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The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless.
by smokel 26d ago
The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless.
Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.
- rf15 26d agoCongratulation to your new unix timestamp record! (and yes, you too, nth reader!)
- worldsavior 26d agoFirst!
- rgoulter 26d agoI can tell you wrote this comment when you were younger.
- podgietaru 26d agoWhat? A Unix timestamp literally cannot ever be lower. Its a completely assinine comparison isn't it? This is comparative.
- phoghed 26d agoFalse, in January 2038 at least some systems will go back in time
- bluGill 26d agoI'm planning to make a killing when somebody unretires me to fix all the issues.. Or maybe not, I hope my retirement accounts are so large I can laugh at their "piddly $500/hr offer".
- QuantumNomad_ 26d agoThe hourly pay will be $1200, no less. Thanks to inflation this amount will cover just about the cost of two second-hand teabags and a mouldy lump of bread.
- soperj 26d agojust make sure you get paid in cash before it rolls over.
- bluGill 26d agoBanks are known for running mainframes which handle dates differently and will not be rolling over. The ones that use unix are likely to 64 bit systems that won't roll over.
- ape4 26d agothats_the_joke.jpg
- tjoff 26d agoJust wait til 2038 ;)
- robrain 26d agoFrom Libre’s announcement (linked in the article): “This is the highest number of downloads in the first week of any LibreOffice release!”
- tempfile 26d agoI don't understand this comment. You don't seem to be disagreeing with OP?
- robrain 26d agoThere is a specific record being claimed. They're not just saying the absolute downloads are going up, as the OP suggests.
- ksymph 26d agoTheir point was more that, if every 'weekly download count after a new release' (or whatever record) is consistently being broken on each new release due to generally increasing popularity, then it doesn't make sense to imply causality between the messaging around this particular release and its already-expected record-breaking status.
- Timon3 26d agoAnd that's the case? Weekly download numbers have been consistently trending upwards?
- tux3 26d agoThey're saying the weekly numbers grow a little bit every week, so every week is technically record breaking. The absolute number of lifetime downloads can of course only go up (but that's even more vacuous).
- robrain 26d agoTheir last sentence: “Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment” makes that vacuous connection, hence my original comment.
- jrflo 26d agoIt's the tried and true headline method of "event 2 happened after event 1", implying a causal effect between the two, despite no evidence of such effect existing. Technically the headline is correct, in the same way that "Canada Tariffs $20b in US Goods After Amazon Plane Crash" is also correct.
- r_lee 26d ago"it's our most powerful X ever" - every Apple event ever
- Operyl 26d agoGod, I'm hoping that this phraseology changes with the new CEO, I am so tired of that overused statement haha.
- WesolyKubeczek 26d agoDidn’t Steve Jobs use that formula as well? The most powerful thing we released compared to last year’s thing we released?
- reactordev 26d agoHe loved the term “revolutionary”
- Operyl 26d agoA woman can dream!
- achalxyz 24d agoLooking at the Sep 9 event, better luck time.
- gadrev 26d agoPost hoc ergo propter hoc.
- blackenedgem 26d agoSee also, every new iPhone/Pixel being the best they've ever release. You'd hope so!
- MoonWalk 26d agoBut still nice to hear. Really timely, too, since my 83-year-old mom called me the other day to help her E-mail a document she prepared in LibreOffice. I installed it on her (seldom-used) computer years ago. So I talked her through E-mailing it with Thunderbird. And I say "talked," because the jagoffs at Microsoft REMOVED Remote Assistance from every version of Windows used by people who are likely to need it. And MS Office is trash; the more people abandon it the better. If I can get my mom on Linux... hey now!
- john_strinlai 26d ago>because the jagoffs at Microsoft REMOVED Remote Assistance from every version of Windows used by people who are likely to need it. when did they remove quick assist? i thought i used it recently (within a month or two), but maybe im misremembering. a quick google still shows it as available for home installs.
- deepsun 26d agoWhat's the issue of getting her on Linux? I bet she wouldn't see a difference, especially if its GUI is similar to Windows, like Linux Mint.
- account42 25d agoIf she's anything like my mom, i.e. someone who has been using computers for a while now but never had the confidence to experiment with it, any small change will freak her out and there really is a long tail of those. It's not a matter of Linux not being good enough, being different is already a real problem.
- deleted 21d ago[deleted]
- JaumeGreen 26d agoI use Google remote desktop with my mother. It's not perfect but it's adequate.
- 26d ago
- yorwba 26d agoYes, here's the graph of weekly downloads: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version The 26.8 peak is within the normal range of week-to-week variation.
- manvillej 26d agoI feel this every time the stock market hits a new “all time high”
- fsckboy 26d agothe stock market goes up and down daily, but with a functioning economy it will overall be up. from a distance you are right, something that keeps going up keeps achieving new highs. but, if you follow the market on a daily basis, you will be paying attention to the market swooning for periods of time, maybe with a small recovery and then another swoon. New "all time highs" do provide convenient notifications that the economy has now grown from before. Without new highs, your investments are treading water.
- neutronicus 26d agoHell, it took like 5 years for the market to get back to its peak after 2008.
- Rebelgecko 26d agoIsn't it also a dep of some AI tools? Or maybe they use their own binary
- Kapura 26d agois the trend of increasing weekly downloads not itself meaningful?
- kitd 26d agoAbsolute number of downloads inevitably goes up. Weekly downloads number doesn't.
- NitpickLawyer 26d ago> In one week, the installer was downloaded more than 1 million times — not counting updates via Linux distribution repositories. Either there's 1m people downloading new software "because no ai", or there's another popular thing that installs this, and is not counted in the "updates via linux repos". One is much much more probable than the other.
- andai 26d ago> or there's another popular thing that installs this Yeah, an AI tool: The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396
- tcfhgj 26d agoand the bundled copies will contribute to installer download statistics?
- leptons 26d agoYou underestimate the public's hatred of AI-in-everything. HN is a bubble of AI.
- deleted 26d ago[deleted]
- ghaff 26d agoI fully expect the bubble is the people in tech who have strong feelings about the goodness or badness of AI one way or another.
- 24d ago
- tzs 26d ago> Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless It is the first to break a million in a week. Even if it has been steadily going up most people would consider passing that number interesting.
- smokel 26d agoThat would make sense, but according to the stats posted in a sibling comment they crossed the million weekly downloads in week 31 already.
- tzs 26d agoSomething isn't adding up. Here's what the Document Foundation says about 26.8 [1]: > 1,031,162 downloads > This is the highest number of downloads in the first week of any LibreOffice release! These are just stats from our official downloads page, of course – many Linux users will have acquired the new release via their distribution’s package repositories. But their weekly stats page [2] does not show anywhere near that many downloads. It shows a small number in the first week, then a bit over 700k next week, then almost a million in the third week. Even if we combine the first two weeks on the chart under the assumption that release weeks might not align with the weeks using in the chart it is nowhere near a million. Also the mouseover popup on the stats page is showing 26.8 several weeks before release. [1] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/02/one-week-of-libreoffice-26-8-the-stats/ https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/02/one-week... [2] https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version
- tzs 25d agoUpdate. Looking at the stats in day view instead of week view, the downloads for their release week were actually around [1] 1.259 million, using 2026-08-26 as the release date. That's the date in the release notes. However, if we take the release date as 2026-08-25 then the 7 day total is exactly what their blog post said. Also by comparing the week numbers to the daily numbers, we can determine that their week 35 is August 23-29 (Sunday to Saturday). They are using US week numbering, not ISO week numbering. In ISO it would be 24-30 (Monday to Sunday). The Document Foundation is based in Germany so I kind of expected they would use ISO weeks. [1] "around" rather than the exact number because this originally was an update to the original comment, but the edit window closed while I was writing it. When you submit in those circumstances you don't get an error and your editing area is undisturbed. You simply lose the editing area. I'm not going to go and add up everything again, so am going from memory of the number.
- xdavidliu 26d agoclickbait gonna clickbait. But you cannot blame it because in today's attention economy it really HAS to since everything else is too
- reaperducer 26d agoCalling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Like how Hollywood is constantly saying each week's ticket sales are record-breaking, because they don't factor for inflation or population growth.
- progval 26d agoA graph to confirm it: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version
- martenson 25d agotrue, however this event seems like a significant daily spike: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#day,version https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#day,version