12 ms·

OnlyOffice is an alternative to LibreOffice

130 points by pkz 6y ago

melling 6y ago
OpenOffice to LibreOffice to OnlyOffice... Does Microsoft still have 95% market share? Put your wood behind 1 arrow. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/35197/meaning-of-more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/35197/meaning-of...
- Nbox9 6y ago
  I dug into the phrase “Put your wood behind 1 arrow” and found a type of culture I want nothing to do with. This quote is just dripping with toxic masculinity. The argument literally boils down to “Iterative development (agile development) isn’t manly.” My personal masculinity doesn’t need to be reinforced by my choice of software development practices. > Face it, iterative development is for people who don't know what they want, who don't believe in themselves enough to trust their own specifications. They don't know their requirements, they don't know where their projects are going to end. No wonder they're afraid of the waterfall method--that takes a little confidence. Here's an analogy. You go out deer hunting. You take your bow and arrow, but do you need a map and a compass? Hardly, not if you are a real man! You take direction from the sun, go east for 3 days, and then shoot your bear. Sure, you meant to shoot a deer, but nobody can call you a coward for shooting a bear, right? And notice I said bow and ARROW, no "s." That's right. Real men bring only one arrow. They know how to aim (and they remember to take plenty of time when aiming), and they put all the wood behind that one arrow. Only sissies bring extra arrows for--what?--in case they "miss?" Real men don't know the meaning of the word. This is the way our fathers did it, and our fathers before them, and if it was good enough for them, it should be good enough for us. http://www.waterfall2006.com/kroll.html http://www.waterfall2006.com/kroll.html
  - swsieber 6y ago
    Per the stack overflow comments, that post was an April fool's post.
    - chris_wot 6y ago
      It’s a stupid idea anyway. Firstly, no hunter only grinds one arrow. Secondly, it’s a saying my a Sun Microsystems executive. And we all know how well that went.
  - irrational 6y ago
    To be honest, I didn’t follow the link, but that quote sounds totally tongue in cheek. Maybe the author is serious, but it reads more like an article from The Onion.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - freemint 6y ago
    While your interpretation of the phrase is interesting i think there is something as to much interpretation. Reimplementation of existing software (what all those projects aim for) doesn't work that well with an iterative process. It might be one of the things where a waterfall like approach is appropriate. The requirements literally don't change. So it doesn't make sense to maintain 3 different waterfalls (or a 4th if you count Apaches efforts) and people working together (not that manly) would have a better chance catching up the monolith that get's copied. I find the saying on point.
TheRealPomax 6y ago
tl;dr according to the author: - MS office compatibility - tabs - cloud support - ribbon UI Personally, none of those are even remotely relevant (and MSO compatibility is a given, which suite doesn't support docx etc these days?). The only times I still reach for MS Office is when I need its million times faster speed compared to OpenOffice and friends (libre office, etc), for things like "sorting 20,000 lines of CSV in Excel using multiple column constraints because I need the first 100 entries after sorting" or "writing out some maths that doesn't justify using full-blown XeLaTeX", so... this just reads like a blog-shaped ad. I'm curious to learn how much the author got paid to post this, given how little what-I-use-it-for-information there is in this post.
- unnouinceput 6y ago
  You know, if you want to fast sort 20k lines, then Excel is the wrong tool. Access is better, and with their DOM linking model you can simply define once, use multiple times as you delete/edit/insert lines into that Excel/Word. Click of a button in Access and zbang! those lines are sorted instantly. For single user Access is still fastest database to use locally. Nothing beats it! Well, until you need 50 millions records, at which point you definitely switch to PostgreSQL as none of Microsoft tools beats that beast when it comes to large data (MSSQL included!).
  - TheRealPomax 6y ago
    It really isn't. Access is great for _persistent_ data, but if I have a .csv file and I just need it quickly sorted so I can grab the top 100 entries after multi-column sorting, Access is about as useful as SQL: pointless for what I need.
    - unnouinceput 6y ago
      Then you definitely don't know to use it to it's usefulness. But that's OK, as long as Excel fits you needs. You do know, just like in Excel, you can simply right click on column data and select order, yes? Or filter if you want. To your point, if I have a .csv file I can simply copy/paste it to Access in a new table, and just next/next through the wizard that will pop-up. Now do a test, get that .csv file, with 20k rows, and paste it in Excel 50 times, so you'll have 1M records in a table. Let me know in how much time Excel vs. Access will order it.
chris_wot 6y ago
I’m rather curious about these claims. What specific formatting issues is he referring to, and what version was he using? Also, they claim LibreOffice is not available on MacOS. This article is quite light on detail.
- freetime2 6y ago
  I can't speak for the author, of course, but recently while working with LibreOffice Calc I ran into an issue where it was completely mangling cell coloring in spreadsheet that a coworker sent me. I was using the latest version of LibreOffice in Ubuntu 20.04, and my coworker was running the latest version of Microsoft Office for Mac.
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    Yup, it can happen. I’m just curious what the issues specifically were. Do you have an example document? The LO team are always looking at compatibility issues.
    - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
      The problem with this is that one can't simply submit work documents and these formatting issues are usually edge cases produced by people that are doing things they really shouldn't with Office.
      - codygman 6y ago
        They should add a feedback wizard that guides a user to remove sensitive data and preserve the document format as much as possible.
        chris_wot 6y ago
        There is a comprehensive document test suite. It is always being improved.
- 6y ago
freetime2 6y ago
I gave LibreOffice a go, but quickly became frustrated with incompatibility issues and some of the other quirks in Calc. So I've switched to using Google Docs, which is powerful enough for my modest needs and has so far been pretty frustration free. It also has the advantage of being easily accessible from my other non-Linux devices. The free browser-only versions of Microsoft Office also look good... but I just haven't had a reason to seriously evaluate them. What are the benefits to going with something like OnlyOffice over Google's and Microsoft's offerings?
- snazz 6y ago
  I’m in a similar situation to you. I use Google Docs as my primary office suite and occasionally switch to native Microsoft Office when I need to edit a complex or macro-covered Excel sheet. Google Docs is very convenient, free of frustration, and quickly improving. It also integrates nicely with the other G Suite apps. I think a lot of the free software people prefer to avoid proprietary web apps made by companies that they view as poorly aligned to their beliefs. Also, performance is a valid reason to avoid web apps.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    I don't know if it's improved since I last tried it but the offline experience with Google Docs was not great. Web apps do require the web, and sometimes there are situations where you don't have it or are not willing to do it.
    - threentaway 6y ago
      I've had no issues with offline mode. Pre-covid, I worked on a long document while on a cross-country flight and once I had WiFi again it just synced it up to Drive.
      - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
        There's quite a bit of essential (to me) functionality that is not available offline though. For instance, you can't convert a sheet to PDF or XSLT. Version history is not available either.
merlinscholz 6y ago
OnlyOffice's developers are... Questionable. Referring to this: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805 https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805
- edoceo 6y ago
  For those who don't want to click: Mobile editing was removed from community edition and only in the $950 license edition. A poorly announced change which made he community mad.
  - merlinscholz 6y ago
    Not only that. Someone wrote a script that activated the document server using only the open source version provided in the repo. A OO developer couldn't even grasp the concept that this was legally allowed any why anyone would want to do that (as a consequence of OO's own license changes). Shortly after that the issue was closed/locked.
  - arp242 6y ago
    Where do you get the $950 from? It's listed in the $149 (currently $100) "home server" lifetime license on their pricing page: https://www.onlyoffice.com/integration-edition-prices.aspx https://www.onlyoffice.com/integration-edition-prices.aspx
    - ColanR 6y ago
      950 EUR is from the first comment in the linked github issue. https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805#issue-578506040 https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805#issu...
      - arp242 6y ago
        Yeah, I saw that; the OO person in the replied mentioning the $100 price as well, so either something changed in the meanwhile (possibly as a response to the feedback?), the poster was mistaken, or I'm not understanding their pricing page correctly. As far as I can see for personal usage the "home server" plan should be grand.
juancn 6y ago
I don’t get why people keep using desktop office apps. Google docs is more than enough for everything I’ve ever thrown at it.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > Google docs is more than enough for everything I’ve ever thrown at it. Please correct for your sampling bias.
- mdifrgechd 6y ago
  I went from MS word to Google Docs for writing professional reports, and there is no comparison. For basic stuff, Google docs is fine, and they definitely have a better model for collaborating on a document. But docs feels 90% done - it is missing advanced formatting, copy paste integration with other Google products, and many other little things like that that make it challenging to use as a professional tool. I could go on at length about all the stuff I didnt like about Word (especially collaborative editing on sharepoint, there have been some disasters), but at least it feels like a professional tool vs. the proof-of-concept feel of Google docs
- swiley 6y ago
  Google docs requires a google account. Getting one of those has become very difficult and I’m not convinced having one is a net benifit. For individual developers I’m also not convinced a spreadsheet is an improvement over sql + maybe some python scripts where you would use macros/charts.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    Wait, getting a google account is difficult? One of my testers routinely creates a new one in like 5-15 minutes. We've got a new one at least weekly.
    - opan 6y ago
      I've heard new Google accounts have to be tied to a phone number now.
RandomWorker 6y ago
One thing that is overlooked by the authors, is that libreoffice now also has ribbon with icons similar to Word. I'm still pretty happy with libreoffice writer, however excel is still king, calc is just horrible. Try to make anything a bit more interesting than a line graph, 2 axis's you'll get stuck quickly
- prox 6y ago
  They also improved importing and exporting in the latest version if I am not mistaken.
- microcolonel 6y ago
  Calc's problems run deep. Every other release breaks the find function or something similar in a way that literally crashes when editing my company's massive golden workbook. Nonetheless it is still usable. When we have more scale, we'll probably just implement a subset of ODS as an import for a custom spreadsheet program that I've been working on in my more-free time (looking to make explicit loops/tables of intra-row and previous-row dependent expressions, enabling lazy sequences [or just sequences with length defined by downstream users] and more straightforward static compilation w/ LLVM or similar). ODS is pretty bad, especially the way LO writes it. For example LibreOffice adds like 50 styles to your ODS files, even empty ones, every time you save; and one of them is called "Default", even though ODS has an explicit mechanism for default styles that LibreOffice recognizes. I could go into all the levels of hell in LibreOffice-generated ODS files (not to say others don't have their own flavour of hell). LibreOffice, and I suspect most ODS generating programs, routinely generate schema-invalid ODS files for a good reason (boolean value cells with integer cached values, which are essential). I think my new legacy-optional spreadsheet can be pretty killer, and I hope to bring it to the masses at some point.
  - akho 6y ago
    In Excel, intra-row and previous row are better handled by DAX (PowerPivot), than the grid as such. This is, of course, unique to desktop Excel. If you are at the point where you are building your own engine for that sort of thing, and have a “massive golden workbook”, wouldn’t SSAS make more sense?
bitL 6y ago
At some point LibreOffice made super weird visual design choices, icons look like they were drawn by a 5-year old and they completely botched math formula editor. Compared to that even Star Office 5 (predecessor of OpenOffice) looked more professional. I am wondering what is going on?
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  I completely agree. Opening ONLYOFFICE and using it for one minute, to me it's immediately better than LibreOffice. This is the first FOSS Office I may actually desire to use when I have to do some document writing. It has a better default font, a much nicer, comfortable-feeling and inviting-to-use interface, and it saves to a more useful format like DOCX by default. LibreOffice puzzles me as to why they choose such bad-looking defaults when the options are there to make it better. My perspective is one that matters in FOSS. This is not just about advanced technical things with power users. It's about casual users too. It's about Linux having something actually comparable to MS Word. It's about the entire FOSS ecosystem. If LibreOffice want their software to be used more, then they need to make it actually look and feel good - out of the box - and not just as a configurable option. I mean this with the greatest respect. I'm a FOSS advocate. Part of furthering FOSS should be that it looks and feels nice, and not just that it's FOSS with a GPL license.
  - mindfulhack 6y ago
    In fact, I'm so impressed with ONLYOFFICE's out of the box experience that IMO it should be Linux Mint's default pre-installed Office. On macOS and Linux it looks awesome.
- prox 6y ago
  The GUI has been redesigned in recent versions, it’s ribbon based and looks like any other package to my eyes.
  - Qub3d 6y ago
    > it’s ribbon based Ehhh, kind-of. I'd put a HUGE asterisk on that, as you need to A) dig through the settings and tick a vague scary "ENABLE EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES" checkbox, then B) apply a random style called "Notebookbar" to get the ribbon UI. Fine, if you're a linux tinkerer, go nuts. If you are trying to find a FOSS option for your parents, you are a literary (but not a technical) professional, or you want to keep your tech and writing work in different silos, ONLYOFFICE seems much, much better at this moment.
dima55 6y ago
If this thing isn't free software, and if one really cares about MSword compatibility, then why wouldn't they just go use MSword?
- crowf 6y ago
  MSword doesn't support Linux. Personally, if it were to I would purchase it
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    If you're willing to pay, have you looked at codeweavers crossover? (Disclaimer: I've not personally tried this)
    - crowf 6y ago
      I don't mind paying. I tried WINE but that didn't work well enough for me. I will try codeweavers crossover
    - crowf 6y ago
      I tried it and unfortunately it did not work
  - tracker1 6y ago
    I've used the online o365 version a bit for work edits, but that's about it... it's not perfect, but much better than gdocs imo. There's an "unofficial" wrapper. I am glad teams works well at this point too. Will probably see some sort of hybrid electron version of office in the future though, which will shift from the classic version and be more transparent between web and offline.
crowf 6y ago
One deal breaker for me regarding OnlyOffice is that they have absolutely no support for RTL https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/19 https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/19 . From what it looks like there is a 5 year opened issue requesting RTL support. Until they support RTL, I can't use them. Softmaker on the other had does support RTL. They still have a long way to go to be at the level of Microsoft office, but they are the best Linux office suite that I found
- xeromal 6y ago
  That was a fun read. Thanks for sharing!
  - gugagore 6y ago
    Your comment encouraged me to read it, so thanks for that. I thought a bit about the phrase "planned for future versions" and I felt like I could see where there was a sort of miscommunication. If someone said: "Future versions of this product", I think it could be reasonably understood to mean: "any/all future versions" which could mean: "the (next and all subsequent) version" The most natural meaning to me, and the one that I believe was intended is that they want it in a/some future version. And then I thought it this was simply because languages can vary in how they specify noun definiteness and indefiniteness? For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_nouns_and_adjectives#State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_nouns_and_adjectives#St...
- esquire_900 6y ago
  It's a great read and an educative insight into the working behind onlyoffice. The issue (RTL support) is dodged, promises are made ("It's on our roadmap") but none are kept. When gh user ramezrafla starts doing the heavy lifting and started coding, he is basically met with... silence? He codes for free, helps them implements an important feature, and the onlyoffice response is that it will cost him $100k for them to make time for the issue.
  - watwut 6y ago
kissgyorgy 6y ago
It comes with Nextcloud, you can install it with a click of a button: https://nextcloud.com/onlyoffice/ https://nextcloud.com/onlyoffice/
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  Doesn't work too well (as in at all) in docker.
  - kissgyorgy 6y ago
    Does not need Docker AFAIK.
yellowapple 6y ago
> Now I know a lot of FOSS enthusiasts will be unhappy about the idealistic part of the recommendation Why would we be unhappy with it? Seems like at least some version of it is FOSS (GNU GPL or AGPL on all the repos I'm seeing). I ain't familiar with it, though. I've also been reasonably happy with LibreOffice, so I haven't been motivated to look all that hard for alternatives.
- samtuke 6y ago
  Their commitment to Open Source has been questioned, given the small OS community size and apparent lack of transparency around releases and development. I haven't verified these criticisms myself however.
p1necone 6y ago
Is there really an issue with compatibility of documents between Libre Office and MS Office? I always thought that was just FUD.
- Hydraulix989 6y ago
  For basic word processing, no.
- gforge 6y ago
  Yes, especially if you have images or other things except text. It surprisingly bad when you want a constant layout between the two.
- Mengkudulangsat 6y ago
  I found compatibility issues between MS Office (Windows) and MS Office (Mac), or even between MS Excel and Ms PowerPoint, it has always been a mess. Try making a table in Excel and pasting it into Powerpoint.
aritmo 6y ago
Is this the same "blogger" that yesterday was disparaging snap packages? I can see a pattern in being superficial in their writings.
- nxpnsv 6y ago
  With 14 mentions of ONLY0FFICE it certainly reads like paid content or SEO nonsense. Not sure there's any money in it in this case though.
henriquemaia 6y ago
All looks well and dandy until you need to integrate Zotero into the flow of your work. Unfortunately, OnlyOffice doesn't offer a Zotero integration tool. That's a huge deal breaker for any academic.
- Darvon 6y ago
  I've never found it taxing to just copy and paste my references into a text file.
- ebalit 6y ago
  OnlyOffice can be extended through plugins apparently [0]. Creating a plugin to search for a reference and generate a list of the citations should be doable and provide most of the benefit. What are the Zotero integration features that you rely on? EDIT: In fact there is already a Zotero plugin available [1] 0: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/sdkjs-plugins https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/sdkjs-plugins 1: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/plugin-zotero https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/plugin-zotero
aurelien 6y ago
It's open source ... not free as in freedom.
- Cyphase 6y ago
  Can you elaborate? FYI, it looks like the code is released under the AGPL 3.
- andrewshadura 6y ago
  Open source is free as in freedom, see opensource.org. The problem with OnlyOffice is non-community-oriented development and the predatory licensing model where they hold all copyrights and dual-license their code AGPL+proprietary, while forbidding others do the same (since they hold the copyrights), therefore putting themselves at the centre of their universe. Compare that with the healthy community around LibreOffice where nobody holds copyrights for all of it, so the copyleft actually protects all involved parties from unfair competition and makes them cooperate for the common good. For OnlyOffice, the open source license is just a marketing trick and a source of occasional free patches.
  - mindfulhack 6y ago
    I don't understand. If they offer any sort of GPL on their code, irrespective of some other license also placed on it isn't a user entitled under such AGPL to fork it as they please, where continued free (as in freedom) use and subsequent further forking can take place?
  - distances 6y ago
    > Compare that with the healthy community around LibreOffice where nobody holds copyrights for all of it, so the copyleft actually protects all involved parties from unfair competition and makes them cooperate for the common good. According to the recent discussion [1] it's not all that peachy for sustainable LibreOffice development either. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793942
  - amenod 6y ago
    > The problem with OnlyOffice is non-community-oriented development and the predatory licensing model where they hold all copyrights and dual-license their code AGPL+proprietary, while forbidding others do the same (since they hold the copyrights), therefore putting themselves at the centre of their universe. > Compare that with the healthy community around LibreOffice where nobody holds copyrights for all of it, so the copyleft actually protects all involved parties from unfair competition and makes them cooperate for the common good. This is a very good point, and very well said! I agree completely - from activist point of view. It really does benefit users the most. BUT! It doesn't benefit developers and maintainers at all, which leads to the common problem of "it works for me" attitude. This is an understandable though regrettable situation. To put software to another level it takes lots of additional effort in areas which are usually not fun. Why would someone do it? LibreOffice is a great case in point. While I use it regularly, it lacks in two important areas: - 100% compatibility with MS Office - UI is ugly and in places unintuitive I can imagine that the first problem is not fun, and the second is difficult to solve with so many people involved. I don't believe LibreOffice will ever solve these two problems. Incentives matter.
m0zg 6y ago
AGPL ensures no serious business users will touch it with a 10 foot pole.
- PowerBar 6y ago
  Why would that make any difference unless they're integrating the software itself into the product? The AGPL will not affect documents made or edited with the software.
- dvdkon 6y ago
  If they're that prejudiced against the AGPL, they'll probably be happy to pay for one of the proprietary editions (which have more restrictive licences, but don't tell them that).
  - m0zg 6y ago
    If you're going to pay anybody anything, you might as well pay Microsoft $8.5/mo and get the real thing. Microsoft salted the earth on commercial viability of competition with this pricing.
codygman 6y ago
Maybe libreoffice needs a more strict word online compatibility mode that compromises UI and functionality for as perfect as possible compatibility. For instance a user in the thread mentioned all background colors can be applied in libreoffice, but in word online some are restricted. Ux having those restricted colors grayed out by default with a hover note why seems perfect to keep compatibility and show where word online is wonky. Hope this makes sense, will have to pay or in a better format to the issue tracker tomorrow.
- thiht 6y ago
  Libre Office is already bloated to the point of being unusable imo. If some features are not available in a given context, they just should not be shown, instead of trying to show off how it's superior. Less is more.
  - stOneskull 6y ago
    i think the bloatedness has improved in the last year. start-up times and responsiveness are much better
  - codygman 6y ago
    If the UX isn't done well I agree. However there a great opportunity for pushing for compatibility and a more portable document format in a less annoying way than gimp does for xcf.
anonytrary 6y ago
I remember using LibreOffice. It does the job, but with noticeable deficiencies. At this point Google Docs basically replaced the MS Office suite for me. Who even needs "powerpoint" anymore? All of the "character bullet sound animations" are like the 90s web of office software. I basically use Google Docs to look at shared notepads and CSVs, and that's about it.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Who even needs "powerpoint" anymore? People who want to make some slides. And why did you put it in scare quotes as if you’re not even convinced it exists?
  - anonytrary 6y ago
    They don't need powerpoint to do that.
- smabie 6y ago
  Excel is much more powerful than Sheets. But maybe that's a bad thing. I've seen entire billion dollar portfolios run on Excel.
  - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    If it works, why would it be bad?
    - smabie 6y ago
      No it didn't work, the performance of the fund was terrible and the portfolio manager was a muppet.
  - sys_64738 6y ago
    I’ve seen this too with Excel. Some of those custom spreadsheets are so complex and developed over decades that it’s not worth my job to try using LO Calc on it. Billions of dollars are dependent on the results from the Spreadsheet. Crazy but true.
mmwelt 6y ago
The author talks about "top notch Microsoft Office compatibility", including formatting. However, something relatively simple, such as "Center Accross Selection" cell formatting in Excel does not display correctly in OnlyOffice. Hmm...
29athrowaway 6y ago
There is also SoftMaker FreeOffice (the free version of SoftMaker Office): https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ Unlike OnlyOffice, it's not open source, but it is an excellent product that I have used for some time now with no adverse results. Works well with HiDPI. I have a deep respect for the people behind the LibreOffice project, but to me it still feels a lot like its predecessor: StarOffice from Sun Microsystems, a product that I did not like. I have not tried Caligra Office or Abiword / Gnumeric lately, probably I should.
- Qub3d 6y ago
  According to the comparison page from SoftMaker[0], Spell-checking is a feature reserved for the paid version. I'm not against reserving features for a paid version, but spell-checking? The thing that is implemented in all modern browsers and even basic editors like notepad++? The bare-bones markdown editor I use[1] has spell checking. Not shipping a major word processor of any sort without spell checking in 2020 makes me immediately cross it off my list. [0]: https://www.freeoffice.com/en/freeoffice-comparison https://www.freeoffice.com/en/freeoffice-comparison [1]: https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    I opened FreeOffice, typed a mispelled English word and got a spellcheck error + suggestion. Then switched language to Spanish, typed a mispelled word on that language and again, got a spellcheck error + suggestion. As you can see, I do not think spellchecking is much of an issue in SoftMaker FreeOffice.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    I think they mean the "Duden Korrektor" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duden which is the authority on German language, and as such a commercially licensed product, which they can't give away.
aneutron 6y ago
Okay so, here we go again: An article which does not go into any detail about specifics, and makes a very bold claim (i.e. this product is better than this one because I said it's better). Why is this on the front page ....
- sjwright 6y ago
  > Why is this on the front page .... Likely because it was mentioned in passing in the most recent Linus Tech Tips video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkiU6GG-YU&t=273 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkiU6GG-YU&t=273
- stuaxo 6y ago
  It does go into specifics, better MS office compatibility and a ribbon UI. My CV evolved over the last 20 years as a word doc, and loading it in anything else explodes it into 2x the pages. Yes, I could redo the whole thing, but other things in life are a higher priority. I use word 2016 in crossover, which is stable...ish. I will gladly try this.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    I’m quite sure Microsoft got a lot of patents on the ribbon user interface, if this becomes big that’s going to be an issue.
  - aneutron 6y ago
    First of all, LibreOffice does support a Ribbon UI, without all the patent-y stuff. Secondly, "better MS office compatibility" is really, really a non-constructive and large comparative. For example, a good post would have been to list exactly what goes wrong, or what are the most annoying bugs. Most of the time, the developers can use posts like those to pin-point exactly what is wrong and fix it quite swiftly. Because it's not only an open source project that strives for compatibility, but it's also made by benevolent humans who don't necessarily have a very definite document of what should be implemented and how. So telling them "hey guys, this should work like this, can you please fix it" is miles better than just saying "hey, your product sux, onlyoffice is better compat with word, bye". I'm sorry if this somehow comes out a bit offensive, it is not, it's just that sometimes we tend to forget that those developers won't necessarily have the use cases we do, and hence will never optimize for them if we don't report them, and that just dismissing the whole software in favor of another without citing detailed analysis helps neither.
stOneskull 6y ago
sounds like a paid advertisement.. but then again, competition is good. don't want libreoffice to get stagnant.
Stierlitz 6y ago
The obvious solution is for Jatan to have his correspondents install a local copy of LibreOffice. There's even a Windows version. https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ “I’m a science writer who uses Linux because it just functions better for me than Windows or macOS and because I’m an open source enthusiast. Given my profession, I have to frequently collaborate with people on other operating systems who almost always use either Microsoft Office or Google Docs.” “After three years of trying, I can tell you that LibreOffice just doesn’t cut it. Either me or the other person will lose some formatting in the documents at some point. And as a document travels from one computer to another, things quickly become a mess.”
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
Am I only one who prefers OpenOffice over LibreOffice?
m-p-3 6y ago
They crippled the open-source version in Nextcloud to only offer read-only access through mobile web https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/fktqug/onlyoffice_fcked_us/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/fktqug/onlyoffic... Collabora is the way to go if you plan on using it with Nextcloud. https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/ https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/

130 points by pkz 6y ago

OpenOffice to LibreOffice to OnlyOffice... Does Microsoft still have 95% market share? Put your wood behind 1 arrow. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/35197/meaning-of-more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/35197/meaning-of...

Nbox9 6y ago
I dug into the phrase “Put your wood behind 1 arrow” and found a type of culture I want nothing to do with. This quote is just dripping with toxic masculinity. The argument literally boils down to “Iterative development (agile development) isn’t manly.” My personal masculinity doesn’t need to be reinforced by my choice of software development practices. > Face it, iterative development is for people who don't know what they want, who don't believe in themselves enough to trust their own specifications. They don't know their requirements, they don't know where their projects are going to end. No wonder they're afraid of the waterfall method--that takes a little confidence. Here's an analogy. You go out deer hunting. You take your bow and arrow, but do you need a map and a compass? Hardly, not if you are a real man! You take direction from the sun, go east for 3 days, and then shoot your bear. Sure, you meant to shoot a deer, but nobody can call you a coward for shooting a bear, right? And notice I said bow and ARROW, no "s." That's right. Real men bring only one arrow. They know how to aim (and they remember to take plenty of time when aiming), and they put all the wood behind that one arrow. Only sissies bring extra arrows for--what?--in case they "miss?" Real men don't know the meaning of the word. This is the way our fathers did it, and our fathers before them, and if it was good enough for them, it should be good enough for us. http://www.waterfall2006.com/kroll.html http://www.waterfall2006.com/kroll.html
- swsieber 6y ago
  Per the stack overflow comments, that post was an April fool's post.
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    It’s a stupid idea anyway. Firstly, no hunter only grinds one arrow. Secondly, it’s a saying my a Sun Microsystems executive. And we all know how well that went.
- irrational 6y ago
  To be honest, I didn’t follow the link, but that quote sounds totally tongue in cheek. Maybe the author is serious, but it reads more like an article from The Onion.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- freemint 6y ago
  While your interpretation of the phrase is interesting i think there is something as to much interpretation. Reimplementation of existing software (what all those projects aim for) doesn't work that well with an iterative process. It might be one of the things where a waterfall like approach is appropriate. The requirements literally don't change. So it doesn't make sense to maintain 3 different waterfalls (or a 4th if you count Apaches efforts) and people working together (not that manly) would have a better chance catching up the monolith that get's copied. I find the saying on point.

TheRealPomax 6y ago

tl;dr according to the author: - MS office compatibility - tabs - cloud support - ribbon UI Personally, none of those are even remotely relevant (and MSO compatibility is a given, which suite doesn't support docx etc these days?). The only times I still reach for MS Office is when I need its million times faster speed compared to OpenOffice and friends (libre office, etc), for things like "sorting 20,000 lines of CSV in Excel using multiple column constraints because I need the first 100 entries after sorting" or "writing out some maths that doesn't justify using full-blown XeLaTeX", so... this just reads like a blog-shaped ad. I'm curious to learn how much the author got paid to post this, given how little what-I-use-it-for-information there is in this post.

unnouinceput 6y ago
You know, if you want to fast sort 20k lines, then Excel is the wrong tool. Access is better, and with their DOM linking model you can simply define once, use multiple times as you delete/edit/insert lines into that Excel/Word. Click of a button in Access and zbang! those lines are sorted instantly. For single user Access is still fastest database to use locally. Nothing beats it! Well, until you need 50 millions records, at which point you definitely switch to PostgreSQL as none of Microsoft tools beats that beast when it comes to large data (MSSQL included!).
- TheRealPomax 6y ago
  It really isn't. Access is great for _persistent_ data, but if I have a .csv file and I just need it quickly sorted so I can grab the top 100 entries after multi-column sorting, Access is about as useful as SQL: pointless for what I need.
  - unnouinceput 6y ago
    Then you definitely don't know to use it to it's usefulness. But that's OK, as long as Excel fits you needs. You do know, just like in Excel, you can simply right click on column data and select order, yes? Or filter if you want. To your point, if I have a .csv file I can simply copy/paste it to Access in a new table, and just next/next through the wizard that will pop-up. Now do a test, get that .csv file, with 20k rows, and paste it in Excel 50 times, so you'll have 1M records in a table. Let me know in how much time Excel vs. Access will order it.

chris_wot 6y ago

I’m rather curious about these claims. What specific formatting issues is he referring to, and what version was he using? Also, they claim LibreOffice is not available on MacOS. This article is quite light on detail.

freetime2 6y ago
I can't speak for the author, of course, but recently while working with LibreOffice Calc I ran into an issue where it was completely mangling cell coloring in spreadsheet that a coworker sent me. I was using the latest version of LibreOffice in Ubuntu 20.04, and my coworker was running the latest version of Microsoft Office for Mac.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  Yup, it can happen. I’m just curious what the issues specifically were. Do you have an example document? The LO team are always looking at compatibility issues.
  - gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
    The problem with this is that one can't simply submit work documents and these formatting issues are usually edge cases produced by people that are doing things they really shouldn't with Office.
    - codygman 6y ago
      They should add a feedback wizard that guides a user to remove sensitive data and preserve the document format as much as possible.
      - chris_wot 6y ago
        There is a comprehensive document test suite. It is always being improved.
6y ago

freetime2 6y ago

I gave LibreOffice a go, but quickly became frustrated with incompatibility issues and some of the other quirks in Calc. So I've switched to using Google Docs, which is powerful enough for my modest needs and has so far been pretty frustration free. It also has the advantage of being easily accessible from my other non-Linux devices. The free browser-only versions of Microsoft Office also look good... but I just haven't had a reason to seriously evaluate them. What are the benefits to going with something like OnlyOffice over Google's and Microsoft's offerings?

snazz 6y ago
I’m in a similar situation to you. I use Google Docs as my primary office suite and occasionally switch to native Microsoft Office when I need to edit a complex or macro-covered Excel sheet. Google Docs is very convenient, free of frustration, and quickly improving. It also integrates nicely with the other G Suite apps. I think a lot of the free software people prefer to avoid proprietary web apps made by companies that they view as poorly aligned to their beliefs. Also, performance is a valid reason to avoid web apps.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  I don't know if it's improved since I last tried it but the offline experience with Google Docs was not great. Web apps do require the web, and sometimes there are situations where you don't have it or are not willing to do it.
  - threentaway 6y ago
    I've had no issues with offline mode. Pre-covid, I worked on a long document while on a cross-country flight and once I had WiFi again it just synced it up to Drive.
    - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
      There's quite a bit of essential (to me) functionality that is not available offline though. For instance, you can't convert a sheet to PDF or XSLT. Version history is not available either.

merlinscholz 6y ago

OnlyOffice's developers are... Questionable. Referring to this: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805 https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805

edoceo 6y ago
For those who don't want to click: Mobile editing was removed from community edition and only in the $950 license edition. A poorly announced change which made he community mad.
- merlinscholz 6y ago
  Not only that. Someone wrote a script that activated the document server using only the open source version provided in the repo. A OO developer couldn't even grasp the concept that this was legally allowed any why anyone would want to do that (as a consequence of OO's own license changes). Shortly after that the issue was closed/locked.
- arp242 6y ago
  Where do you get the $950 from? It's listed in the $149 (currently $100) "home server" lifetime license on their pricing page: https://www.onlyoffice.com/integration-edition-prices.aspx https://www.onlyoffice.com/integration-edition-prices.aspx
  - ColanR 6y ago
    950 EUR is from the first comment in the linked github issue. https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805#issue-578506040 https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/805#issu...
    - arp242 6y ago
      Yeah, I saw that; the OO person in the replied mentioning the $100 price as well, so either something changed in the meanwhile (possibly as a response to the feedback?), the poster was mistaken, or I'm not understanding their pricing page correctly. As far as I can see for personal usage the "home server" plan should be grand.

juancn 6y ago

I don’t get why people keep using desktop office apps. Google docs is more than enough for everything I’ve ever thrown at it.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> Google docs is more than enough for everything I’ve ever thrown at it. Please correct for your sampling bias.
mdifrgechd 6y ago
I went from MS word to Google Docs for writing professional reports, and there is no comparison. For basic stuff, Google docs is fine, and they definitely have a better model for collaborating on a document. But docs feels 90% done - it is missing advanced formatting, copy paste integration with other Google products, and many other little things like that that make it challenging to use as a professional tool. I could go on at length about all the stuff I didnt like about Word (especially collaborative editing on sharepoint, there have been some disasters), but at least it feels like a professional tool vs. the proof-of-concept feel of Google docs
swiley 6y ago
Google docs requires a google account. Getting one of those has become very difficult and I’m not convinced having one is a net benifit. For individual developers I’m also not convinced a spreadsheet is an improvement over sql + maybe some python scripts where you would use macros/charts.
- edoceo 6y ago
  Wait, getting a google account is difficult? One of my testers routinely creates a new one in like 5-15 minutes. We've got a new one at least weekly.
  - opan 6y ago
    I've heard new Google accounts have to be tied to a phone number now.

RandomWorker 6y ago

One thing that is overlooked by the authors, is that libreoffice now also has ribbon with icons similar to Word. I'm still pretty happy with libreoffice writer, however excel is still king, calc is just horrible. Try to make anything a bit more interesting than a line graph, 2 axis's you'll get stuck quickly

prox 6y ago
They also improved importing and exporting in the latest version if I am not mistaken.
microcolonel 6y ago
Calc's problems run deep. Every other release breaks the find function or something similar in a way that literally crashes when editing my company's massive golden workbook. Nonetheless it is still usable. When we have more scale, we'll probably just implement a subset of ODS as an import for a custom spreadsheet program that I've been working on in my more-free time (looking to make explicit loops/tables of intra-row and previous-row dependent expressions, enabling lazy sequences [or just sequences with length defined by downstream users] and more straightforward static compilation w/ LLVM or similar). ODS is pretty bad, especially the way LO writes it. For example LibreOffice adds like 50 styles to your ODS files, even empty ones, every time you save; and one of them is called "Default", even though ODS has an explicit mechanism for default styles that LibreOffice recognizes. I could go into all the levels of hell in LibreOffice-generated ODS files (not to say others don't have their own flavour of hell). LibreOffice, and I suspect most ODS generating programs, routinely generate schema-invalid ODS files for a good reason (boolean value cells with integer cached values, which are essential). I think my new legacy-optional spreadsheet can be pretty killer, and I hope to bring it to the masses at some point.
- akho 6y ago
  In Excel, intra-row and previous row are better handled by DAX (PowerPivot), than the grid as such. This is, of course, unique to desktop Excel. If you are at the point where you are building your own engine for that sort of thing, and have a “massive golden workbook”, wouldn’t SSAS make more sense?

bitL 6y ago

At some point LibreOffice made super weird visual design choices, icons look like they were drawn by a 5-year old and they completely botched math formula editor. Compared to that even Star Office 5 (predecessor of OpenOffice) looked more professional. I am wondering what is going on?

mindfulhack 6y ago
I completely agree. Opening ONLYOFFICE and using it for one minute, to me it's immediately better than LibreOffice. This is the first FOSS Office I may actually desire to use when I have to do some document writing. It has a better default font, a much nicer, comfortable-feeling and inviting-to-use interface, and it saves to a more useful format like DOCX by default. LibreOffice puzzles me as to why they choose such bad-looking defaults when the options are there to make it better. My perspective is one that matters in FOSS. This is not just about advanced technical things with power users. It's about casual users too. It's about Linux having something actually comparable to MS Word. It's about the entire FOSS ecosystem. If LibreOffice want their software to be used more, then they need to make it actually look and feel good - out of the box - and not just as a configurable option. I mean this with the greatest respect. I'm a FOSS advocate. Part of furthering FOSS should be that it looks and feels nice, and not just that it's FOSS with a GPL license.
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  In fact, I'm so impressed with ONLYOFFICE's out of the box experience that IMO it should be Linux Mint's default pre-installed Office. On macOS and Linux it looks awesome.
prox 6y ago
The GUI has been redesigned in recent versions, it’s ribbon based and looks like any other package to my eyes.
- Qub3d 6y ago
  > it’s ribbon based Ehhh, kind-of. I'd put a HUGE asterisk on that, as you need to A) dig through the settings and tick a vague scary "ENABLE EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES" checkbox, then B) apply a random style called "Notebookbar" to get the ribbon UI. Fine, if you're a linux tinkerer, go nuts. If you are trying to find a FOSS option for your parents, you are a literary (but not a technical) professional, or you want to keep your tech and writing work in different silos, ONLYOFFICE seems much, much better at this moment.

dima55 6y ago

If this thing isn't free software, and if one really cares about MSword compatibility, then why wouldn't they just go use MSword?

crowf 6y ago
MSword doesn't support Linux. Personally, if it were to I would purchase it
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  If you're willing to pay, have you looked at codeweavers crossover? (Disclaimer: I've not personally tried this)
  - crowf 6y ago
    I don't mind paying. I tried WINE but that didn't work well enough for me. I will try codeweavers crossover
  - crowf 6y ago
    I tried it and unfortunately it did not work
- tracker1 6y ago
  I've used the online o365 version a bit for work edits, but that's about it... it's not perfect, but much better than gdocs imo. There's an "unofficial" wrapper. I am glad teams works well at this point too. Will probably see some sort of hybrid electron version of office in the future though, which will shift from the classic version and be more transparent between web and offline.

crowf 6y ago

One deal breaker for me regarding OnlyOffice is that they have absolutely no support for RTL https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/19 https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/19 . From what it looks like there is a 5 year opened issue requesting RTL support. Until they support RTL, I can't use them. Softmaker on the other had does support RTL. They still have a long way to go to be at the level of Microsoft office, but they are the best Linux office suite that I found

xeromal 6y ago
That was a fun read. Thanks for sharing!
- gugagore 6y ago
  Your comment encouraged me to read it, so thanks for that. I thought a bit about the phrase "planned for future versions" and I felt like I could see where there was a sort of miscommunication. If someone said: "Future versions of this product", I think it could be reasonably understood to mean: "any/all future versions" which could mean: "the (next and all subsequent) version" The most natural meaning to me, and the one that I believe was intended is that they want it in a/some future version. And then I thought it this was simply because languages can vary in how they specify noun definiteness and indefiniteness? For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_nouns_and_adjectives#State https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_nouns_and_adjectives#St...
esquire_900 6y ago
It's a great read and an educative insight into the working behind onlyoffice. The issue (RTL support) is dodged, promises are made ("It's on our roadmap") but none are kept. When gh user ramezrafla starts doing the heavy lifting and started coding, he is basically met with... silence? He codes for free, helps them implements an important feature, and the onlyoffice response is that it will cost him $100k for them to make time for the issue.
- watwut 6y ago

kissgyorgy 6y ago

It comes with Nextcloud, you can install it with a click of a button: https://nextcloud.com/onlyoffice/ https://nextcloud.com/onlyoffice/

LockAndLol 6y ago
Doesn't work too well (as in at all) in docker.
- kissgyorgy 6y ago
  Does not need Docker AFAIK.

yellowapple 6y ago

> Now I know a lot of FOSS enthusiasts will be unhappy about the idealistic part of the recommendation Why would we be unhappy with it? Seems like at least some version of it is FOSS (GNU GPL or AGPL on all the repos I'm seeing). I ain't familiar with it, though. I've also been reasonably happy with LibreOffice, so I haven't been motivated to look all that hard for alternatives.

samtuke 6y ago
Their commitment to Open Source has been questioned, given the small OS community size and apparent lack of transparency around releases and development. I haven't verified these criticisms myself however.

p1necone 6y ago

Is there really an issue with compatibility of documents between Libre Office and MS Office? I always thought that was just FUD.

Hydraulix989 6y ago
For basic word processing, no.
gforge 6y ago
Yes, especially if you have images or other things except text. It surprisingly bad when you want a constant layout between the two.
Mengkudulangsat 6y ago
I found compatibility issues between MS Office (Windows) and MS Office (Mac), or even between MS Excel and Ms PowerPoint, it has always been a mess. Try making a table in Excel and pasting it into Powerpoint.

aritmo 6y ago

Is this the same "blogger" that yesterday was disparaging snap packages? I can see a pattern in being superficial in their writings.

nxpnsv 6y ago
With 14 mentions of ONLY0FFICE it certainly reads like paid content or SEO nonsense. Not sure there's any money in it in this case though.

henriquemaia 6y ago

All looks well and dandy until you need to integrate Zotero into the flow of your work. Unfortunately, OnlyOffice doesn't offer a Zotero integration tool. That's a huge deal breaker for any academic.

Darvon 6y ago
I've never found it taxing to just copy and paste my references into a text file.
ebalit 6y ago
OnlyOffice can be extended through plugins apparently [0]. Creating a plugin to search for a reference and generate a list of the citations should be doable and provide most of the benefit. What are the Zotero integration features that you rely on? EDIT: In fact there is already a Zotero plugin available [1] 0: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/sdkjs-plugins https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/sdkjs-plugins 1: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/plugin-zotero https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/plugin-zotero

aurelien 6y ago

It's open source ... not free as in freedom.

Cyphase 6y ago
Can you elaborate? FYI, it looks like the code is released under the AGPL 3.
andrewshadura 6y ago
Open source is free as in freedom, see opensource.org. The problem with OnlyOffice is non-community-oriented development and the predatory licensing model where they hold all copyrights and dual-license their code AGPL+proprietary, while forbidding others do the same (since they hold the copyrights), therefore putting themselves at the centre of their universe. Compare that with the healthy community around LibreOffice where nobody holds copyrights for all of it, so the copyleft actually protects all involved parties from unfair competition and makes them cooperate for the common good. For OnlyOffice, the open source license is just a marketing trick and a source of occasional free patches.
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  I don't understand. If they offer any sort of GPL on their code, irrespective of some other license also placed on it isn't a user entitled under such AGPL to fork it as they please, where continued free (as in freedom) use and subsequent further forking can take place?
- distances 6y ago
  > Compare that with the healthy community around LibreOffice where nobody holds copyrights for all of it, so the copyleft actually protects all involved parties from unfair competition and makes them cooperate for the common good. According to the recent discussion [1] it's not all that peachy for sustainable LibreOffice development either. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23793942
- amenod 6y ago
  > The problem with OnlyOffice is non-community-oriented development and the predatory licensing model where they hold all copyrights and dual-license their code AGPL+proprietary, while forbidding others do the same (since they hold the copyrights), therefore putting themselves at the centre of their universe. > Compare that with the healthy community around LibreOffice where nobody holds copyrights for all of it, so the copyleft actually protects all involved parties from unfair competition and makes them cooperate for the common good. This is a very good point, and very well said! I agree completely - from activist point of view. It really does benefit users the most. BUT! It doesn't benefit developers and maintainers at all, which leads to the common problem of "it works for me" attitude. This is an understandable though regrettable situation. To put software to another level it takes lots of additional effort in areas which are usually not fun. Why would someone do it? LibreOffice is a great case in point. While I use it regularly, it lacks in two important areas: - 100% compatibility with MS Office - UI is ugly and in places unintuitive I can imagine that the first problem is not fun, and the second is difficult to solve with so many people involved. I don't believe LibreOffice will ever solve these two problems. Incentives matter.

m0zg 6y ago

AGPL ensures no serious business users will touch it with a 10 foot pole.

PowerBar 6y ago
Why would that make any difference unless they're integrating the software itself into the product? The AGPL will not affect documents made or edited with the software.
dvdkon 6y ago
If they're that prejudiced against the AGPL, they'll probably be happy to pay for one of the proprietary editions (which have more restrictive licences, but don't tell them that).
- m0zg 6y ago
  If you're going to pay anybody anything, you might as well pay Microsoft $8.5/mo and get the real thing. Microsoft salted the earth on commercial viability of competition with this pricing.

codygman 6y ago

Maybe libreoffice needs a more strict word online compatibility mode that compromises UI and functionality for as perfect as possible compatibility. For instance a user in the thread mentioned all background colors can be applied in libreoffice, but in word online some are restricted. Ux having those restricted colors grayed out by default with a hover note why seems perfect to keep compatibility and show where word online is wonky. Hope this makes sense, will have to pay or in a better format to the issue tracker tomorrow.

thiht 6y ago
Libre Office is already bloated to the point of being unusable imo. If some features are not available in a given context, they just should not be shown, instead of trying to show off how it's superior. Less is more.
- stOneskull 6y ago
  i think the bloatedness has improved in the last year. start-up times and responsiveness are much better
- codygman 6y ago
  If the UX isn't done well I agree. However there a great opportunity for pushing for compatibility and a more portable document format in a less annoying way than gimp does for xcf.

anonytrary 6y ago

I remember using LibreOffice. It does the job, but with noticeable deficiencies. At this point Google Docs basically replaced the MS Office suite for me. Who even needs "powerpoint" anymore? All of the "character bullet sound animations" are like the 90s web of office software. I basically use Google Docs to look at shared notepads and CSVs, and that's about it.

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Who even needs "powerpoint" anymore? People who want to make some slides. And why did you put it in scare quotes as if you’re not even convinced it exists?
- anonytrary 6y ago
  They don't need powerpoint to do that.
smabie 6y ago
Excel is much more powerful than Sheets. But maybe that's a bad thing. I've seen entire billion dollar portfolios run on Excel.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  If it works, why would it be bad?
  - smabie 6y ago
    No it didn't work, the performance of the fund was terrible and the portfolio manager was a muppet.
- sys_64738 6y ago
  I’ve seen this too with Excel. Some of those custom spreadsheets are so complex and developed over decades that it’s not worth my job to try using LO Calc on it. Billions of dollars are dependent on the results from the Spreadsheet. Crazy but true.

mmwelt 6y ago

The author talks about "top notch Microsoft Office compatibility", including formatting. However, something relatively simple, such as "Center Accross Selection" cell formatting in Excel does not display correctly in OnlyOffice. Hmm...

29athrowaway 6y ago

There is also SoftMaker FreeOffice (the free version of SoftMaker Office): https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/ Unlike OnlyOffice, it's not open source, but it is an excellent product that I have used for some time now with no adverse results. Works well with HiDPI. I have a deep respect for the people behind the LibreOffice project, but to me it still feels a lot like its predecessor: StarOffice from Sun Microsystems, a product that I did not like. I have not tried Caligra Office or Abiword / Gnumeric lately, probably I should.

Qub3d 6y ago
According to the comparison page from SoftMaker[0], Spell-checking is a feature reserved for the paid version. I'm not against reserving features for a paid version, but spell-checking? The thing that is implemented in all modern browsers and even basic editors like notepad++? The bare-bones markdown editor I use[1] has spell checking. Not shipping a major word processor of any sort without spell checking in 2020 makes me immediately cross it off my list. [0]: https://www.freeoffice.com/en/freeoffice-comparison https://www.freeoffice.com/en/freeoffice-comparison [1]: https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  I opened FreeOffice, typed a mispelled English word and got a spellcheck error + suggestion. Then switched language to Spanish, typed a mispelled word on that language and again, got a spellcheck error + suggestion. As you can see, I do not think spellchecking is much of an issue in SoftMaker FreeOffice.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  I think they mean the "Duden Korrektor" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duden which is the authority on German language, and as such a commercially licensed product, which they can't give away.

aneutron 6y ago

Okay so, here we go again: An article which does not go into any detail about specifics, and makes a very bold claim (i.e. this product is better than this one because I said it's better). Why is this on the front page ....

sjwright 6y ago
> Why is this on the front page .... Likely because it was mentioned in passing in the most recent Linus Tech Tips video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkiU6GG-YU&t=273 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwkiU6GG-YU&t=273
stuaxo 6y ago
It does go into specifics, better MS office compatibility and a ribbon UI. My CV evolved over the last 20 years as a word doc, and loading it in anything else explodes it into 2x the pages. Yes, I could redo the whole thing, but other things in life are a higher priority. I use word 2016 in crossover, which is stable...ish. I will gladly try this.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  I’m quite sure Microsoft got a lot of patents on the ribbon user interface, if this becomes big that’s going to be an issue.
- aneutron 6y ago
  First of all, LibreOffice does support a Ribbon UI, without all the patent-y stuff. Secondly, "better MS office compatibility" is really, really a non-constructive and large comparative. For example, a good post would have been to list exactly what goes wrong, or what are the most annoying bugs. Most of the time, the developers can use posts like those to pin-point exactly what is wrong and fix it quite swiftly. Because it's not only an open source project that strives for compatibility, but it's also made by benevolent humans who don't necessarily have a very definite document of what should be implemented and how. So telling them "hey guys, this should work like this, can you please fix it" is miles better than just saying "hey, your product sux, onlyoffice is better compat with word, bye". I'm sorry if this somehow comes out a bit offensive, it is not, it's just that sometimes we tend to forget that those developers won't necessarily have the use cases we do, and hence will never optimize for them if we don't report them, and that just dismissing the whole software in favor of another without citing detailed analysis helps neither.

stOneskull 6y ago

sounds like a paid advertisement.. but then again, competition is good. don't want libreoffice to get stagnant.

Stierlitz 6y ago

The obvious solution is for Jatan to have his correspondents install a local copy of LibreOffice. There's even a Windows version. https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/ “I’m a science writer who uses Linux because it just functions better for me than Windows or macOS and because I’m an open source enthusiast. Given my profession, I have to frequently collaborate with people on other operating systems who almost always use either Microsoft Office or Google Docs.” “After three years of trying, I can tell you that LibreOffice just doesn’t cut it. Either me or the other person will lose some formatting in the documents at some point. And as a document travels from one computer to another, things quickly become a mess.”

SomeoneFromCA 6y ago

Am I only one who prefers OpenOffice over LibreOffice?

m-p-3 6y ago

They crippled the open-source version in Nextcloud to only offer read-only access through mobile web https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/fktqug/onlyoffice_fcked_us/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NextCloud/comments/fktqug/onlyoffic... Collabora is the way to go if you plan on using it with Nextcloud. https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/ https://nextcloud.com/collaboraonline/