4 ms·

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 fan

by 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).

by godot 6mo ago

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).