6 ms·

It's not dead. I use it. Not that I dev for it though.

by oneepic 4y ago

jgilias 4y ago
Why are you using it instead of LibreOffice? Genuinely curious.
- bluedino 4y ago
  He may not know why he should be using it instead of OpenOffice.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    I’m also curious. Also compared to OnlyOffice?
    - jraph 4y ago
      OnlyOffice is far from being as comprehensive as LibreOffice. At least when I tried the spreadsheets, I ran into limitations even though I use spreadsheets very rarely.
      - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
        Good to know, thanks.
  - mtmail 4y ago
    They (he, she, undetermined) might not even be aware of the other office suites. The sibling commenter lists OnlyOffice, first time I hear about that.
- oneepic 4y ago
  1) No Windows release afaik. But please correct me if I am wrong -- I don't see a Win download on their page from a quick look on my phone. 2) I did use it on Ubuntu sometime in college (around 2016 for class) and I just didn't like the feel of Libre. OpenOffice still had a lot of feature parity with Excel without buying Excel, so I got that instead.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - themitigating 4y ago
    They've had Windows builds for as long I can remember. https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/dl/win-x86_64/7.3.4/en-US/LibreOffice_7.3.4_Win_x64.msi https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/dl/win-x86_64/7.3.4/en-US...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrnotcrazy 4y ago
    There should be a windows release, its on the downloads page.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >1) No Windows release afaik. But please correct me if I am wrong -- I don't see a Win download on their page from a quick look on my phone. It's been available for Windows for years. The first option on the drop-down menus says "Windows (64-bit)"[0]. 90% of their 10 million worldwide users in 2011 were on Windows machines[1]. [0]https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Users_and_deployments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Users_and_deployme...
  - Karellen 4y ago
    > I don't see a Win download on their page On the download page, just above the "Download" button, there is a dropdown to select the installer. There should be "Windows (32-bit)" and "Windows (64-bit)" there along with the Linux and MacOS installers. https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
  - lolinder 4y ago
    Others have already noted that the windows release is easily findable, so instead I will ask: what features are missing from LibreOffice that OpenOffice has? The former is a fork of the latter, and LibreOffice has undergone extensive further development where OpenOffice has stagnated.
- kypro 4y ago
  Not OP, but I know sometimes I forget I want LibreOffice. Many years ago I worked for a computer store where I used to refurbish computers everyday with OpenOffice so open OpenOffice is still the brand that first comes to mind for me. I never get very far though because as soon as I see "Apache OpenOffice" I realise my mistake and search for LibreOffice. But I'd assume lot of OpenOffice users today are just legacy users who use it just because they're familiar with the brand and that's what they've always used.
  - vt100 4y ago
    If you type "apt install openoffice", don't most distros install libreoffice instead?
- MichaelMoser123 4y ago
  (not the poster) one of my problems with LibreOffice is that it sucks when you are not using English as your main language - little support for spell checkers, etc. At some stage open office used to be better in that respect!
- 2b3a51 4y ago
  Not the gp (and not IT/Tech based) but I have OpenOffice available because... 1) editing documents I wrote some time ago. There was a time some months ago when LO would warn you when opening an older oOo doc about changes in the format. I saw this with drawings and Impress files. (I need to see if this still happens with latest LO). 2) one of my employers has oOo on their standard desktop image alongside MS Word and all. So I want the same as them for their documents 3) I know the menus and the little UI glitches well in oOo having used it since StarOffice days. LO is (entirely reasonably) refactoring stuff and therefore changing the ways some features work (drawing tools I recollect) 4) gives the impression of running snappier on an ancient laptop that I use. LO does seem to need a full DE (e.g. Gnome/KDE/xfce) ...if oOo life support was switched off, I'd shrug, move all the documents over to LO, and move on I suppose.
  - rascul 4y ago
    > LO does seem to need a full DE (e.g. Gnome/KDE/xfce) LibreOffice seems to do just fine for me here without a DE. I wonder if there's something I'm missing that I don't realize?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    It is already switched off, long since. Except downloading.
    - 2b3a51 4y ago
      I'll nag employer1 again over the summer. Can anyone point to an actual security breach that is traceable to OpenOffice? That would focus minds perhaps.
gspr 4y ago
If you don't mind me asking: why? What does it have going for it that LibreOffice doesn't?
- qweqwerwerwerwr 4y ago
  openoffice came out years before libreoffice, so if you had learned to work with it at the time and you still find it sufficient, then why switch? I doubt libreoffice is 1:1 identical in terms of UI/hotkeys/etc
  - CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
    Because it's basically an outdated version of the same software. Do you also keep on using Word 2003?
    - bitwize 4y ago
      A fair number of people still use Word 97. It does what they need and still works on modern systems. Why switch?
      - rhapsodic 4y ago
        > A fair number of people still use Word 97. It does what they need and still works on modern systems. Why switch? Perhaps so you can open all of those .docx files that people send to you?
        krylon 4y ago
        There are people who don't need to do that. Their use case may be writing the monthly newsletter for the local rabbit breeders club, or writing that novel they've been working on for decades now (and totally are going to finish any day now! I can relate, because I've got two or three of those saved somewhere). To these people, there are no benefits in upgrading. (Also, I've spent a lot of time teaching my parents not to open office documents attached to emails, as that has become a popular way for people to spread malware.)
pabs3 4y ago
You might want to reconsider that, I expect that Apache haven't kept up with fixing the security issues in the OpenOffice codebase.
- JohnTHaller 4y ago
  At one point, an exploitable security issue was unpatched for about 6 months. There was a small note on the site of how to work around it, but it wasn't very noticeable. And every download of it still had the unpatched issue in it until they finally had the resources to release an update. The main purpose of the update was to patch the issue out of the box.

It's not dead. I use it. Not that I dev for it though.

jgilias 4y ago

Why are you using it instead of LibreOffice? Genuinely curious.

bluedino 4y ago
He may not know why he should be using it instead of OpenOffice.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  I’m also curious. Also compared to OnlyOffice?
  - jraph 4y ago
    OnlyOffice is far from being as comprehensive as LibreOffice. At least when I tried the spreadsheets, I ran into limitations even though I use spreadsheets very rarely.
    - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
      Good to know, thanks.
- mtmail 4y ago
  They (he, she, undetermined) might not even be aware of the other office suites. The sibling commenter lists OnlyOffice, first time I hear about that.
oneepic 4y ago
1) No Windows release afaik. But please correct me if I am wrong -- I don't see a Win download on their page from a quick look on my phone. 2) I did use it on Ubuntu sometime in college (around 2016 for class) and I just didn't like the feel of Libre. OpenOffice still had a lot of feature parity with Excel without buying Excel, so I got that instead.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- themitigating 4y ago
  They've had Windows builds for as long I can remember. https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/dl/win-x86_64/7.3.4/en-US/LibreOffice_7.3.4_Win_x64.msi https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/dl/win-x86_64/7.3.4/en-US...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mrnotcrazy 4y ago
  There should be a windows release, its on the downloads page.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >1) No Windows release afaik. But please correct me if I am wrong -- I don't see a Win download on their page from a quick look on my phone. It's been available for Windows for years. The first option on the drop-down menus says "Windows (64-bit)"[0]. 90% of their 10 million worldwide users in 2011 were on Windows machines[1]. [0]https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Users_and_deployments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Users_and_deployme...
- Karellen 4y ago
  > I don't see a Win download on their page On the download page, just above the "Download" button, there is a dropdown to select the installer. There should be "Windows (32-bit)" and "Windows (64-bit)" there along with the Linux and MacOS installers. https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
- lolinder 4y ago
  Others have already noted that the windows release is easily findable, so instead I will ask: what features are missing from LibreOffice that OpenOffice has? The former is a fork of the latter, and LibreOffice has undergone extensive further development where OpenOffice has stagnated.
kypro 4y ago
Not OP, but I know sometimes I forget I want LibreOffice. Many years ago I worked for a computer store where I used to refurbish computers everyday with OpenOffice so open OpenOffice is still the brand that first comes to mind for me. I never get very far though because as soon as I see "Apache OpenOffice" I realise my mistake and search for LibreOffice. But I'd assume lot of OpenOffice users today are just legacy users who use it just because they're familiar with the brand and that's what they've always used.
- vt100 4y ago
  If you type "apt install openoffice", don't most distros install libreoffice instead?
MichaelMoser123 4y ago
(not the poster) one of my problems with LibreOffice is that it sucks when you are not using English as your main language - little support for spell checkers, etc. At some stage open office used to be better in that respect!
2b3a51 4y ago
Not the gp (and not IT/Tech based) but I have OpenOffice available because... 1) editing documents I wrote some time ago. There was a time some months ago when LO would warn you when opening an older oOo doc about changes in the format. I saw this with drawings and Impress files. (I need to see if this still happens with latest LO). 2) one of my employers has oOo on their standard desktop image alongside MS Word and all. So I want the same as them for their documents 3) I know the menus and the little UI glitches well in oOo having used it since StarOffice days. LO is (entirely reasonably) refactoring stuff and therefore changing the ways some features work (drawing tools I recollect) 4) gives the impression of running snappier on an ancient laptop that I use. LO does seem to need a full DE (e.g. Gnome/KDE/xfce) ...if oOo life support was switched off, I'd shrug, move all the documents over to LO, and move on I suppose.
- rascul 4y ago
  > LO does seem to need a full DE (e.g. Gnome/KDE/xfce) LibreOffice seems to do just fine for me here without a DE. I wonder if there's something I'm missing that I don't realize?
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It is already switched off, long since. Except downloading.
  - 2b3a51 4y ago
    I'll nag employer1 again over the summer. Can anyone point to an actual security breach that is traceable to OpenOffice? That would focus minds perhaps.

gspr 4y ago

If you don't mind me asking: why? What does it have going for it that LibreOffice doesn't?

qweqwerwerwerwr 4y ago
openoffice came out years before libreoffice, so if you had learned to work with it at the time and you still find it sufficient, then why switch? I doubt libreoffice is 1:1 identical in terms of UI/hotkeys/etc
- CorrectHorseBat 4y ago
  Because it's basically an outdated version of the same software. Do you also keep on using Word 2003?
  - bitwize 4y ago
    A fair number of people still use Word 97. It does what they need and still works on modern systems. Why switch?
    - rhapsodic 4y ago
      > A fair number of people still use Word 97. It does what they need and still works on modern systems. Why switch? Perhaps so you can open all of those .docx files that people send to you?
      - krylon 4y ago
        There are people who don't need to do that. Their use case may be writing the monthly newsletter for the local rabbit breeders club, or writing that novel they've been working on for decades now (and totally are going to finish any day now! I can relate, because I've got two or three of those saved somewhere). To these people, there are no benefits in upgrading. (Also, I've spent a lot of time teaching my parents not to open office documents attached to emails, as that has become a popular way for people to spread malware.)

pabs3 4y ago

You might want to reconsider that, I expect that Apache haven't kept up with fixing the security issues in the OpenOffice codebase.

JohnTHaller 4y ago
At one point, an exploitable security issue was unpatched for about 6 months. There was a small note on the site of how to work around it, but it wasn't very noticeable. And every download of it still had the unpatched issue in it until they finally had the resources to release an update. The main purpose of the update was to patch the issue out of the box.