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SUSE's LibreOffice Core Team Moves To Collabora
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Meeks has announced that the core of SUSE's LibreOffice team is moving over to Collabora, which will now be providing commercial LibreOffice support. 'It seems to me that the ability to say "no" to profitable but peripheral business in order to strategically focus the company is a really important management task. In the final analysis I'm convinced that this is the right business decision for SUSE. It will allow Collabora's Productivity division to focus exclusively on driving LibreOffice into Windows, Mac and Consulting markets that are peripheral to SUSE. It will also retain the core of the existing skill base for the benefit of SUSE's customers, and the wider LibreOffice community, of which openSUSE is an important part.'"
I figured a libre-office hater would be the first post. Just to counter it, here's my Open/Libre Office experience. In 2000, I started a software company in NC, and bought every employee (we were all big geek programmers) Linux laptops. I didn't pay for a single Windows Office license (though we paid for a bunch of Visual C++ pro seats). It's been 13 years, and even though I have been in a CTO role all that time, I've not once had to install Windows Office. I see co-workers, mostly in biz-dev, marketing, sales, or management roles who get squished by people who send them documents in a more recent Office format. Management hates paying for new software simply to load new file formats. LibreOffice has loaded and edited every file I ever had to deal with since 2000, for free, while my Office addicted co-workers have put out a lot of $$ just to keep up. You're upset about bugs in file recovery?!? Get a real job!
Now I have to give Microsoft some kudos. They've actually managed to continue to innovate in this space, and the PowerPoint presentations I see from co-workers who are PowerPoint fan-boys beat anything I've seen from the LibreOffice geeks. From a visual presentation point of view, they win. That's worth some $.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
"Open office .. it'll overwrite you're auto backups"
From what I've experienced OO prompts the user and asks if they want to recover any lost documents.
"Microsoft .. actually managed to continue to innovate in this space, and the PowerPoint presentations I see .. beat anything I've seen from the LibreOffice geeks"
..
Googling on 'graphics example filetype:odp` brings up some very interesting results, see these examples
Stereoscopic vision workshop
Open Source Productivity Tools
I'm a bit skeptical of ms office's greatness too. My company and I do support and having been the one to get the company off the ground I did a lot of it until a few years ago. My recollection is people fear stuff that is different, but in reality MS Office requires significantly more maintenance. There are lots of bugs in it. For instance I had a employee (way overqualified and extremely knowledgeable all around) spend 3-4 days on one customs outlet because of a bug. The most recent MS Outlook was doing something much worse than the auto-recovery bug this person speaks of. Had my tech not done the smart thing and backed everything outlook related up before he upgraded the customer would have been screwed. If you wonder why it took so long too- it's a business customer who lives off email.
Now I had another similar customer a few years back. Same thing happened. The difference is I didn't waste 3-4 days. I hack'd it and the hack involved gmail. Turned out gmail does everything most people really need and was a much better solution than Outlook. It was pretty hilarious. There is this fear that only Outlook / microsoft Office can do what you need it to. It's just not the case though.
And personally I've only ever run this business (substantial size now; 5 years and many employees) off GNU/Linux, Thunderbird/Evolution, and LibreOffice. Ohh we do have imap setup and webmail. Nothing is even outsourced (well, I do use gmail for contacts/calendar actually although we are going to eliminate that shortly).
While we started off doing support for mostly MS Windows users about 90% of our business is now GNU/Linux and it in part due to people purchasing our solutions. The other part is an increase in customers simply going GNU/Linux on there own initiative. About 50% of non-technical local customers who were on MS Windows when they started with us have gone GNU/Linux. It could be 80% if we had a solution for quickbooks.
"not having to even worry about file formats so long as you have an up-to-date version"
..
It's understandable why you would want to remain anonymous
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better, hater, ideological, immature, inferior, interface, pirate, slow, stresses, tangible
Both the mail and the calendaring part has been figured out a long time ago. It's called CalDAV and IMAP. Get with the times, Exchange/Outlook is only king where the subjects want it to be. There are drop-in replacements for Exchange Server, it's just a question of figuring out how to do it and get your stuff out of the proprietary cycle. Microsoft has itself abandoned Office and Exchange in favor of it's cloud (pay-per-view) offering, there is nowhere to go but open.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It would damage their eternal belief that Microsoft is on the brink of destruction.
They did just purchase the failing smartphone business from Nokia for 7 billion dollars. I mean, they could literally light the 7 billion on fire, but it would be less spectacular.
MS Office is pretty slick, minus the GUI. Excel is both made by and undone by VBA and really has no peer, but Keynote outclasses Powerpoint and Word is nothing special. Visual Studio is great - when you are working with MS's languages and targeting Windows. I'm not in love with Explorer on any level... not even in Windows 7, which added the crazy Libraries concept, but more power to you. PowerShell is cool - if you have to admin Windows machines. Windows/Office isn't horrible to work on day-to-day, but I'm amazed that it isn't further ahead given the cash these guys make with it. It seems like they completely lose years of development every once in a while, like "Longhorn" and Windows 8.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I would love to junk MS Word in favor of Libre Writer, but it can't even do a search and replace on a manual page feed (^m in MS Word).
Okay. Having gotten this far in the page, I've seen more comments bitching about the stereotypical slashdotter bashing microsoft than actual commenters bashing microsoft. And this is not a new trend. Now, I may not be the sharpest shed in the tool, but seems to me that 'truth' is highly subjective here.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
I know I was modded troll before, but I'll add a bit more.
Let me be very, very clear - I consider Windows 7, Office 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 to be the epitome of what Microsoft have created so far. The immediately following version of each of the above (Windows 8, Office 2013 and VS 2013) are all disasters in my opinion, not necessarily due to functionality or bugs, but due to the changes in UI. Windows 8 looks boring as fuck and Metro UI gets in the way in various areas even if you do your best to just stick to he desktop. Office 2013 looks boring as fuck and you need to choose one of the duller color schemes not to blow your eyes out (not to mention the high level of animations that actually make things feel less snappy, regardless of computer power). Visual Studio 2013 is the least affected of the UI changes, but the lack of color is still annoying but not to the same degree as the other two.
This is what Microsoft considers to be improvements to their core product line, and it's disappointing as hell. And I was marked as a troll before!
I think that Powerpoint is good but the problem is that the gloss of Powerpoint can detract from what you are trying to say. I have seen a lot of presentations where people are really impressed by the speaker's Powerpoint presentation and are not listening to what is being said. You should learn to present and put the main points, your boardwork, on the presentation in a simple and plain form. Do not use too many different fonts or flashy graphics, they take the audience's attention away from you. They hide your message. If the audience wants to see a movie they have better options.
If you want to create a stand alone presentation that does not have a speaker then Powerpoint is great but for normal presentation, learn to present.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
"Libre Writer .. can't even do a search and replace on a manual page feed"
...
Install the AltSearch extension and search for \p
Dontcha know? Emacs also comes with a life.
Table-ized A.I.
Michael Meeks has announced that the core of SUSE's LibreOffice team is moving over to Collabora
Is that in French Polynesia?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The OpenOffice Alt Find & Replace extension can do that -- I've been using it for years to supplement the built-in find/replace dialog, and it's really rare that I encounter something that it can't actually tackle. That said, while it works fine in the latest OpenOffice despite the extension's age, I have no idea how LibreWriter will handle it.**
**On my computers, OOWriter can handle much larger documents without slowing down or having 'issues' than LibreWriter can -- I'm fairly sure that this is because OOW lets me choose which extensions I want (basically just Alt F&R), while LO has a bunch of science/math addons (which I don't use) coded into the program now.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
Conditional formatting, fix it please, even when starting from scratch with a new Calc document, it's horribly broken - starts off ok, but after a bit of copying and pasting such as when making shift patterns, it all goes completely haywire and becomes unusable :-(. Every time (v 4.1.0.2.0 Sept 2013)
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
They usually mention a non-existent Slashdot groupthink too.
There are drop-in replacements for Exchange Server, it's just a question of figuring out how to do it...
"DROP IN" means there's a readily available "Downloads" page at some website, where you go to download some 250MB executable file with a free 2-user licence, and once you download that file, you double click on it, and it brings up a choice panel between "Basic" and "Advanced" installation, and 99% of all n00b users can choose the "Basic" installation, and within 5 minutes or so, you're up and playing around with the system and getting a feel for how it works and how your users could benefit from switching to the system.
"Drop-In" does NOT mean that you have to spend a week at Amazon, reading through thousands of product reviews, deciding which stack of softcover programming books with pictures of bizarre esoteric mammals on their covers you will need to purchase, and then spending about three or four years of your life actually reading the stack of softcover programming books with pictures of bizarre esoteric mammals on their covers, until you have a PhD-level understanding of C-Compilers [and a worthwhile opinion as to whether you should compile with the GNU compiler or Clang/LLVM or the Intel compiler or the M$FT compiler or the WTFE compiler], and which libraries you will need to compile against, and the theory of BASH shells, and the theory of prime numbers & elliptic curves and LDAP authentication, and the theory of sector-level hard-drive replication living beneath WebDAV and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
And then five or ten years later, when you've finally earned your "PhD" from the "School of Hard Knocks", you've still got to spend six or eight weeks at various internet forums, from Palo Alto to Bangalore, trying to figure out WTF line of code you need to add to some configuration file to get it all to work together reasonably "seamlessly", when finally some poor fat bearded dude, working for free from his mother's basement in Bulgaria, finally points out to you that your corporation can't do this because your 1,000 client computers have a known "issue" involving their 3Com ethernet chipsets in combination with their ATi graphics chipsets, but that no one has been able to chase down where that particular bug might live in the total code package, and so you're SOL.
At which point you learn that no one ever got fired for purchasing M$FT.
Hi, Rob! (Everyone, this is Rob Weir from IBM, posting in his role as marketer at IBM^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wentirely on his own behalf, yessirree.)
Bullshit. You can clearly see pattens when it comes to pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft/Windows posts being moderated highly, and anti-Linux and pro-Microsoft/Windows posts being moderated poorly, regardless of the merit of what's being discussed and even the validity of their arguments.
People HATE Microsoft here, often with good reason. But they're also often unable to accept that Linux might have its own set of flaws and that it could not be anything but perfect. I've seen it time and time again - and I've argued with them time and time again (in older, now dormant accounts because it got too much). Nothing's changed in 10 years.
It's always the same few people though, not a general thread throughout the site. People like Alex Betis who will argue black is white when it comes to Linux are not everyone. I criticise everyone personally because they're all not good enough for different reasons.
I had the displeasure of having to use libre office and open office and I can say that I would rather pay for Microsoft Office which I don't, then use free Libre/Open office.
Fixed that for you
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
Powerpoint is actually the one bit of MS Office where Microsoft doesn't completely dominate the market, because a lot of people use Keynote.
My recollection is people fear stuff that is different, but in reality MS Office requires significantly more maintenance.
Fear is great in your cow-orkers! I've been told not to distribute Document.docm files because the Word2010 default is Document.docx and "people will be nervous about getting something different." The weird thing about that is most of these same people don't know how to tell WindowsOS to display document suffixes, so how would they even notice?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I'll give almost ANYTHING the benefit of the doubt.
But there is a very finite upper bound to my patience, and as soon as that foreboding "Not Ready For Primetime" feeling starts to sink in, I'm outta there.
Again, though, my larger point would be that there is MASSIVE value-add in simply "getting it all to work together seamlessly", and unless and until the FOSS/Linux/BSD community [-er-, non-Apple BSD community] starts stepping up to the plate and actually putting in the elbow grease and peforming their due diligence on customer relations and making the whole process more or less "seamless" - until that time comes, M$FT is gonna keep eating their lunch in the Enterprise space.
Folks in the real world simply do not have the spare time to do the whole "poor fat bearded dude living in his mother's basement" routine for very long, before they actually STARVE to death [for lack of sufficient income stream].
You were modded troll because "To be honest I have enough trouble leaving Microsoft products at times, although often it's because they are the best at what they do" is incorrect. Nobody would replace the OS that came on their computer unless the replacement was superior, and Linux IS superior. My W7 notebook will be joining the tower in running kubuntu very soon -- Windows gets slower and slower all the time as its registry becomes hugely bloated. It seems uninstalling a program seldom deletes any registry keys; I'm using the Windows AV (can't remember its name) and have uninstalled AVG, yet Windows keeps nagging my to turn AVG on.
Windows lacks features, has to be rebooted monthly, its useability is awful, and it's slow as molasses compared to Linux.
As to "Explorer file manager has no equivalent in terms of speed, functionality and usability compared to anything in Linux", that is PURE troll. Windows file manager was all right in XP but the one in W7 is klunky as hell. I don't remember the name of kubuntu's file manager, but it's heads and shoulders above Windows'.
As to MS Office I'll agree Excel is the best spreadsheet, but Word has few advantages over Oo, and MS Access is one of the reasons I'm glad I retire next year. I miss real DBMS languages like NOMAD and it's little brother dBase. I'm still pissed about what MS did to FoxPro after buying it. It was a great little DBMS before Microsoft bought and ruined it.
And Outlook is the absolute WORST email client I've ever had the misfortune of using. They went all MS a couple of years ago where I work and I miss the Novell email client.
I use MS products at work and absolutely HATE them. Microsoft makes the absolute WORST products of anyone's in my opinion.
You were modded troll because it was a troll. I completely agree with the guy who modded you down.
Free Martian Whores!
No, I actually do pay for MS Office.. It's an important tool and I pay for it.
Well, I have submitted a long time ago, the bugs which happened, but, that's over 1 yr ago and the truth is, after 2 months of fighting with the software, I got my boss to pay for a full license of MS Office. Now you think after all this time I'm going to a copy of these issues, especially when the moment I started to use MS Office, I had no more headaches to deal with? :) You gotta be kidding me.
I have no idea whatsoever about this bug, but if you know about it then it should not bite you again - you should always keep a backup, preferrably on another computer or at least on another HD or if even that can't be managed on some system a backup copy even on same HD is better than nothing. It sounds like a bug that should be flagged critical and fixed as quick as possible, but if this was needed to teach you to backup (and not trust the applications own auto-backups it manages and keeps in same disk) your important data then there is at least one good thing resulting from it.
And no, that is not trying to paint the bug as feature - just like I'm not saying that it was good when I burned my HD and lost most of my data back in the days because it taught me the importance of keeping backups ;) It was awful, but it did have one minor positive effect :)
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
I know a few people who use non-pirate copies of microsoft office, but nobody who actually pays for it with money out of his own wallet. This does not exclude that you do of course, but will you keep paying now that they want you to subscribe for it?
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
You are making an assertion that Linux is superior as fact, rather than an opinion. Things such as this ARE subjective. Considering a different opinion as troll makes it impossible to have an intelligent discussion with you people.
This almost works. It can find a page break but not replace it. It reports replacing the page breaks, but the page breaks remain in the document.
The fact that Linux has every feature Windows has while Windows lacks features that Linux has had for years is fact, not opinion. The fact that Linux is faster on the same machine is not opinion, but fact.
I use both OSes. Windows falls short everywhere except eye candy and gaming, which they excel at. Fact, not opinion.
Free Martian Whores!
Was going to mod you troll....but eh....so I just tried your example. New writer doc, opened a .bmp file in a photo viewer....ctrl+c...switch to writer ctrl+v and there it is a bitmap pasted into writer.
.jpg and .png files....I didn't have any convinent files with other extensions.
So exactly what part are you having difficulty with? Are you trolling or is this a real difficulty for you?
As a side note, this method works with
With Windows I can do everything I want, but with Linux I can only do maybe about 80%-90%. Close, but it's those edge cases which tend to burn you and make you question why you're trying to be different - and whether you're being different because you think it's better, or whether you've spent too much time on Linux forums with similar people who've convinced you that Linux is the better option.
I don't want to turn into an intolerant Linux zealot. I still want to retain at least some ability to communicate with 90%+ of the rest of computing users with respect.
You know, I would love to see Microsoft burn crashing down but I don't think it's going away for some time yet (although nobody can predict the future, just make informed guesses/estimations). But it's really more on the emotional level - it's not as much from their crappy appliations (at command, taken from *NIX but with lesser functionality, executing entered commands under SYSTEM account, not under the users own account and priviledges, on XP, wtf!?) as it is because of their shady and/or downright illegal and immoral "business tactics". ;)
MS however has provided a lot of motivation for many F/OSS developers to push Linux and/or software for it further - in fact back when MS still tried to fight unix/linux systems a fault in samba was found in MS Windows vs. Linux as file-server competition. It made samba slower than it should be and thanks to that we got it fixed - and unlike some products, we never try making server run faster by allowing parts of it run in kernel space
I have understood they were pretty good in designing very realistic flight simulators - whatever happened to that?
See, this is why you're an ass: you lie like no tomorrow.
Whatever you mean by CMD, I can only guess from CMD being *Windows* OS command promt and text console window (kinda like terminal emulators) that you probably mean CLI applications. You might mean TUI apps, but from what you wrote I'm guessing no.
Explorer is garbage, personally when I've had to work long with windows, if it involves use of filemanager, I've tried to find at least acceptable quality free dual-pane (extra pane for showing directory tree is a plus if it can be switched on/off but a big minus if it's forced to be there).
While CLI is indeed ultimately best tool for many operations that people usually use filemanagers for, it's not the best tool for anything/everything. There exists huge amount of different GUI and TUI (Terminal User Interface) applications for Linux. For terminals Midnight Commander is probably most known, liked and if you really get deep into it, really extendable/configurable. For GUI I personally like to use ugly but powerful dual-pane filemanager named "worker" - it's also extendable, has different modes for each pane (defaulting both to showing directory content), can bind general functionality (like generating symbolic links of selected files on active pane into directory on inactive pane - or simply copying/moving them) or filetype specific (image, audio, video, etc. conversion for example) into hotkeys or buttons (which also include possibility for defining a hotkey).
As for Visual Studio, I used to like that kind of IDE's - and before that I used Borland Turbo Pascal/C/C++ type IDE's, which actually are not that bad but nothing special either. When it comes to editing code, whetever it's a small shell script or big projects, I'm like this Microsoft dude:
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.