4 ms·

As a person who refuses to use “free” cloud products, and won’t even consider Office on Windows, I’m a big fan of LibreOffice. I’ve donated a few times over the

by allenrb 6mo ago

As a person who refuses to use “free” cloud products, and won’t even consider Office on Windows, I’m a big fan of LibreOffice. I’ve donated a few times over the years but probably not enough. I’ll be sad if there’s not a free & local “office” solution available. That said, my eyes crossed trying to read this. Do I need to ask an LLM to read the various messages and tell me what’s going on? ;-)

godot 6mo ago
I don't know about any of the drama happening, but if LibreOffice ceases to exist, there's still Softmaker FreeOffice as a free & local option. It's nothing fancy, but works for the times when I have to use one. I'm not against cloud products as you are, but it's nice being able to do stuff locally sometimes, it's just more convenient.
- deafpolygon 6mo ago
  If LO ceases to exist, then I will just use plain text typesetting tools.
  - c7b 6mo ago
    There are many good options for text editing, some for presentations, but what about spreadsheets? Using Python/R/SQL everywhere ain't no panacea, spreadsheets are really useful in some cases and LO has the best implementation I've seen apart from Excel.
    - heresie-dabord 6mo ago
      Gnumeric, since 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnumeric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnumeric
    - deafpolygon 6mo ago
      plenty of ways with sqlite. someone just needs to come up with a good front-end without monetizing it. there's sqlite db browser, but not much challenger in this space because it either gets turned to a saas (notion, airtable) or is a niche dev tool.
- dangus 6mo ago
  OnlyOffice and its upcoming Euro Office derivative, which I already like better than LibreOffice.
  - KronisLV 6mo ago
    Apparently Euro-Office has some drama around it too: https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-license-violations-in-euro-office-project-by-nextcloud-and-ionos https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-lic... OnlyOffice also seems to have a lack of clarity in regards to the ownership of the org (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47100599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47100599) but in general I think they're in the right here - you can't just ignore parts of a software license selectively because you feel like it. Oh and I liked their software when I did try it out, except LibreOffice seems like a slightly safer bet (though I'm also not as sensitive to the way its UI is).
    - dangus 6mo ago
      I should also disclaim that I only need these office suites for occasional home use. If one of them disappears tomorrow it’s no big loss to me personally, not that I wouldn’t be sad about a loss of consumer choice. If I need something for a business that I’m going to depend on I’m just gonna give Microsoft ten bucks a month, hate to say it. Office is really better than any of these options by a long shot. I also find the Google suite to be really good and free as in beer.
      - KronisLV 6mo ago
        > I’m just gonna give Microsoft ten bucks a month, hate to say it. After having used MS Office for a while, I have to admit that LibreOffice just feels more pleasant to me, when I don't need exact MS compatibility - the UI is customizable, Calc doesn't mess up CSV files when I open them, Writer also has most of the features you need and exporting PDF files is nice and has none of that OneDrive bullshit with them almost trying to hide your local file system as some secondary target. That said, in some hardware configurations LibreOffice has slow and laggy rendering (you have to mess around with rendering settings, hardware acceleration and Skia and so on), some features like bibliography have broken on me in odd ways, and Impress can be a bit slow for larger presentations. OnlyOffice feels like it has more polish in regards to how approachable the UI/UX might be to a MS user, but feature wise isn't that far off. I personally wouldn't reach for MS Office unless I wanted it as a part of their overall groupware - mail, Teams, AD and a bunch of other integrated stuff (though aside from AD, most other things feel a bit jank, like the new Outlook or Teams in general when compared to Slack).
fhdkweig 6mo ago
If LibreOffice ceases to exist, won't the old installers still work? Is it forkable to a new project? I seem to remember that it was Star Office then Open Office then LibreOffice.
- kackerlacker 6mo ago
  I think such situations are rather big risk that a community that already wasn't very active atrophies or splits and then atrophies. With code bases like that there's also a lot of maintenance so being able to run an old version is not necessarily enough.
  - jrumbut 6mo ago
    Yeah that ability to use old code is great as an emergency escape hatch but it's not really a viable day-to-day document editing strategy.
  - eudamoniac 6mo ago
    What maintenance are you talking about? I'm quite sure I could open any document on my computer with a libreoffice version from ten years ago. The functionality doesn't magically rot away...
    - greekrich92 6mo ago
      Security vulnerabilities for one obvious example
- johannes1234321 6mo ago
  The questionnis: How does a community form, which can take a project tof that size? TDF andjvre Office cMd out of a long process of independent (from Sun Microsystems) contributions to OpenOffice, which at some point had a momentum to do a proper form and then another momentum to take over as the lead variant. For a successful fork you need a notable amount of people engaging in the fork.
- rurban 6mo ago
shevy-java 6mo ago
> I’ll be sad if there’s not a free & local “office” solution available. I think a free open source suite will always exist. But probably slow down if existing open source solutions handicap progress for whatever the reason(s). They should focus on making the office suite much more useful and powerful and wide-spread. Like ffmpg+mpv!
tomrod 6mo ago
Before Libre Office was Open Office. I take comfort that we would not be without a local office suite for long.
- SV_BubbleTime 6mo ago
  I’d love for someone to be able to take it from “yeah it mostly works for me” to “oh fuck you Microsoft, I’m going to move our entire company over to this”. I’m not going to hold my breath.
  - redeeman 6mo ago
    because thats not about quality, its about "i demand something thats 100% exactly the same as microsofts product, even in the places where its objectively crappier. I also wish it to track the microslop so that it consistently stays as shitty as microslop deems, so that I may never realize I use something else."
    - gus_massa 6mo ago
      > "so that I may never realize I use something else" The main reasons are: 1) ... so my muscle memory work. (In some editor Ctrl+Y is redo, in others no, I never remember in which editors, I hate when it doesn't work.) 2) ... so I can exchange files with coworkers, and they will see exactly what I wrote (I recently received an email with a draft and I complained about a missing ≥. It actually was there was the visor in Gmail was not showing it.)
    - kube-system 6mo ago
      This is the kind of attitude that stops OSS from becoming widely adopted. If simply shipping a quality office suite was enough, this problem would have been solved last millennium. (WordPerfect fuckin' slapped) And in fact, there are many quality office suites. Organizations choose Office because it: 1. enables interoperability with other organizations 2. has a commercial throat to choke 3. has an existing pipeline of workers trained on it 4. has a deep feature set for edge-case power-users 5. integrates with other products and services that their customers want Every institutional office-migration project runs into these issues -- they're solvable, but damn if OSS advocates stopped pretending they didn't exist, they might actually fix them. LibreOffice/TDF is the closest anyone has gotten thus far in this regard.

by allenrb 6mo ago

godot 6mo ago

I don't know about any of the drama happening, but if LibreOffice ceases to exist, there's still Softmaker FreeOffice as a free & local option. It's nothing fancy, but works for the times when I have to use one. I'm not against cloud products as you are, but it's nice being able to do stuff locally sometimes, it's just more convenient.

deafpolygon 6mo ago
If LO ceases to exist, then I will just use plain text typesetting tools.
- c7b 6mo ago
  There are many good options for text editing, some for presentations, but what about spreadsheets? Using Python/R/SQL everywhere ain't no panacea, spreadsheets are really useful in some cases and LO has the best implementation I've seen apart from Excel.
  - heresie-dabord 6mo ago
    Gnumeric, since 2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnumeric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnumeric
  - deafpolygon 6mo ago
    plenty of ways with sqlite. someone just needs to come up with a good front-end without monetizing it. there's sqlite db browser, but not much challenger in this space because it either gets turned to a saas (notion, airtable) or is a niche dev tool.
dangus 6mo ago
OnlyOffice and its upcoming Euro Office derivative, which I already like better than LibreOffice.
- KronisLV 6mo ago
  Apparently Euro-Office has some drama around it too: https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-license-violations-in-euro-office-project-by-nextcloud-and-ionos https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2026/03/onlyoffice-flags-lic... OnlyOffice also seems to have a lack of clarity in regards to the ownership of the org (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47100599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47100599) but in general I think they're in the right here - you can't just ignore parts of a software license selectively because you feel like it. Oh and I liked their software when I did try it out, except LibreOffice seems like a slightly safer bet (though I'm also not as sensitive to the way its UI is).
  - dangus 6mo ago
    I should also disclaim that I only need these office suites for occasional home use. If one of them disappears tomorrow it’s no big loss to me personally, not that I wouldn’t be sad about a loss of consumer choice. If I need something for a business that I’m going to depend on I’m just gonna give Microsoft ten bucks a month, hate to say it. Office is really better than any of these options by a long shot. I also find the Google suite to be really good and free as in beer.
    - KronisLV 6mo ago
      > I’m just gonna give Microsoft ten bucks a month, hate to say it. After having used MS Office for a while, I have to admit that LibreOffice just feels more pleasant to me, when I don't need exact MS compatibility - the UI is customizable, Calc doesn't mess up CSV files when I open them, Writer also has most of the features you need and exporting PDF files is nice and has none of that OneDrive bullshit with them almost trying to hide your local file system as some secondary target. That said, in some hardware configurations LibreOffice has slow and laggy rendering (you have to mess around with rendering settings, hardware acceleration and Skia and so on), some features like bibliography have broken on me in odd ways, and Impress can be a bit slow for larger presentations. OnlyOffice feels like it has more polish in regards to how approachable the UI/UX might be to a MS user, but feature wise isn't that far off. I personally wouldn't reach for MS Office unless I wanted it as a part of their overall groupware - mail, Teams, AD and a bunch of other integrated stuff (though aside from AD, most other things feel a bit jank, like the new Outlook or Teams in general when compared to Slack).

fhdkweig 6mo ago

If LibreOffice ceases to exist, won't the old installers still work? Is it forkable to a new project? I seem to remember that it was Star Office then Open Office then LibreOffice.

kackerlacker 6mo ago
I think such situations are rather big risk that a community that already wasn't very active atrophies or splits and then atrophies. With code bases like that there's also a lot of maintenance so being able to run an old version is not necessarily enough.
- jrumbut 6mo ago
  Yeah that ability to use old code is great as an emergency escape hatch but it's not really a viable day-to-day document editing strategy.
- eudamoniac 6mo ago
  What maintenance are you talking about? I'm quite sure I could open any document on my computer with a libreoffice version from ten years ago. The functionality doesn't magically rot away...
  - greekrich92 6mo ago
    Security vulnerabilities for one obvious example
johannes1234321 6mo ago
The questionnis: How does a community form, which can take a project tof that size? TDF andjvre Office cMd out of a long process of independent (from Sun Microsystems) contributions to OpenOffice, which at some point had a momentum to do a proper form and then another momentum to take over as the lead variant. For a successful fork you need a notable amount of people engaging in the fork.
rurban 6mo ago

shevy-java 6mo ago

> I’ll be sad if there’s not a free & local “office” solution available. I think a free open source suite will always exist. But probably slow down if existing open source solutions handicap progress for whatever the reason(s). They should focus on making the office suite much more useful and powerful and wide-spread. Like ffmpg+mpv!

tomrod 6mo ago

Before Libre Office was Open Office. I take comfort that we would not be without a local office suite for long.

SV_BubbleTime 6mo ago
I’d love for someone to be able to take it from “yeah it mostly works for me” to “oh fuck you Microsoft, I’m going to move our entire company over to this”. I’m not going to hold my breath.
- redeeman 6mo ago
  because thats not about quality, its about "i demand something thats 100% exactly the same as microsofts product, even in the places where its objectively crappier. I also wish it to track the microslop so that it consistently stays as shitty as microslop deems, so that I may never realize I use something else."
  - gus_massa 6mo ago
    > "so that I may never realize I use something else" The main reasons are: 1) ... so my muscle memory work. (In some editor Ctrl+Y is redo, in others no, I never remember in which editors, I hate when it doesn't work.) 2) ... so I can exchange files with coworkers, and they will see exactly what I wrote (I recently received an email with a draft and I complained about a missing ≥. It actually was there was the visor in Gmail was not showing it.)
  - kube-system 6mo ago
    This is the kind of attitude that stops OSS from becoming widely adopted. If simply shipping a quality office suite was enough, this problem would have been solved last millennium. (WordPerfect fuckin' slapped) And in fact, there are many quality office suites. Organizations choose Office because it: 1. enables interoperability with other organizations 2. has a commercial throat to choke 3. has an existing pipeline of workers trained on it 4. has a deep feature set for edge-case power-users 5. integrates with other products and services that their customers want Every institutional office-migration project runs into these issues -- they're solvable, but damn if OSS advocates stopped pretending they didn't exist, they might actually fix them. LibreOffice/TDF is the closest anyone has gotten thus far in this regard.