5 ms·

Been using LibreOffice for years. Everyone should. If we don't vote with our choices companies like Microsoft will keep pushing the envelope until you have to p

by jamwise 4mo ago

Been using LibreOffice for years. Everyone should. If we don't vote with our choices companies like Microsoft will keep pushing the envelope until you have to pay a monthly fee to turn on your own computer. https://www.libreoffice.org/ https://www.libreoffice.org/

xingped 4mo ago
Same. There is literally nothing I need from Microsoft Office that I can't do just fine in Libre Office. Happier to be using free open source software too.
- vjvjvjvjghv 4mo ago
  Libre Office is fine standalone but as soon as you have to exchange files with other businesses you are often pretty much forced to use MS Office. Sad but true.
  - nrub 4mo ago
    Just because they don't know how to use a computer well, doesn't mean you can't teach them.
    - hvb2 4mo ago
      Which is fine, if and only if that's your actual business
    - 9dev 4mo ago
      Uh-huh. Sorry mate, I'm not in the business of unwarrantedly lecturing my customers or authorities about technical correctness. But if that floats your boat…
  - Joel_Mckay 4mo ago
    Most use PDF for exchanges anyway, as there is no guarantee the receiver system has all the document components/features used to author content. 10% of users with MacOS Office 2019 installs just got NERF'd by Microsoft. This story will not encourage users to spend more money on a disappearing rabbit trick. =3
    - zelphirkalt 4mo ago
      The critical point is collaboration on a document. I wish LO had this. You know, like other collaborative editors online, where you can see the other person's cursor and inputs live and all that, with a conflict free data structure driving it all. LO needs this, if it ever wants to replace MS Word in businesses. Even if it would be totally fine for most situations to edit sequentially, there are those cases, when multiple cooks are trying to change a company document, and now they can't, and need to be in a call, to organize their editing or share their writing ideas, because the tool doesn't allow them to edit at the same time. It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser. Just somehow make it possible to easily connect and edit collaboratively. I know, I know, it is a huge ask, unfortunately.
      - Joel_Mckay 4mo ago
        >It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser LibreOffice Writer online was not popular, so it is understandable you assume it doesn't exist. There is also the trivial headless Linux remote desktop cloud hosting with 100% identical functionality. >"edit at the same time" Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..." Most documents that support OLE have difficulty handling concurrent writes. Office 365 abandoned desktop publishing in 2019, and replaced it with a web document management system. Best workaround is every user imports each instanced changes: "File -> Merge Document." And manually handle any collisions. I would post how to setup your own remote collaborative environment on an $8/month host, but people seem like they are not interested. =3
        zelphirkalt 4mo ago
        Are you talking about the LO WASM thingy? (https://wasm-test.libreoffice.org/ https://wasm-test.libreoffice.org/) I have recently tried to use it, but couldn't find a way to open files from local computer in it. It showed me a fake filesystem and dragging and dropping files also didn't work. I have not used another web browser LO thing, I think. If you are talking about another thing, do you have demo site/link? > Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..." No, I mean a mode or so that is like online word processors like Google Docs, where you see the cursor of someone else, with their name, and can see them typing live, while you are also typing somewhere in the document. Unless "Track Changes" somehow enables connecting to someone else and seeing their actions concurrently, it is not what I am talking about. I really mean collaboratively editing a document, at the same time, seeing changes others make live, not merging afterwards (the git model).
- rdedev 4mo ago
  This is true up until the point where someone sends you a crappy old version of a word document that breaks when you load it in Libre Office. I had to install office after that
LeoPanthera 4mo ago
Other options include Calligra (especially on KDE) https://calligra.org https://calligra.org And Macs are bundled with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, all of which are excellent.
- isityettime 4mo ago
  I love the Calligra user interface compared to Microsoft Office or LibreOffice. It feels like it exposes features and information well in the way the best KDE apps always have.
- qwerty_clicks 4mo ago
  Numbers is not excellent. It’s stubborn and unhelpful.
  - zarzavat 4mo ago
    Apple should make their finance department use Numbers, it would be fixed in no time. I swear nobody at that company has ever opened Numbers, I don't understand how it can be so broken for so long.
    - ornornor 4mo ago
      It seems to be a pattern with apple apps in my experience. I don’t hate myself enough to have a Mac but I have an iPhone and there are so many bugs in apple supplied apps (mail, safari, iOS itself, iCloud) that apple have known about for years. And yet these bugs are still there with no desire from apple to fix them.
      - zarzavat 4mo ago
        I don't have any inside information so perhaps an ex-fruit can shed some light on it, but speculating it seems that Apple's organizational structure implicitly encodes the waterfall pattern. Apple has divisions for Design, Engineering, etc instead of divisions for products as is more normal. So sometime 20 years ago someone in the Design department designed a spreadsheet app, and they've been stuck with it ever since because Engineering isn't empowered to say to Design that this UI fucking sucks. Even though the app is otherwise regularly updated. You see the same with Tahoe, when users report that they can't resize the window because the corner radius is so large that it excludes the hit box, Engineering does their best to move the hitbox, but they are not empowered to make the obvious fix which is to reduce the corner radius because that would be a UI change and those only go through waterfall.
hbbio 4mo ago
OnlyOffice is better than LibreOffice for people who want a more direct alternative to Microsoft Office https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/ (it's AGPL... there is an ongoing dispute with a fork now)
- kuerbel 4mo ago
  The fork is called EuroOffice and will be released next month. Onlyoffice is from Russian developers and includes binary blobs, it's not fully open source.
  - fithisux 4mo ago
    What blobs?
    - kuerbel 4mo ago
      I dug a bit deeper after you asked because "compiled or obfuscated code blobs" was the wording from EuroOffice. It doesn't seem like they shipped binary objects hidden inside the editor source tree after a quick glance. I guess they used "binary blobs" in the broad FOSS-maintainer sense, e.g. bundled third-party assets, fonts, generated/minified JavaScript in sdkjs, and possibly precompiled mobile components... However, onlyoffice removed their mobile editor repo from Github a few days ago, and EuroOffice has been particularly critical of the mobile apps, claiming they contained proprietary sections. So if there is a concrete concern behind the "binary blobs" accusation, the mobile side seems like the most likely place it was directed at. It feels a bit like a mudslinging match right now and you were completely right to question the claim :-)
      - fithisux 4mo ago
        This is what I saw in their site. Thanks for taking the time to double check. Given the anti-Russian propaganda I am very suspicious. I mostly use Libeoffice + ODT or Latex, but occasionally a researcher shares a docx for review. This where Onlyoffice shines.
  - 4mo ago
zelphirkalt 4mo ago
In general, I also am a LO fan, but recently it left me hanging quite a bit. I wrote my CV in LO, to avoid my endless tinkering mode, that I had with my LaTeX CV, that still never looked exactly how I wanted it to look. Then 2 things happened: I upgraded my desktop computer from Debian 12 to 13. Now LO can no longer start. I am only getting a crash without UI error, and on command line I get a nothing saying C++ error, saying "std::alloc bad alloc" or so, and that's it. No details, nothing. Already tried reinstalling a few things, including LO, but apparently it doesn't come with all it needs. On my laptop, which is the same OS, Debian 13 LO still works, so at least I can edit my CV. However, there is another issue there. Scrolling takes approximately 1s, before the document is re-rendered. I found out I need to set an env var to make LO use XWayland compatibility layer, instead of using Wayland directly, because if it uses Wayland directly, it is just pure laaaag, unbearable scrolling experience. Needed: Way better error messages, not just slinging low level C++ crap at me. Needed: Why doesn't it recognize Wayland and perform properly when scrolling?? Or act through XWayland by itself, rather than me having to search for a solution for an hour? If the Wayland experience is that rough, maybe it should not use Wayland at all and use the XWayland instead from the start? In short, a very bumpy experience recently. But once it works, which it still doesn't on my desktop PC, it is maybe the best word processor tool. Briefly I looked at OnlyOffice, thinking it is also free/libre software and maybe it is good, but alas it is a child's toy, when it comes to editing styles. Character styles don't even work properly, so it's an instant no-go for me. Maybe I will investigate Calligra, which has been mentioned here. EDIT: Tried Calligra. Couldn't even open the first fairly trivial odt document I tried: My CV. My CV document is basically just a few tables with text in them, one photo, bullet lists, some paragrah styles for headings and such, and some character styles to highlight words. The writer tool of Calligra instantly crashed, with no error message dialog whatsoever. It does have paragraph styles and character styles, but the font rendering looks weird, blurred as well and often users a way too small font in the styles editor. Aside from paragraph styles and character styles I didn't see any other styles in the styles editor though. What about list styles, table styles, page styles ... To me the writer tool of Calligra looks also very immature at this point. (version 1:25.04.2+dfsg-1, as shown in "Discover" on Debian 13, KDE) EDIT: Maybe I will truly have to invest more time and create a good looking LaTeX CV. Or just be lazy and use something pre-made I find online. Though I already know there will be something that will not satisfy me or that is not anticipated by some pre-made template and then I will probably be fiddling with it again ...
arendtio 4mo ago
I have been using it for a while as well (started with OpenOffice). However, not all apps can keep up the pace. As a word processor, I like Writer even more than MS Word, but Calc, for example, is just much slower than MS Excel when you build a bit larger spreadsheets. So from an ideological perspective, I agree, but you should know that there are some drawbacks / the products have different strengths.

by jamwise 4mo ago

xingped 4mo ago

Same. There is literally nothing I need from Microsoft Office that I can't do just fine in Libre Office. Happier to be using free open source software too.

vjvjvjvjghv 4mo ago
Libre Office is fine standalone but as soon as you have to exchange files with other businesses you are often pretty much forced to use MS Office. Sad but true.
- nrub 4mo ago
  Just because they don't know how to use a computer well, doesn't mean you can't teach them.
  - hvb2 4mo ago
    Which is fine, if and only if that's your actual business
  - 9dev 4mo ago
    Uh-huh. Sorry mate, I'm not in the business of unwarrantedly lecturing my customers or authorities about technical correctness. But if that floats your boat…
- Joel_Mckay 4mo ago
  Most use PDF for exchanges anyway, as there is no guarantee the receiver system has all the document components/features used to author content. 10% of users with MacOS Office 2019 installs just got NERF'd by Microsoft. This story will not encourage users to spend more money on a disappearing rabbit trick. =3
  - zelphirkalt 4mo ago
    The critical point is collaboration on a document. I wish LO had this. You know, like other collaborative editors online, where you can see the other person's cursor and inputs live and all that, with a conflict free data structure driving it all. LO needs this, if it ever wants to replace MS Word in businesses. Even if it would be totally fine for most situations to edit sequentially, there are those cases, when multiple cooks are trying to change a company document, and now they can't, and need to be in a call, to organize their editing or share their writing ideas, because the tool doesn't allow them to edit at the same time. It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser. Just somehow make it possible to easily connect and edit collaboratively. I know, I know, it is a huge ask, unfortunately.
    - Joel_Mckay 4mo ago
      >It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser LibreOffice Writer online was not popular, so it is understandable you assume it doesn't exist. There is also the trivial headless Linux remote desktop cloud hosting with 100% identical functionality. >"edit at the same time" Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..." Most documents that support OLE have difficulty handling concurrent writes. Office 365 abandoned desktop publishing in 2019, and replaced it with a web document management system. Best workaround is every user imports each instanced changes: "File -> Merge Document." And manually handle any collisions. I would post how to setup your own remote collaborative environment on an $8/month host, but people seem like they are not interested. =3
      - zelphirkalt 4mo ago
        Are you talking about the LO WASM thingy? (https://wasm-test.libreoffice.org/ https://wasm-test.libreoffice.org/) I have recently tried to use it, but couldn't find a way to open files from local computer in it. It showed me a fake filesystem and dragging and dropping files also didn't work. I have not used another web browser LO thing, I think. If you are talking about another thing, do you have demo site/link? > Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..." No, I mean a mode or so that is like online word processors like Google Docs, where you see the cursor of someone else, with their name, and can see them typing live, while you are also typing somewhere in the document. Unless "Track Changes" somehow enables connecting to someone else and seeing their actions concurrently, it is not what I am talking about. I really mean collaboratively editing a document, at the same time, seeing changes others make live, not merging afterwards (the git model).
rdedev 4mo ago
This is true up until the point where someone sends you a crappy old version of a word document that breaks when you load it in Libre Office. I had to install office after that

LeoPanthera 4mo ago

Other options include Calligra (especially on KDE) https://calligra.org https://calligra.org And Macs are bundled with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, all of which are excellent.

isityettime 4mo ago
I love the Calligra user interface compared to Microsoft Office or LibreOffice. It feels like it exposes features and information well in the way the best KDE apps always have.
qwerty_clicks 4mo ago
Numbers is not excellent. It’s stubborn and unhelpful.
- zarzavat 4mo ago
  Apple should make their finance department use Numbers, it would be fixed in no time. I swear nobody at that company has ever opened Numbers, I don't understand how it can be so broken for so long.
  - ornornor 4mo ago
    It seems to be a pattern with apple apps in my experience. I don’t hate myself enough to have a Mac but I have an iPhone and there are so many bugs in apple supplied apps (mail, safari, iOS itself, iCloud) that apple have known about for years. And yet these bugs are still there with no desire from apple to fix them.
    - zarzavat 4mo ago
      I don't have any inside information so perhaps an ex-fruit can shed some light on it, but speculating it seems that Apple's organizational structure implicitly encodes the waterfall pattern. Apple has divisions for Design, Engineering, etc instead of divisions for products as is more normal. So sometime 20 years ago someone in the Design department designed a spreadsheet app, and they've been stuck with it ever since because Engineering isn't empowered to say to Design that this UI fucking sucks. Even though the app is otherwise regularly updated. You see the same with Tahoe, when users report that they can't resize the window because the corner radius is so large that it excludes the hit box, Engineering does their best to move the hitbox, but they are not empowered to make the obvious fix which is to reduce the corner radius because that would be a UI change and those only go through waterfall.

hbbio 4mo ago

OnlyOffice is better than LibreOffice for people who want a more direct alternative to Microsoft Office https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/ (it's AGPL... there is an ongoing dispute with a fork now)

kuerbel 4mo ago
The fork is called EuroOffice and will be released next month. Onlyoffice is from Russian developers and includes binary blobs, it's not fully open source.
- fithisux 4mo ago
  What blobs?
  - kuerbel 4mo ago
    I dug a bit deeper after you asked because "compiled or obfuscated code blobs" was the wording from EuroOffice. It doesn't seem like they shipped binary objects hidden inside the editor source tree after a quick glance. I guess they used "binary blobs" in the broad FOSS-maintainer sense, e.g. bundled third-party assets, fonts, generated/minified JavaScript in sdkjs, and possibly precompiled mobile components... However, onlyoffice removed their mobile editor repo from Github a few days ago, and EuroOffice has been particularly critical of the mobile apps, claiming they contained proprietary sections. So if there is a concrete concern behind the "binary blobs" accusation, the mobile side seems like the most likely place it was directed at. It feels a bit like a mudslinging match right now and you were completely right to question the claim :-)
    - fithisux 4mo ago
      This is what I saw in their site. Thanks for taking the time to double check. Given the anti-Russian propaganda I am very suspicious. I mostly use Libeoffice + ODT or Latex, but occasionally a researcher shares a docx for review. This where Onlyoffice shines.
- 4mo ago

zelphirkalt 4mo ago

In general, I also am a LO fan, but recently it left me hanging quite a bit. I wrote my CV in LO, to avoid my endless tinkering mode, that I had with my LaTeX CV, that still never looked exactly how I wanted it to look. Then 2 things happened: I upgraded my desktop computer from Debian 12 to 13. Now LO can no longer start. I am only getting a crash without UI error, and on command line I get a nothing saying C++ error, saying "std::alloc bad alloc" or so, and that's it. No details, nothing. Already tried reinstalling a few things, including LO, but apparently it doesn't come with all it needs. On my laptop, which is the same OS, Debian 13 LO still works, so at least I can edit my CV. However, there is another issue there. Scrolling takes approximately 1s, before the document is re-rendered. I found out I need to set an env var to make LO use XWayland compatibility layer, instead of using Wayland directly, because if it uses Wayland directly, it is just pure laaaag, unbearable scrolling experience. Needed: Way better error messages, not just slinging low level C++ crap at me. Needed: Why doesn't it recognize Wayland and perform properly when scrolling?? Or act through XWayland by itself, rather than me having to search for a solution for an hour? If the Wayland experience is that rough, maybe it should not use Wayland at all and use the XWayland instead from the start? In short, a very bumpy experience recently. But once it works, which it still doesn't on my desktop PC, it is maybe the best word processor tool. Briefly I looked at OnlyOffice, thinking it is also free/libre software and maybe it is good, but alas it is a child's toy, when it comes to editing styles. Character styles don't even work properly, so it's an instant no-go for me. Maybe I will investigate Calligra, which has been mentioned here. EDIT: Tried Calligra. Couldn't even open the first fairly trivial odt document I tried: My CV. My CV document is basically just a few tables with text in them, one photo, bullet lists, some paragrah styles for headings and such, and some character styles to highlight words. The writer tool of Calligra instantly crashed, with no error message dialog whatsoever. It does have paragraph styles and character styles, but the font rendering looks weird, blurred as well and often users a way too small font in the styles editor. Aside from paragraph styles and character styles I didn't see any other styles in the styles editor though. What about list styles, table styles, page styles ... To me the writer tool of Calligra looks also very immature at this point. (version 1:25.04.2+dfsg-1, as shown in "Discover" on Debian 13, KDE) EDIT: Maybe I will truly have to invest more time and create a good looking LaTeX CV. Or just be lazy and use something pre-made I find online. Though I already know there will be something that will not satisfy me or that is not anticipated by some pre-made template and then I will probably be fiddling with it again ...

arendtio 4mo ago

I have been using it for a while as well (started with OpenOffice). However, not all apps can keep up the pace. As a word processor, I like Writer even more than MS Word, but Calc, for example, is just much slower than MS Excel when you build a bit larger spreadsheets. So from an ideological perspective, I agree, but you should know that there are some drawbacks / the products have different strengths.