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Why not take the FREEDOM CHALLENGE and https://www.libreoffice.org/. What can you lose but what I hope is a reassuring guess, fifty years of paying rent to access your content, well not your content in 365 but M$'s content, they own it and you can only rent access to it (gees dude, even your children and grand children and great grand children and on down the line will all have to pay rent to access your content).

You joke, but they're half way there:
https://www.libreoffice.org/do...

Sounds like you were perfectly happy with LibreOffice until you had to convert files made by other people in other software, then blamed LibreOffice for not being magically accommodating in ways that probably aren't even legal. But sure, blame an open source project for not stealing assets and secrets from other corporations to make their own software more compatible with the competition. If that's what you need from your software developers, leave that up to Microsoft. They've had that covered since the DOS days.

Open/Libre Office boast about file compatibility. It was not me who put that in the spec sheet and in their website:

https://www.libreoffice.org/di...

And I quote:
"Use documents of all kinds

LibreOffice is compatible with a wide range of document formats such as Microsoft® Word (.doc, .docx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx) and Publisher."

If a feature LibreOffice boasts about in their website, and is repeated on and on in /. and many other places, is broken, is not my fault.

Either Open/Libre Office make it work right, remove it, or make it clear that the feature is not completely working and never will be.

If they decide to keep advertising it, and it does not work right, criticism shall be expected. And users (like me) will have to revert to plain old MS-Office.

It does not matter if it is because Microsoft is hiding their older file formats (the new ones are abundantly documented, so, a file done in pptx from scratch (not converted) should render fine in LibreOffice).

Or if it because the LibreOffice project has not enough budget for programmers (being free and all).

If they can not make the feature work, not our fault.

"... no way ... I am going to pay you for a subscription."

Answer: LibreOffice is free.

Simply download LibreOffice, see: https://www.libreoffice.org/
or any other software that supports the OpenDocument format ISO26300, see: https://www.iso.org/standard/4...

The British Govenment saw the light, see: https://gdstechnology.blog.gov...

LibreOffice is free, but you can have paid support contracts from multiple sources if you need such, and you can freely distribute copies. LibreOffice is available on all major O/S's, which include Linux, Microsoft's & Apple's.

But Yes, I often send people PDF files. Note that LibreOffice allows you to edit PDF files!

Why not take the freedom challenge. Download https://www.libreoffice.org/ and install and try it, no matter how much you like it, you will not have to pay for it, yours forever as is access to your documents. Take the freedom challenge or pay rent to M$ for the rest of your life, 10 years, 20 years 50 years, 100 years or more paying rent to read the letters you wrote but no longer own the access to, you can only rent it, one month at a time and they can take it away at any time for any reason, perhaps because you are not paying enough, so how high will that rent go, you can guarantee it will go up, just as you can guarantee upgrades will slow to a crawl.

Try this:

LibreOffice
Apache OpenOffice
Softmaker FreeOffice
WPS Office
(they have a whole office suite, not just the word processor)
Abiword
SoftMaker Office
(again, they have a whole suite, not just the word processor)
Pages (for Mac)
(Apple does other office apps, too, but they don't seem to
market a unified suite)
Atlantis Word Processor

it's great software. it's free. It's cross-platform. https://www.libreoffice.org/

Doesn't run on iPads, iPhones or Android phones or tablets nor is there any web hosted version. The world of personal computing is much larger than just desktop applications.

it's great software. it's free. It's cross-platform. https://www.libreoffice.org/

I don't know why this deserves a whole slashdot article and you didn't even provide links to the alternatives!

LibreOffice is a powerful office suite

Distrowatch | put the fun back into computing

Luckily there's an anti-dote.

Yeah, yeah, cue the whiners who will complain about how useless and inferior it is, but the fact is that it's more than good enough, and whining is only a measure of how spoiled you are; after all, people used to make do with a pencil, and there was a time when a VT-100 was considered state-of-the-art. And people got shit done anyway.

This is actually a pretty clear case of "we have to hang together or we'll all hang separately", because if we do, there's very little the rent seekers can do.

You can download it here

There's Skrooge for KDE if you need a dedicated program. Or you can just use a spreadsheet in LibreOffice.

This is a legitimate question, along with:

* What would be the population of Russia today if the Soviets hadn't killed 20 million of their own people?
* What would be the population of China today if the Taiping Rebellion hadn't killed 50 to 100 million of their own people?
* What would be the population of the United States today if 800,000 people hadn't been killed in the Civil War?

The simplest model is just exponential math, and is quite easy. Take a look at:
https://www.rapidtables.com/ca...

A very slightly less simple model is the logistics equation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

For comparison, enter the simple formulas into a spreadsheet, see if you can duplicate or get close to the figures on Wikipedia. If you don't have Microsoft Excel handy, download LibreOffice and start calculating and graphing. It's easy and fun! And it will give you power...

Even better, do the math in Python and generate CSV tables, or spreadsheets, or just graph directly from Python. Or get uber geeky and use the Julia language. Or get old school and break out the slide rule and some paper. If you have an old HP calculator, bonus points. I keep all mine sealed and displayed in a glass case, and only use the HP RPN calculator app on my cell phone :)

Libre Office

The galaxy icon theme, which used to be the default icon theme, was removed.
There is no mention of this change in the ChangeLog.

However, you can download an extension with the icon teme here:
https://extensions.libreoffice...

I use this icon set so this was a nasty surprise, compounded with the lack of any mention in the release materials. Not good, LO folks.
Thankfully the functionality is just an extension away.

there are solutions with less soy.
https://www.libreoffice.org/do...
you can always donate to libreoffice, without gathering money somewhere else and paying loyalties to a third party.

This whole argument seems as weird as. I use notepad for temporary one page junk. I use notepad++ for editing larger unformatted text only documents. For more than that I use libreoffice https://www.libreoffice.org/. The only reason I use M$ notepad is because it is there and a decades of habit, otherwise I would use notepad++ (basic install) https://sourceforge.net/projec.... I would not bother with M$ notepad if I had to download it, just wouldn't be worth that effort.

You need a major corporate player, with a record for privacy invasiveness and stealing ideas as well as a willingness to corrupt the democratic process to feed their ego and an extremely autocratic bent to forcing their asexual peccadillos on the rest of us, to have an inside line on your companies activities. The ability to data mine all your staffs digital discussions. Seriously the company that does evil by it's own definitions, why, just why?

Seriously modern corporation, I would not trust Google with anything, except what it can uniquely provide, Google Maps, for everything else, someone else, they have straight up proven they can not be trusted. For search https://duckduckgo.com/?q=duck..., for office apps https://www.libreoffice.org/, browser https://www.waterfoxproject.or... (I know firefox is all chromey but yeah, NAAHHH). Email, seriously serve your own, or if you want more reliable rent a private maintained email server in a local server farm. Messaging https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/..., keeping in mind messaging beyond marketing hype and bullshit, is more counter productive than productive, honestly.

LibreOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and a database.
It's free!
https://www.libreoffice.org/

Office 2019 is new and shiny. It's Free*!

*Free to corporate users who pay contractual subscriptions to MS anyway. Everyone else doesn't give a shit and will happily use Office 97.

And here's the link to give them your money.

Let's see, free vs. several hundred dollars....

Take the hardware into equation too. LibreOffice is not a lightweighter, and requires far newer/faster/bigger hardware than what they claim on the system-requirements web page. Especially if you can't build your own LibreOffice from source and have to take pre-packaged binaries, it's going to be severely bloated, including java. Even though Office is heavy, it's lighter than that. I actually can use Word on a PIII laptop, but LibreOffice, nope.
If the choice is between buying a minimal version of Office for $50 or replacing a working computer to run a free LibreOffice, well...

I've done this. I have half a dozen macs (my kids all use mac minis), quite a few more Linux boxen, and exactly ONE windows box. (It's a gaming laptop. I've had it for 6 or 7 years now. Still going strong, though the graphics card is starting to show its age. To say nothing of the battery!)

Your windows box will get compromised / infected on a regular basis. You will be amazed at how easily that can happen! Definitely go with Chrome over IE, but, really, go with a Chromebook rather than risk webbrowsing & drivebys on a windows box.

One thing I cannot recommend highly enough: Get a CD/DVD drive, external if necessary. Boot off a Linux disk. Good o'l Redhat Fedora in "rescue" mode will suffice. Have an external drive, formatted for Linux, that you can hook up. Use "ntfsclone"! (Or, alternatively, even good o'l dd.) I've had to restore my windows box several times now. Being able roll it back to a safe place has been a lifesaver! It's also nice to be able to see if the windows restore partition was infected...

Practically speaking, what you want is a Win box for just games, and ideally just Steam at that. And then a Mac or Chromebook for everything else. And I do mean everything!

That said, you may want to install Cygwin on the windows box. Having a decent BASH or TCSH command line is a lifesaver! You might also want Libreoffice. Very useful, compatible with most MSWord files, and a lot cheaper than a microsoft subscription!

I'm no Apple user so I don't know about Keynote. But for ensuring compatibility, I make sure that my wife's PowerPoint presentations are all converted to PDF.

Anyway, in Linux you could use Impress, which is more than enough for most people in need of a graphical slide editor.

As for me, in my lectures I use Beamer in LaTeX, which is more than enough for my needs. And its output is, again, PDF.

I can project anything of these with Okular in presentation mode, easily. So I think Linux is more than capable in the area.

That's because the Chrome and Firefox web browsers and the Thunderbird mail client have enough of a budget for multi-platform development and testing.

I use the same image editor on all three platforms. I use the same network analyzer on all three platforms. I use the same video tools on all three platforms. I use the same office suite on all three platforms. I use the same shell, the same command line tools, the same interpreters on all three platforms.

The claim that native applications equal only one operating system is plainly false. It's pointless trying to defend that position.

Let's have a LibreOffice championship.

LibreOffice needs improvements in its user interface. Those who compete could suggest improvements.

Openoffice is unfortunately a pretty dead project and should probably not be touched or recommended to anyone who do not know what they are doing.
Instead, go with LibreOffice (a fork of Openoffice) that is maintained and have a good amount of developers behind it.

LibreOffice has telemetry: https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/89256/does-libreoffice-snoop-on-users-documents-really/

98% of the people who use office simply type letters and notes, maybe make a simple spreadsheet or two. Openoffice is entirely up to the task.

I really have to give Microsoft credit, figuring out a way to make people pay rent on something as simple as a word processor.

Openoffice is unfortunately a pretty dead project and should probably not be touched or recommended to anyone who do not know what they are doing.
Instead, go with LibreOffice (a fork of Openoffice) that is maintained and have a good amount of developers behind it.

Apparantly you are wrong, https://www.google.com.au/sear... leads to https://ask.libreoffice.org/en.... Wow that was really so hard.

Next step in this story should be a in depth investigation of why the new incoming politician pushed so hard on this apparently with zero consultation with his IT staff. Most probable, M$ paid them a bribe (campaign contribution) to push it, so the arse holes at M$ could use if for marketing purposed and the stupendously invasive POS windows anal probe 10, dies a slow grim death.

You can definitely embed Windows Metafile images in LibreOffice on Windows; but I'm not entirely sure if that is enough to make it vulnerable. WMF is dangerous because it is basically a package of GDI function calls, which might be good for efficiency or compactness; but has led to a number of creative and executable things being shoehorned in(as in this case; and repeatedly over the years).

However, there are several image handling libraries that can render or convert WMF images without access to GDI; so in those cases GDI bugs wouldn't be a problem(though you probably have other things to worry about).

This Libreoffice VCL documentation suggests that LibreOffice uses its own VCL WMF filters; but I sure wouldn't bet anything remotely important on that without testing it first; or knowing rather more about how LibreOffice is put together.

Star Office was never intended to be a "drop-in" replacement for Microsoft Office. It was intended as a functional equivalent, but originally only ran on Solaris systems with a SPARC processor. Later they would branch out to include running under x86_64 processors for Solaris and under Windows. This allowed for the creation of spreadsheets and word processor documents on Unix workstations that could also be manipulated on other platforms.

The original software had its own file format and could import and export to Microsoft formats. The import was not that good. The export was reasonable, but not great. The syntax for formulas were different between Calc and Excel (generally Calc used semicolons where Excel used commas). Then there is the EASTERSUNDAY function in Calc. There is no Microsoft equivalent to this day. In the special case where you need this information, it is amazingly handy because calculating it is not that easy. Easter Sunday in the Roman Catholic Church is always on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. So you need to know about the seasons, the moon phases, and the actual calendar to get this right.

In any case, the above example provide several reasons why it was not a drop-in replacement.

Why pay $7 a month for office when you can get LibreOffice, or use Google Docs or a bunch of other free options. Or alternatively if you really must have office buy Microsoft Office 2016 for a once-off cost of $265 AUD (about 3 years worth of Office 365 Subscription assuming they don't jack up the price) or your old version of office which probably does everything you want. Seriously, the ability to write documents and do spreadsheets is no longer a killer app that people are willing to pay lots of money for when they can get something that probably has 95% of the functionality for free.

... for reduced functionality compared to previous Office versions, near total reliance on the cloud, server failures, and compatibility isues with people who were smart enough to not buy into this crap? Sign me up!

I hear they're offering a deep discount here.

I think a systemd-free Debian is the right way to go; systemd does have a lot of issues, enough to not have it be the default in a distribution that's more committed to software freedon and is managed democratically, like Debian. So, I support Devuan.

However, their website is just scary awful. Not that it isn't aesthetic, but they have some too-smart-for-their-own good website system. I haven't seen it anywhere else - perhaps it was developed by people related to the project itself? But, honestly - it's baroque; it's confusing; you can't figure out how to post what and where, and it lets you believe you might be able to post something only to be disappointed when it's not accepted. So not only is documentation lacking but it's also close to impossible to discuss anything (specifically problems you might be having with installation etc.)

So, dear Devuaners - stick to one major earth-shattering norm change, don't try to force your weird website management ideas onto us. If you had something like AskUbuntu.com or even the less-polished ask.libreoffice.org - that would be awesome.

BTW - It's interesting to note just how many packages you need to fork in order to make your Debian run without systemd.

The only alternative that would offer searching, filtering, sorting (in general: querying) features that you need to work with raw data (or even long lists) would be Access.

Or one of the perfectly adequate free alternatives, like LibreOffice Base.

I tried Base once a few years ago, and it was a steaming pile of sh!t. I take that back; it was not coherent enough to be called a "pile".

Anybody try it recently?

It's too bad more people haven't tried LibreOffice, because it works flawlessly with Windows 10.

Like Windows 10, LibreOffice is free. The only difference is that it won't automatically download to your computer.

I can't believe how much money people waste on Microsoft Office. Don't let friends use MS Office!

You can even put LibreOffice on a USB stick with the free Portable Version of LibreOffice. You can't do that with Microsoft.

It's too bad more people haven't tried LibreOffice, because it works flawlessly with Windows 10.

Like Windows 10, LibreOffice is free. The only difference is that it won't automatically download to your computer.

I can't believe how much money people waste on Microsoft Office. Don't let friends use MS Office!

You can even put LibreOffice on a USB stick with the free Portable Version of LibreOffice. You can't do that with Microsoft.

I recommend using https://www.libreoffice.org/ in MS-Windows, having MS-Office used only as fallback: this way you can gradually identify and fix the problematic documents (please, try to use ODF whenever possible =])

For the people I know, the main problem are macros. It is almost impossible to develop macros in Libre/OpenOffice. The language seems to be a mix of vb/java or python/java that makes it necessary to understand at least two languages to be usable, the API is HUGE and complex, and so on, and on.

On the other hand, it seems to be going in the right direction: Upcoming PyUNO improvements in LibreOffice 5.1 Matthew Francis

If it continues like that, it may soon be *easier* to write macros for LibreOffice than for MS office as python is much better/easier/powerful than VB

In the best case, installing Linux is straightforward. But I've tried installing Linux on more than one laptop not doing anything strange with partitioning (just ext4 and swap partitions on the disk), only to get bounced out to a grub2 prompt when it tries to boot for the first time. I solved both problems, but they weren't particularly simple. There's no good reason I need to edit a file to disable Ubuntu's guest session.

Regarding the bug in Libreoffice, here's a link to what I encountered: https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/37966/read-only-content-cannot-be-changed-no-modifications-will-be-accepted/. If it's indeed due to non-ODF content, that makes it hard to collaborate with Windows users, which is a big negative.

In my experience, the proprietary Nvidia drivers provide better performance. They're also a pain in the ass to set up sometimes. That's not Linux's fault, but it is the reality of the situation.

For what it's worth, I despise Unity and Gnome 3. Gnome 2 wasn't particularly nice to look at, but it got the job done. I used to like KDE, but recent versions aren't that great. The KDE apps aren't as good as the Gnome apps.

Just a couple of days ago, I needed to view ago PDF form. Evince couldn't open it. There are no recent versions of Adobe Reader for Linux. I couldn't get Adobe Reader to work in wine. While it's not the fault of Linux that Adobe dropped support for Reader on Linux, it doesn't mean it isn't an issue for users.

Linux frustrates me. I actually try to use it as a desktop OS. I've been running Ubuntu 14.04. I encountered that Libreoffice bug a couple of days ago. It's frustrating trying to finish writing something for work before a strict deadline, only to encounter a bug like that. That's why I have that attitude, questioning why people would want Linux as a desktop OS. My experience isn't flamebait. It's my experience. Windows 7 was good, but Windows 10 sucks. I just don't see Linux as a viable alternative.

You know what's safe from MS Office macro malware and doesn't force the stupid ribbon on you? LibreOffice.

Bonus: it's free of charge.

Double bonus: you don't need to install Windows to use it.

Looks like there are extensions already ...
OpenOffice
http://extensions.openoffice.o...

LibreOffice
http://extensions.libreoffice....

By the way, the editor of the story should have pointed to http://www.libreoffice.org/ !

I assume you meant https://www.libreoffice.org/ Libre Office rather than Linux

you assumed incorrectly but it may have to do with your apparent illiteracy. :)

I assume you meant https://www.libreoffice.org/ Libre Office rather than Linux although subtlety in there no M$ Office on Linux of course, although in this case you could call it M$ 'open' Orifice, eww, that's bad ;).

LibreOffice Fresh

Then installing Linux [...] will give them a modern, supported, OS with a good and easy to use word processor (Open Office) for free.

OpenOffice is dead.
LibreOffice is the better Office clone.
(I don't understand why so many students torrent MSOffice when they could get LO legally for free.)

Skype is a Microsoft product now, so there's no way it would have a Linux client
http://www.skype.com/en/downlo...
Wait, it does?

No Office though.
https://www.libreoffice.org/
That's not Office, I mean something that will open .doc files.
*points at link again*
But it isn't Microsoft
https://products.office.com/en...
That's not funny!

Still doesn't address text editors
-emacs
-jed
-nano
-pico
-vim
-gvim
-gedit
-NEdit
-Tea
-Sublime
-Eclipse

LibreOffice actually has native ODBC database connectivity built into it, permitting you to make live connections to MSSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, and many others. You can also directly use SQL queries.