs (and speed up the downloads for your neighbors). Interestingly enough, they offer torrents for the source code, too, but per archive, which is kind of a drag. Transmission and I are seeding until 300%.