5 ms·

Is LibreOffice still commonly used? It seems like much of the world has shifted to cloud offerings.

by _ea1k 3y ago

walrus01 3y ago
yes, absolutely, not everyone wants or needs a "runs as a web app in a browser" word/excel or google sheets/docs etc.
badsectoracula 3y ago
I use it all the time when i need a spreadsheet, rich text editor or... powerpoint viewer :-P. Now i don't really need these that often but it is still one of the programs i have installed on my PC since the OpenOffice days. Also FWIW i avoid anything web-based as much as i can. I prefer software that runs on my own PC, as a desktop app whenever possible.
- LoveMortuus 3y ago
  Interesting, I used to use word processor that aren't cloud based, but many years ago I've lost to many of my writings due to crashes or power loses, do that when I finally discovered cloud based word processors it was like magic to me, because it didn't crash and if I lost power I didn't lose any of my work!
  - whartung 3y ago
    Save for rare cases, I'm really content with the Apple apps: Pages, Numbers, Keynote. And I love the Apple document management. Document always saved and versioned.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      If I had to go back to Linux, and if it were an option (which it’s not), I’d pay $300 without hesitation, to have all Apple’s office-like and other “bonus” apps on it. They’re my top choice in practically every category, when outside factors aren’t deciding for me (it’s usually MS or Google crap, when that happens—man, I hate Google Docs)
  - HideousKojima 3y ago
    LibreOffice (and MS Office) have had automatic saving for several years now. If the program crashes or your PC loses power or whatever you won't be losing your work.
    - jodrellblank 3y ago
      MS Office has taken autosaving away again, if you aren't saving to OneDrive/SharePoint you can't have autosave. (At least, on my work machine; maybe it's different if you don't have a cloudy M365 version installed). https://superuser.com/questions/1663096/why-cant-word-autosave-a-file-to-local-storage https://superuser.com/questions/1663096/why-cant-word-autosa... https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-to-autosave-local-to-pc-instead-of-to-onedrive/8631fa3c-3af4-49f7-8f83-b80c3f3389e8 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-t...
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        "If you're not a subscriber, don't worry. There's still AutoRecover."
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Battery on my laptop works well, no power failures since... '96? Sibling comment mentions backup files, yes a thing too. Also make local and remote backups separately, don't you? So I haven't had a local app lose work in decades. Can't even remember the last time. Definitely before Y2K or so. What does go out several times a year? Yes, you guessed it, our internet connection!
blackhaz 3y ago
Daily. I hate clouds with a passion.
gillesjacobs 3y ago
The killer feature for me is full regex search and replace support, not available elsewhere.
- dharmab 3y ago
  Google Docs has RE2 support. However, Google Docs is so laughably bad in other features compared to LibreOffice and MS Office that I can't recommend it with a straight face for any but the most basic use cases.
jehb 3y ago
I use it all the time, not because I'm as good as I'd like to be about keeping things out of the cloud that don't need to be there, but because I often have ad hoc spreadsheets that are bigger than Google Sheets can handle.
Scarbutt 3y ago
Exporting to .xls files it's pretty bad, so it's a no for sharing. Unfortunately, Google sheets does a better job here. I assume cloud office is the best in this case but haven't tried it.
- mdaniel 3y ago
  Ironically, if one uses the export feature from G-docs they actually use LibreOffice under the covers (I'd guess Xvnc or similar); I found this snippet hiding in a g-doc export, so it's entirely possible they use something different for .xls exports <meta:generator>LibreOfficeDev/6.0.5.2$Linux_X86_64 LibreOffice_project/</meta:generator>
jszymborski 3y ago
I use some combination of Impress, Calc, and Writer everyday. Wouldn't trade them for any cloud or MS Office product.
spudlyo 3y ago
I tried LibreOffice for the first time in many years recently to help me generate some nice templates for ODT documents I wanted to export using Emacs' Org-Mode. Overall I was really quite impressed with how far it has come. I also found that ODT documents also import nicely from Google Drive into Google Docs, which is a great way to get feedback on documents I author in Org-Mode with my teammates.
gerdesj 3y ago
What do you personally use?
- _ea1k 3y ago
  Google Docs and Google Drive primarily.
jdboyd 3y ago
I mostly use it to view files so that I don't have to re-upload them to Google Drive just to open them in Google Docs or Sheets. If LibreOffice could work directly from NextCloud, I might be inclined to intentionally use it more often.
dharmab 3y ago
My mother uses it. She finds the interface more familiar than modern MS Office.
adamrezich 3y ago
I install it on my mom's laptop, and, after configuring it to save to Microsoft formats by default, it works great for everything she uses it for (personal documents, various things for church and other groups). for her purposes, it's worth it to not have to pay the now-annual Office costs.
Gigachad 3y ago
Of course you'll find countless HN users who use it or have set their family up with it, but in general, no, I don't think many people want locally managed files anymore. The whole point of documents is to share them, and cloud offerings do that better. The whole landscape has shifted from underneath LO and I'm not sure they have the capacity to adapt. Especially since they still haven't made a decision about what the toolbar UI should be, something that should have been settled a decade ago.
- chris_wot 3y ago
  Do you have any actual evidence for this assertion?
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Anecdotally, it's been a very long time since I've seen an actual document sent to me. Across multiple companies, it's always been an office or google docs link. There are close to no compelling reasons for a company to email document attachments around these days.
    - chris_wot 3y ago
      Really? Because I'm still being sent documents frequently by a lot of people. And the number of PDFs I get sent that are originally Word documents is huge.
- drpixie 3y ago
  Sure, share the documents, but running apps over the net - ha! I despise every time I open an MS Doc or gmail. Just now gmail loaded almost 13MB of "app" - just to show an almost empty inbox, what a waste! And (behind the scenes) it's still loading stuff after almost 30 secs. Cloud apps are the IT version of supersizing. Morgan Spurlock showed what happens when you use capacity just because it's available - obesity.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
ww520 3y ago
I use it all the times on machines that don't have the MS Office license. It has been great since it works across different platforms.
sph 3y ago
Yes because I dont like clouds. But I truly dislike any second I have LibreOffice open. It feels slow, clunky, ugly, non-native on Linux and it is generally not a fun, stable nor feature full enough piece of software for a very light user like myself. I mean, I chose to learn LaTeX rather than having to put up with LO for a simple rich text document. The sad thing is that the other non-Office alternatives are even worse in their own way. Word processors are like browsers, huge, complex, requiring a ton of compatibility subsystems, yet without the massive corporate backing actual browsers have. So there's only Microsoft, and a lot of small players that would have to spend literal billions to reach 50% of the power and polish of Office. Word processors are basically living fossils, relics of a bygone era. It's sad, really, because people still need to write documents and spreadsheet, but no sane company will seriously try to enter this space ever again.
- mrd3v0 3y ago
  OnlyOffice/Cryptpad feel faster with better UX, even though they are not native.
  - sph 3y ago
    OnlyOffice, the one written in Electron? The typing latency is the worse I have experienced in any Electron app. As much as I would like to use it, LibreOffice on that front is snappier, and not even by much.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  I use Calc every week and it is snappy enough and hasn't crashed in a decade+. More features than I could ever use. Sounds like you're exaggerating or need a Pentium overdrive.
  - sph 3y ago
    Last I tried desktop Excel on my 20 core machine, it felt much snappier than Calc ever did. Shame on me for expecting a spreadsheet app to run as melted butter on a i9 10900k. To be fair, the word processor is the one that has annoying writing latency. My issue with Calc it is clunky to use, and not very HiDPI friendly.
Yodel0914 3y ago
I switched from gsuite to LO a while back for the vast majority of my personal documents. TBH I miss some of Sheets, but on balance I prefer having less of my data in cloud providers' hands.
kelnos 3y ago
I still use it for some things here and there, but most of the time when I want to write a document or spreadsheet, I either a) want to share it with other people, or b) keep it private, but be able to access it from more than one device. So, Google Docs it is, unfortunately.
Krssst 3y ago
Occasional spreadsheet user. Was using a well-known proprietary software until now but LibreOffice's interface is much easier to use for me. I don't have to keep looking again for the place each option is. Especially, in Writer, all text formatting options are in a single place so I never have to spend much time looking to find a given feature. Bonus point: pressing Ctrl-S actually opens the file save dialog.
projektfu 3y ago
I use it frequently for editing csv files. It's also a great default to have on Windows computers that need to open the occasional Word document. It fixes some of excel's mistakes, too, especially the one where opening a csv in Excel now doesn't bring up the text import wizard. I also love the plug-ins that people can write in Python or whatever suits them. The database is for the birds, and I haven't gotten any use out of the other parts.
drpixie 3y ago
Daily. It has its faults but its WAY more usable than the MS trash. And it lives on my computer - no "cloud" garbage if I can avoid it.
makeitdouble 3y ago
To chime in, I use both cloud. There's still many cases where uploading a document or having to deal with the online version is not great.
asddubs 3y ago
I never used office software much, but I do use it to view the occasional csv. I avoid cloud offerings like the plague, since I don't like getting rug-pulled.
trelane 3y ago
Let me introduce you to LibreOffice Online (https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/) and its descendent, Collabora Online (https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/)
complex_pi 3y ago
Primary office program since a decade or so. I don't own MS Office and for many purpose it is quite convenient to have/be able to use files on disk (admin forms, attachments and downloads, etc). I use cloud tools when needed but I am very happy with LibreOffice otherwise.
zitsarethecure 3y ago
I use both. I use local for stuff I consider important (estate documents, financial documents, etc) and the "cloud" when I don't care about the risk of storing information on someone else's computer.

Is LibreOffice still commonly used? It seems like much of the world has shifted to cloud offerings.

by _ea1k 3y ago

Is LibreOffice still commonly used? It seems like much of the world has shifted to cloud offerings.

walrus01 3y ago

yes, absolutely, not everyone wants or needs a "runs as a web app in a browser" word/excel or google sheets/docs etc.

badsectoracula 3y ago

I use it all the time when i need a spreadsheet, rich text editor or... powerpoint viewer :-P. Now i don't really need these that often but it is still one of the programs i have installed on my PC since the OpenOffice days. Also FWIW i avoid anything web-based as much as i can. I prefer software that runs on my own PC, as a desktop app whenever possible.

LoveMortuus 3y ago
Interesting, I used to use word processor that aren't cloud based, but many years ago I've lost to many of my writings due to crashes or power loses, do that when I finally discovered cloud based word processors it was like magic to me, because it didn't crash and if I lost power I didn't lose any of my work!
- whartung 3y ago
  Save for rare cases, I'm really content with the Apple apps: Pages, Numbers, Keynote. And I love the Apple document management. Document always saved and versioned.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    If I had to go back to Linux, and if it were an option (which it’s not), I’d pay $300 without hesitation, to have all Apple’s office-like and other “bonus” apps on it. They’re my top choice in practically every category, when outside factors aren’t deciding for me (it’s usually MS or Google crap, when that happens—man, I hate Google Docs)
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  LibreOffice (and MS Office) have had automatic saving for several years now. If the program crashes or your PC loses power or whatever you won't be losing your work.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    MS Office has taken autosaving away again, if you aren't saving to OneDrive/SharePoint you can't have autosave. (At least, on my work machine; maybe it's different if you don't have a cloudy M365 version installed). https://superuser.com/questions/1663096/why-cant-word-autosave-a-file-to-local-storage https://superuser.com/questions/1663096/why-cant-word-autosa... https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-to-autosave-local-to-pc-instead-of-to-onedrive/8631fa3c-3af4-49f7-8f83-b80c3f3389e8 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-t...
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      "If you're not a subscriber, don't worry. There's still AutoRecover."
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Battery on my laptop works well, no power failures since... '96? Sibling comment mentions backup files, yes a thing too. Also make local and remote backups separately, don't you? So I haven't had a local app lose work in decades. Can't even remember the last time. Definitely before Y2K or so. What does go out several times a year? Yes, you guessed it, our internet connection!

blackhaz 3y ago

Daily. I hate clouds with a passion.

gillesjacobs 3y ago

The killer feature for me is full regex search and replace support, not available elsewhere.

dharmab 3y ago
Google Docs has RE2 support. However, Google Docs is so laughably bad in other features compared to LibreOffice and MS Office that I can't recommend it with a straight face for any but the most basic use cases.

jehb 3y ago

I use it all the time, not because I'm as good as I'd like to be about keeping things out of the cloud that don't need to be there, but because I often have ad hoc spreadsheets that are bigger than Google Sheets can handle.

Scarbutt 3y ago

Exporting to .xls files it's pretty bad, so it's a no for sharing. Unfortunately, Google sheets does a better job here. I assume cloud office is the best in this case but haven't tried it.

mdaniel 3y ago
Ironically, if one uses the export feature from G-docs they actually use LibreOffice under the covers (I'd guess Xvnc or similar); I found this snippet hiding in a g-doc export, so it's entirely possible they use something different for .xls exports <meta:generator>LibreOfficeDev/6.0.5.2$Linux_X86_64 LibreOffice_project/</meta:generator>

jszymborski 3y ago

I use some combination of Impress, Calc, and Writer everyday. Wouldn't trade them for any cloud or MS Office product.

spudlyo 3y ago

I tried LibreOffice for the first time in many years recently to help me generate some nice templates for ODT documents I wanted to export using Emacs' Org-Mode. Overall I was really quite impressed with how far it has come. I also found that ODT documents also import nicely from Google Drive into Google Docs, which is a great way to get feedback on documents I author in Org-Mode with my teammates.

gerdesj 3y ago

What do you personally use?

_ea1k 3y ago
Google Docs and Google Drive primarily.

jdboyd 3y ago

I mostly use it to view files so that I don't have to re-upload them to Google Drive just to open them in Google Docs or Sheets. If LibreOffice could work directly from NextCloud, I might be inclined to intentionally use it more often.

dharmab 3y ago

My mother uses it. She finds the interface more familiar than modern MS Office.

adamrezich 3y ago

I install it on my mom's laptop, and, after configuring it to save to Microsoft formats by default, it works great for everything she uses it for (personal documents, various things for church and other groups). for her purposes, it's worth it to not have to pay the now-annual Office costs.

Gigachad 3y ago

Of course you'll find countless HN users who use it or have set their family up with it, but in general, no, I don't think many people want locally managed files anymore. The whole point of documents is to share them, and cloud offerings do that better. The whole landscape has shifted from underneath LO and I'm not sure they have the capacity to adapt. Especially since they still haven't made a decision about what the toolbar UI should be, something that should have been settled a decade ago.

chris_wot 3y ago
Do you have any actual evidence for this assertion?
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Anecdotally, it's been a very long time since I've seen an actual document sent to me. Across multiple companies, it's always been an office or google docs link. There are close to no compelling reasons for a company to email document attachments around these days.
  - chris_wot 3y ago
    Really? Because I'm still being sent documents frequently by a lot of people. And the number of PDFs I get sent that are originally Word documents is huge.
drpixie 3y ago
Sure, share the documents, but running apps over the net - ha! I despise every time I open an MS Doc or gmail. Just now gmail loaded almost 13MB of "app" - just to show an almost empty inbox, what a waste! And (behind the scenes) it's still loading stuff after almost 30 secs. Cloud apps are the IT version of supersizing. Morgan Spurlock showed what happens when you use capacity just because it's available - obesity.
- Gigachad 3y ago

ww520 3y ago

I use it all the times on machines that don't have the MS Office license. It has been great since it works across different platforms.

sph 3y ago

Yes because I dont like clouds. But I truly dislike any second I have LibreOffice open. It feels slow, clunky, ugly, non-native on Linux and it is generally not a fun, stable nor feature full enough piece of software for a very light user like myself. I mean, I chose to learn LaTeX rather than having to put up with LO for a simple rich text document. The sad thing is that the other non-Office alternatives are even worse in their own way. Word processors are like browsers, huge, complex, requiring a ton of compatibility subsystems, yet without the massive corporate backing actual browsers have. So there's only Microsoft, and a lot of small players that would have to spend literal billions to reach 50% of the power and polish of Office. Word processors are basically living fossils, relics of a bygone era. It's sad, really, because people still need to write documents and spreadsheet, but no sane company will seriously try to enter this space ever again.

mrd3v0 3y ago
OnlyOffice/Cryptpad feel faster with better UX, even though they are not native.
- sph 3y ago
  OnlyOffice, the one written in Electron? The typing latency is the worse I have experienced in any Electron app. As much as I would like to use it, LibreOffice on that front is snappier, and not even by much.
mixmastamyk 3y ago
I use Calc every week and it is snappy enough and hasn't crashed in a decade+. More features than I could ever use. Sounds like you're exaggerating or need a Pentium overdrive.
- sph 3y ago
  Last I tried desktop Excel on my 20 core machine, it felt much snappier than Calc ever did. Shame on me for expecting a spreadsheet app to run as melted butter on a i9 10900k. To be fair, the word processor is the one that has annoying writing latency. My issue with Calc it is clunky to use, and not very HiDPI friendly.

Yodel0914 3y ago

I switched from gsuite to LO a while back for the vast majority of my personal documents. TBH I miss some of Sheets, but on balance I prefer having less of my data in cloud providers' hands.

kelnos 3y ago

I still use it for some things here and there, but most of the time when I want to write a document or spreadsheet, I either a) want to share it with other people, or b) keep it private, but be able to access it from more than one device. So, Google Docs it is, unfortunately.

Krssst 3y ago

Occasional spreadsheet user. Was using a well-known proprietary software until now but LibreOffice's interface is much easier to use for me. I don't have to keep looking again for the place each option is. Especially, in Writer, all text formatting options are in a single place so I never have to spend much time looking to find a given feature. Bonus point: pressing Ctrl-S actually opens the file save dialog.

projektfu 3y ago

I use it frequently for editing csv files. It's also a great default to have on Windows computers that need to open the occasional Word document. It fixes some of excel's mistakes, too, especially the one where opening a csv in Excel now doesn't bring up the text import wizard. I also love the plug-ins that people can write in Python or whatever suits them. The database is for the birds, and I haven't gotten any use out of the other parts.

drpixie 3y ago

Daily. It has its faults but its WAY more usable than the MS trash. And it lives on my computer - no "cloud" garbage if I can avoid it.

makeitdouble 3y ago

To chime in, I use both cloud. There's still many cases where uploading a document or having to deal with the online version is not great.

asddubs 3y ago

I never used office software much, but I do use it to view the occasional csv. I avoid cloud offerings like the plague, since I don't like getting rug-pulled.

trelane 3y ago

Let me introduce you to LibreOffice Online (https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/ https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/) and its descendent, Collabora Online (https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/)

complex_pi 3y ago

Primary office program since a decade or so. I don't own MS Office and for many purpose it is quite convenient to have/be able to use files on disk (admin forms, attachments and downloads, etc). I use cloud tools when needed but I am very happy with LibreOffice otherwise.

zitsarethecure 3y ago

I use both. I use local for stuff I consider important (estate documents, financial documents, etc) and the "cloud" when I don't care about the risk of storing information on someone else's computer.