LibreOffice 5.0 Released

New submitter ssam writes: The Document Foundation has announced LibreOffice 5.0, the tenth major release since the launch of the project, bringing new features including Windows 10, Android and Ubuntu touch compatibility, superior interoperability features, an updated UI, and lots of under the hood improvements. For people still running OpenOffice it is probably time to move over.

Comments

OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Maddog Batty]

So what is the story between the two? I know that LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice and that some/most/all of the devs moved to LibreOffice.
Is LibreOffice now far enough ahead to say forget about OpenOffice?

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

No you stupid fuck! That's how things stagnate.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is wrong with you? No you can't forget about OpenOffice! Jesus you are dumb!

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, I hope the two comments above are satire.

The idea that people are getting this angry about minor quality differences between office suites is really chilling.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[TemporalBeing]

So what is the story between the two? I know that LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice and that some/most/all of the devs moved to LibreOffice. Is LibreOffice now far enough ahead to say forget about OpenOffice?

LibreOffice is moving on its own. They do fix some things ahead of OpenOffice, but they also continue to borrow code from OpenOffice. Licensing-wise, they're more limited than OpenOffice is so the code-sharing is not a two-way street, they take but they can't contribute back.

Personally, I still prefer OpenOffice. I recently accidentally opened up-to-date LibreOffice Calc on Kubuntu 15.04 and the interface was just horrid.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[nine-times]

Well, LibreOffice just hit version 5.0, while OpenOffice is at 4.1.1. Obviously, LibreOffice is exactly 0.8.9 amount better.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[CritterNYC]

You've got it the wrong way around license-wise. LibreOffice can pull anything they'd like from OpenOffice, but OpenOffice won't because they don't want LGPL/GPL code polluting their code-tree. OpenOffice spent a long time rewriting GPL/LGPL code to ensure they could keep their license pure which is one of the reasons they're so much further behind LibreOffice.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Chris Mattern]

That's why we have Windows 10. It's got twice as many improvements as Windows 9 would've had!

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually given that they branched from the same base, and kept the same versioning scheme that is pretty accurate.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you forget what website you're on? There are wars between console text editor here that rival some real-world conflicts.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

libreoffice is the wusses that jumped ship when oracle bought sun and inherited openoffice. oracle didn't have a plan for openoffice and kinda messed up project management during the short time it held the project. oracle then donated the name, trademark, and code to apache foundation who continues work on openoffice, and has also received donated code from ibm (symphony) to incorporate into the project. if they would have stuck it out for a little while longer, libreoffice would not exist, and openoffice under apache's leadership would be better overall than either the current libreoffice or the current openoffice.

libreoffice is OBSOLETE, the reason for the fork NO LONGER EXISTS. the developers that turned tail and ran at the first sign of trouble under oracle's leadership should have disbanded their project and joined apache the moment they received the code.

instead, they'll essentially steal every bit of code they can from apache openoffice while continuing their own project, while apache, who migrated openoffice to their own free license and policies, cannot swipe libreoffice code for their own project (while maintaining the apache licensing).

i support apache's project. they have a 20 year history of open source project development (their history dates back to 1995 and the beginnings of apache server).. libreoffice is a baby by comparison, made by people that have proven to have hissy-fits and run away at first sign of trouble. i don't trust them, i trust apache and have since their earliest years.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't agree. 4.1.1 + 0.8.9 si 4.9.10, not 5.0.0.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Mr D from 63]

I'm waiting for Nacho LibreOffice.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[INT_QRK]

"That's not how it works...that's not how any of this works!"

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't really contribute to this, but I'd be interested to hear a rebuttal, or someone else's take. It's marked as a troll, but it actually sounds like there are some valid points possibly.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you considered that it would've taken lots longer for oracle to give up the code, if the devs had stayed? And it might've not happened at all. Of course you haven't. Not to mention that at the point where oracle gave the code, there was lots and lots of done for libre office. Sure it'd be nice to be able to combine the effort, but licensing does not allow that. I don't have anything against open office, but i'm not going to change from libre office until open office is not only to the par with libre office, a lots better than libre office.

But seriously, your description of libre office people running at first sign of trouble is complete bullshit. You are a douche, there's no way around that fact.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[TemporalBeing]

You've got it the wrong way around license-wise. LibreOffice can pull anything they'd like from OpenOffice, but OpenOffice won't because they don't want LGPL/GPL code polluting their code-tree. OpenOffice spent a long time rewriting GPL/LGPL code to ensure they could keep their license pure which is one of the reasons they're so much further behind LibreOffice.

That's what I said. The "they" in the GP consistently referred to LibreOffice.

LibreOffice uses the GPL/LGPL code because they had no choice - it was the only option available to them since they were forking the source code.

OpenOffice is purely and solely licensed under Apache License version 2. They also didn't have to rewrite code for GPL/LGPL compliance - Oracle wholesale relicensed the work to Apache version 2 before they could contribute it to Apache to start with. A lot of their time was in integrating IBM's Symphony changes, and catching backup after several months of minimal to no development going on; but they've re-established that.

So LibreOffice can pull chances from OpenOffice since Apache License V2 code can be easily relicensed to GPL/LGPL, but OpenOffice cannot pull changes from LibreOffice.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent rebuttal, neckbeard.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

I fully agree with your assessment, but would also add that the commentor is not only a neckbeard, but also a twat-waffle.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me know when LibreOffice can open WordPerfect 5.x documents.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying it's 1.-1.-1 amount better? 4.1.1 + 1.-1.-1 = 5.0.0. Sense this makes.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

So writing a macro in LibreOffice will cause it to be GPL while writing it in OpenOffice don't?

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Your documents are not GPL just because you write them with GPL software.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[MrKrillls]

Most of these over the top postings from anonymous cowards are just sad.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[ssam]

Many of the developers were already fed up with Sun's poor stewardship of the OpenOffice.org project, hence the go-oo project which hosted many improvements that Sun did not integrate and was the basis of OpenOffice packages that most Linux distributions shipped. Oracle was just the final straw that catalysed a true fork (go-oo was more of a patch set that needed to follow OOo). LO used the GPL because that was pretty much the only option (and maybe the developers think it is better for LO than a permissive licence). LO made big strides, for example in code clean up and build systems even before Oracle decided dump the code on the Apache foundation. The permissive was probably to keep IBM happy, as they have previously released closed derivatives of OO.

What code exactly have LO stolen from AOO? There is nothing new in AOO to be worth taking, LO has always been a step ahead of AOO (and is about 3 steps ahead now). The only possible example is the sidebar, but that was developed by IBM, not Oracle or Apache.

Personally I think Apache should de-list AOO on the grounds that they can't even produce security updates in a timely manor.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

they'll essentially steal every bit of code they can

I'm not sure you understand how this code is licensed

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure.

What's the dialling code for 1989?

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

It's binary 10. Much like web2.0

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't touch that!

Why?

It's Nacho LibreOffice!

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that really the case? If a macro is code and it calls into code from LibreOffice then shouldn't the whole thing go as GPL? Is there actually a difference from regular compiled code just because it's called a macro? I know it sounds weird but I'm actually serious here, unless there's a really big and clear exception in the license then there's a big loophole in GPL because this sounds a lot like when you have a GPL'd library that if you call you have to be GPL as well.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle shills. ... or trolls.... or both. lol.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Your macro is your own. You license it however you want.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

At least I don't remember seeing any console text editor wars here in a long time.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because we found all the emacs supporters, went to their houses, and killed them.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched to LO at the time of the fork.

I had occasion to speak to Greg Stein (ASF) about the direction OOo would go relative to LO and he summed it by saying that LO was likely to drift away from Java and OOo was likely to drift toward Java.

Of course, both teams still share a ton of patches back and forth, and OOo is certainly not being abandoned; the community is alive and well, and I suspect it will continue to be so.

I think the choice between the two is going to come down to some very small differences such as the aforementioned Java affinity (or lack thereof), or maybe just ease of pronunciation :)

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[swhalen]

Or we went into hiding where you can't find us.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

No you didn't. Like the Jedi, we survive to rise again, more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

Never would've pegged Palpatine as a vi user. Explains a lot...

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[FatdogHaiku]

Oracle shills. ... or trolls.... or both. lol.

So... shrolls?
Or maybe trills?

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

You know nothing about GPL, Anonymous Coward.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent retort me lack beard

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[danbob999]

Your macro isn't GPL if you don't want it to. LibreOffice is LGPL to begin with, not GPL.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[crabboy.com]

Well, have they tried producing security updates anywhere else besides a timely manor? Maybe they'd have better luck...

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, then that solves that problem. Thanks. Still interesting to think about for applications which are GPL that offers similar functionality.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

The ASF did actually take quite a lot of time dealing with GPL-licensed code, etc. in order to make it AL2-clean. It's one of the reasons their first release took so painfully long.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[TemporalBeing]

Have you considered that it would've taken lots longer for oracle to give up the code, if the devs had stayed? And it might've not happened at all. Of course you haven't.

If Oracle had managed the project at all instead of just not saying anything LibreOffice probably wouldn't exist. Most in the community jumped because Oracle wasn't saying anything - period.

Now, if Oracle had done something other than what it did, then OpenOffice would probably be in a state similar to MySQL. May be LibreOffice would exist, but not likely since there was no OpenOffice equivalent of Michael Widenius.

Not to mention that at the point where oracle gave the code, there was lots and lots of done for libre office.

The devs that continue just worked on a lot of technical debt. But they did so at the expense of any future integration with any OpenOffice related project because of the license changes and the fact that they were pretty much guaranteed that the licensing used by LibreOffice would prohibit contributions back to OpenOffice regardless of what happened.

Sure it'd be nice to be able to combine the effort, but licensing does not allow that.

IIRC, that was purposeful, and also a side-effect.

I don't have anything against open office, but i'm not going to change from libre office until open office is not only to the par with libre office, a lots better than libre office.

Fair enough. I prefer OpenOffice over LibreOffice. To each their own.

But seriously, your description of libre office people running at first sign of trouble is complete bullshit. You are a douche, there's no way around that fact.

Well, it wasn't really a "first sign of trouble". It was a lack of trust in Oracle, lack of any communications from Oracle, etc - there were numerous and valid reasons for it. That said, the LibreOffice community also has its own issues in that respect. I participated in the early community building and dropped out when it was clear what kind of community was being formed - and it wasn't what was being advertised. May be that's changed; I don't know - but I'm still not really interested in LibreOffice seeing the product they've put out, I personally find it inferior to OpenOffice.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[WillAffleckUW]

Palpatine uses vim.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[WillAffleckUW]

It's open source. It's up to you what you give back. And they've gone further than most in resubmission.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[WillAffleckUW]

All your copyright is belong to TPP.

Which sells out all your rights to your corporate masters, serf.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[ITRambo]

Calling people names online is so childish. Please stop that shit.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, LibreOffice just hit version 5.0, while OpenOffice is at 4.1.1. Obviously, LibreOffice is exactly 0.8.9 amount better.

For the benefit of those of us who use Imperial units:

0.8.9 amounts = 4.2x10^-3 Libraries of Congress.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[msobkow]

You get to use Apache 2 software with GPL/LGPL code, but you do not get to rewrite the license that Apache 2 code was released under. The fact that someone gives you permission to use something doesn't mean you get to relicense it however you want.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

If Oracle had managed the project at all

If. A very big if. Just like "if my mother had balls she wouldn't be my mother".

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[The Mysterious Dr. X]

Too many O's. Not enough marshmallows. 6/10.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough. I prefer OpenOffice over LibreOffice. To each their own.

Here's the deal though. This is not actually a concern. Hard drives are big these days. You can use both. It is not a cost issue. Both are free.

From an end-user standpoint, few people care about licensing. They care about functional, stable, secure, and free. Both open and libre are cross-platform, and functional, stable, secure, and free - and have portable versions as well. You don't even have to install them. Just grab a portable version of each. Your registry doesn't get touched. All required files exist in a folder tree on your hard drive. Their formats cooperate. Their formats cooperate across operating systems.

Anybody that still buys Microsoft Office is a fool. Buying an Office 365 subscription is like going to a gypsy flea market, alone, unarmed, in an India shanty town, if that were possible, wearing an Armani suit. You are about to get marketed to, and likely ripped off harder than you knew possible.

http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable
http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable

The only benefit of doing a full install in Windows is the installer will auto-associate file-types. This affects your fragile-ass registry database. You can manually associate the file-types as you use them if you need to. There is no need for full installs. You can just extract the software to a folder using the self-extracting archive it comes in (the .exe) and create a shortcut on your desktop to the binary. You can also add shortcuts to your SendTo and just shoot files to the binary via context menu.

There should be no versus here. Pick which one you like or both. In Linux/BSD you will not have to worry about your precious little registry getting hosed because there isn't one. Windows is weak, but a lot of good apps from Linux have portable versions and even full installers in Windows now. eg. VLC, open/libre office, etc.

Everything runs better in Linux. Cyberspace is practically all Linux now. Windows is death knell. Microsoft Office can die of proprietary format cancer too.

You can grab portable versions from their actual websites as well. That portableapps.com site is very good if you never used it before. You can use their suite app if you want to but you don't have to. I just linked their self extracting portables for the additional heads up. Surely a lot of you already knew, some didn't.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[dbIII]

It was club level politics with people who wanted to be in charge but didn't have the time to run the project in one camp and others that wanted to get stuff done in another. With open source if you take your ball and go home the game still continues.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[danbob999]

Also, unless you distribute your macro, your question doesn't apply.
You are always free to take GPL code, modify it, and run it yourself without giving the modifications to anyone. You can even make money with that modified code.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinga tu madre, pinche maricon!

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[gl4ss]

Oh, then that solves that problem. Thanks. Still interesting to think about for applications which are GPL that offers similar functionality.

oh.. this one thing called gcc...

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

LibreOffice uses the GPL/LGPL code because they had no choice - it was the only option available to them since they were forking the source code.

Why couldn't they keep it as Apache license?

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Your macro isn't GPL if you don't want it to.

Don't want it to what?

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

libgcc has an exemption for this specific reason.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

If you write a macro for MS Office, does it have to be closed source?

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[JImbob0i0]

I wrote about this on reddit only recently ... Link to the discussion there

Copied in full to here:

So back when Sun maintained OpenOffice.org and sold StarOffice they had a Contributor License Agreement that required handing over ownership of patches to them so they could sell the closed source supported suite and license out to IBM for Symphony.

To get around this bureaucracy and to not sign over ownership for patches most distributions used go-oo.org (aka ooo-build) that was the source code of OpenOffice.org with a bunch of patches on top to help compatibility with MS Office and some other things that Sun could or did not want in the upstream oo.org code.

When Oracle bought Sun they left oo.org languishing with no maintenance for months. This was naturally unacceptable to the various linux distros and they didn't want to be beholden to Oracle's whims (for good reason given the state of the various projects that used to be with Sun). Due to this they got together and formed The Document Foundation and took the go-oo.org code (which was basically what this group used and collaborated on anyway) and forked it to LibreOffice.

Fast forward some more time and Oracle decide they don't want anything to do with OpenOffice.org after all and essentially (with IBM's help ... presumably so there would be a sort of maintained base for Symphony) dumped it on the Apache Software Foundation. As per their requirements it went through an incubation process and all the code was relicensed to the Apache Public License. This was months after LibreOffice had been created and worked on and most consider it a pretty petty move rather than giving the brand to TDF to work with.

From that point on it's pretty much been IBM driving Apache OpenOffice (as they renamed oo.org to) although they appear to have stopped caring about it mid to end last year. The amount of development work on AOO is minimal compared to LO and the number of active committers is in the teens (at best) for AOO compared to the hundreds for LO.

Due to the way the licensing works out LO can merge in any fixes (there were some in the early days, not many now as can be seen in the CVE issue I mentioned) but AOO cannot merge in work from LO.

The last release of AOO was August 2014 and if you go look at the changelogs from 3.4 (the first AOO release as opposed to oo.org IIRC... mostly rebranding) up to the 4.1.1 then you'll see there's been minimal work - mostly translations. Anything developed/fixed in AOO is either merged into LO or improved/obsoleted by other work. Compare these to the release notes for each LO release from the forking point of 3.3 and it really is quite significant - the heavy work on clean up and better build systems for LO lower the barrier to entry for LO contribution by the common person too.

The proposed AOO release of 4.1.2 is going forwards at the moment - driven mostly by only a few people Apache OpenOffice Dev mail archives.

To give an idea how bad this has got the no-interaction code execution as privileges of user bug by a special HWP file was announced publicly last April. It was fixed in LibreOffice the same month and users would have had the update notification and been protected. Anyone using Apache OpenOffice is still vulnerable and although there was a disclosure on the security part of the AOO site at the time, the workaround was to 'delete .dll/.so' ... not a release with a fix and unless anyone actively went to check up on this they would not have known the issue.

To add to this (if it's not enough already) AOO can still only read and not write docx/xlsx/pptx (OOXML) files produced by MS Office whereas LibreOffice can

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[JImbob0i0]

Local user arbitrary code execution when opening a specially crafted document (via the HWP filter, document can have any extension to disguise it a bit).

CVE disclosed in April 2015 with LibreOffice having a fix out the same month (within a week tops of disclosure) ...

Apache OpenOffice is still exploitable at the present time with 4.1.2 due to fix the bug (by removing the HWP filter entirely as opposed to fixing the filter) ... but they've been struggling to get this built and released for months at this point.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[lsatenstein]

That's why we have Windows 10. It's got twice as many improvements as Windows 9 would've had!

When you browse the contents (metadata) of windows 8.1, you will see 9 pasted everywhere. Windows 9 became 8.1 to try to save the corp from a second vista fiasco.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[TemporalBeing]

It's open source. It's up to you what you give back. And they've gone further than most in resubmission.

Never said there were no open source.

However, what is given back from one project (e.g TDF/LO) to another (e.g AOO) is a matter of licensing. Apache license (AOO) is less restrictive than the GPL/LGPL (TDF/LO); so contributions can only go one way. TDF/LO didn't have a choice as to their license since they could only fork the open source portion of the codebase.

TDF/LO cannot as a matter of license contribute code back to AOO.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[TemporalBeing]

LibreOffice uses the GPL/LGPL code because they had no choice - it was the only option available to them since they were forking the source code.

Why couldn't they keep it as Apache license?

The code was under the Apache License when TDF/LO forked the project. It was a mixed license code-base with GPL/LGPL, MPL, and a commercial license. Sun used the license this way to keep being able to produce proprietary commercial versions, and license that right to other organizations while at the same time accepting changes from the community. Sun also required all contributors to sign a Copyright Licence Agreement/Attribution so that Sun could license it however they wanted.

TDF/LO could only for the open source version of the project; they had no right to the commercial licensed works, so they had to remove that.

Since Oracle owned all the copyrights (per CLA) to OO after buying Sun, they could blanket relicense it as they chose, which made it easy to give the code to Apache under the Apache License.

TDF/LO will never be in that situation, instead they'll be in the same situation as the Linux Kernel - unable to change licenses without getting massive agreements from thousands of people or having to rewrite a lot of code to remove people's contributions.

CLA's cut two ways, and if a project is requiring it then it's a matter of how much trust you have in the project as to whether you sign one or not. Qt/KDE I'd have no problem doing so; Oracle...that's asking a bit much.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[vandamme]

And that's why I run Linux Mint 17.2. Do the math.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[TemporalBeing]

So writing a macro in LibreOffice will cause it to be GPL while writing it in OpenOffice don't?

GPL (and copyright law) has a concept of derivative works. Input and output of a program is not typically considered a derivative work - like your documents in LibreOffice.

While IANAL, Macros would be similar to your normal documents as such they would not be considered a derivative work; not really any different than C source running through GCC.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[TemporalBeing]

You get to use Apache 2 software with GPL/LGPL code, but you do not get to rewrite the license that Apache 2 code was released under. The fact that someone gives you permission to use something doesn't mean you get to relicense it however you want.

IIRC, Apache License, like the MIT and BSD licenses, allows you to relicense it so long as certain provisions are met (namely attributions).

Many in the TDF/LO community don't like that a company can take AOO and make a commercial product, even forking it in the process.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[Meski]

No, forget about Microsoft Office instead.

Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[danbob999]

be GPLed.

Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[arglebargle_xiv]

Palpatine uses TECO. vim is for wookies.

Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I tried using Open Office 6 or 7 years ago it was a massive pile of shit. Is LibreOffice a significant improvement? Does the word processor start up as fast as M$ Word?

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

That's quite a long time, and by the way, open office was not massive pile of shit. It worked great for me 7 years ago. I've been using libre office instead of open office ever since libre office was released.

As for starting up, libre office writer seems to start about as fast as word 2010, which is a massive pile of shit. And you can use that quick start thing, that loads on windows start.

Re:Question for user community

[l_bratch]

LibreOffice Writer seems to start in around 0.35 seconds on this PC*. I'm not certain about that, because it's really hard to measure something that fast.

*i7-4790, 8 GB RAM, SSD, Gentoo Linux

I remember starting OpenOffice 6 or 7 years ago, and it was indeed painfully slow at starting back then.

Usability seems fine to me, but I'm not a power office suite user.

Re:Question for user community

[jones_supa]

As for starting up, libre office writer seems to start about as fast as word 2010, which is a massive pile of shit.

Massive pile of shit? Word 2010 usually starts in 2 seconds.

Re:Question for user community

[CritterNYC]

Grab LibreOffice and check it out. If startup time is a key point for you, install and enable the QuickStart feature. It'll pre-load part of LibreOffice as Windows starts up and then let it sit idle in the background, just like Microsoft Office does to improve startup time.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

But is it libre?

Re:Question for user community

[tehcyder]

Last time I tried using Open Office 6 or 7 years ago it was a massive pile of shit. Is LibreOffice a significant improvement? Does the word processor start up as fast as M$ Word?

At work, "M$ Word" takes approximately half a working day to start up, so you're setting a pretty low bar.

Re:Question for user community

[RazorSharp]

I understand why you're hesitant to try it out and see for yourself, being such a costly program and all.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

Start up time is your only criteria for a program being or not a massive pile of shit? I said libre office writer starts in about the same time, so that certainly was not what i was talking about.

I'm talking about the ribbon, the thing that your documents are always in one window, unless you open another instance yourself and then from the open menu open the file you need. Not to mention all the little fucking things like clicking on an edge of a cell in excel and it jumps to the end or beginning of the column etc etc etc. copy/paste not working, but constantly whining about not being able to use the clipboard and so on and so on.

Re:Question for user community

[MagickalMyst]

"Massive pile of shit? Word 2010 usually starts in 2 seconds."

But it is still a massive pile of shit.

Re:Question for user community

[MagickalMyst]

I switched from OO to Libre because OO could be painfully slow.

Re:Question for user community

[TemporalBeing]

Grab LibreOffice and check it out. If startup time is a key point for you, install and enable the QuickStart feature. It'll pre-load part of LibreOffice as Windows starts up and then let it sit idle in the background, just like Microsoft Office does to improve startup time.

FYI - OpenOffice has long had that feature, even back in version 3.0.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

Only to dumbass communist faggots that live in their mommy's basement like you.

Re:Question for user community

[DogDude]

I understand why you're hesitant to try it out and see for yourself, being such a costly program and all.

Oh, you silly kids! What the OSS fanatics fail to understand is that once a person leaves graduate school to get a "real job" in the "real world" that time suddenly becomes much more important to money for many, many people. Saving a few hundred bucks on software is pointless (to me) if I have to spend more than an hour dicking with it, for example. For other people, a few hundred bucks (actually Office 365 is only $100/year) might be worth two hours of their time to dick with. Anything more than that, and it's not worth my time.

Re:Question for user community

[Snufu]

You may reach a level of professional success and responsibility where you measure cost not in dollars but in total time required to get from start to finish.

Money is fungible, time is precious. This is why many "free" alternatives really aren't. I support the principals of FOSS and eagerly adopt FOSS tools wherever they pass an honest cost/benefit analysis. I think the FOSS community would have more success if they stopped thinking "free" is their main advantage. Cost is measured in time/hassle/fuss.

Re:Question for user community

[CritterNYC]

I know. It's been in OO since before LO existed. Just wasn't sure if the poster was aware of it.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the FOSS community would have more success if they stopped thinking "free" is their main advantage.

The context indicates that you mean "free as in beer". "Free as in freedom" is the main advantage of FOSS. Actually, it's the only defining characteristic.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, your point is really fucking clear when you start calling people OSS fanatics. Oh how i could have been so wrong, it's all about the money. Everyone makes so much money on their free time. If only i had been using MS office the whole time, i would've made millions in my free time. Without the name calling i would have never seen the light.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't a small enough unit of measure to gauge how little of a fuck I give about whether it's Libre or not. All I want to do is type passive aggressive notes to my co-workers.

Re:Question for user community

[AthanasiusKircher]

Oh, you silly kids! What the OSS fanatics fail to understand is that once a person leaves graduate school to get a "real job" in the "real world" that time suddenly becomes much more important to money for many, many people. Saving a few hundred bucks on software is pointless (to me) if I have to spend more than an hour dicking with it, for example.

I understand exactly what you're talking about, and I agree that cost-benefit analyses have to be made.

But there is also a problem in corporate culture where cost-benefit analyses are focused too much on the immediate future. Paying $100/year to license software may seem worth it if you're just using that software for a year and retraining may require a few hours.

But what about after 3 years? Or 5 years? Or 10 years? And what about other fringe benefits of OSS, like your ability to customize the code yourself if you want a new feature? If you're a big business and you want to complain that you lack feature X in LibreOffice, you could either pay Microsoft thousands of dollars annually (perhaps tens of thousands, in a big company), or you could use that money to pay a developer to add feature X to LibreOffice and customize it to do exactly what you want (rather than what Microsoft gives you).

And then there's end-of-life concerns, too. Do you want to pay to retrain all your employees when Microsoft decides whatever its next random mutation of UI happens? Or do you pay Microsoft extra to continue security patches after your version is no longer supported? Or do you just use that money to pay people who can patch your free OSS suite, which can be maintained by anyone since the source is available?

These are all cost-benefit analyses. But often they aren't actually decided on that basis by large corporations -- they are decided because "Microsoft Office is the standard" and people in power to make decisions don't want to have to deal with the switch or don't believe "free" could possibly be as good, or they don't consider alternatives to get the features they want in OSS that might be cheaper than paying licensing fees for many years.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

...once a person leaves graduate school to get a "real job" in the "real world"...time suddenly becomes much more important to money for many, many people. Saving a few hundred bucks on software is pointless (to me) if I have to spend more than an hour dicking with it, for example. For other people, a few hundred bucks (actually Office 365 is only $100/year) might be worth two hours of their time to dick with. Anything more than that, and it's not worth my time

Well, whatever works best for you, works best for you, of course. But my mileage has varied.

Whenever I've started a job someplace that uses a lot of proprietary, licensed software, it always takes quite a while for me to get a license. I invariably have to explicitly ask my manager or the IT department to get me a license, even though there's no possible way I would have been able do my job without it. I can only ask for the license after I find out I need a particular product, of course, and in extreme cases it may take a few days just to find that out, because for some reason people try to conceal the very need for a license like it's Voldemort's name or something. Whoever I ask first is never authorized to just buy these things and hand them out, and so they have to run the request past three more layers of management and the accounting department. Half the time the answer comes back "no", in which case you, the new guy, have to go before some tribunal of trolls to argue your case. Or they might tell you to "share" the license with some other guy, maybe by (illegally) sharing a login, maybe by passing a physical device back and forth. Multiply all this wasted time by the number of licensed products in use, and the amount of time sucked starts to get significant.

Compare this to: "Oh, we use Apache Gimmudgy. Just download it from their site."

Then there's the whole multiplatform issue. Maybe a third of the team uses Linux, a third uses Windows, and a third use Macs. Proprietary packages aren't really great about working across platforms. Neither is FOSS, of course, but it is usually a little better about it--or at least they're more likely to use an open format for their save files.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

Only to dumbass communist faggots

Or people who hate wasting a sheet of paper at the end of every document because they just can't remove that final page break if it comes after a table. Either/or.

Re: Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to buy an MS office license (real, not that 365 crap), so I went online. I could only get something shipped, which is beyond stupid, and I wanted the license /now/ so I went to a store and bought a copy.

I got the box home and it contained a license key, which I had to use to download the installer, then run the installer, then use the key again to activate the license.

Time to license and install MS Office? About 90 minutes.

Or I could have just downloaded OOo or LO and been up and running in about 4 minutes.

(I needed the license for an employee who needed "real" Office because they "send documents to customers". Eyeroll. I've used OOo/LO for 10 years and never had a problem, but I tend to write and receive sane documents and not "works of art" with way too much formatting and all that obnoxious stuff word processors will let you add for no good reason.)

Re:Question for user community

[ausekilis]

He's on AOL dial-up, you insensitive clod.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Linux you insensitive clod!

Re:Question for user community

[TemporalBeing]

I know. It's been in OO since before LO existed. Just wasn't sure if the poster was aware of it.

I just wanted a fair comparison in the case of OO vs LO. That said, I believe one of them was working towards not needing it at all; but it's been a while since I saw that discussion, so it was probably LO that was doing that.

Re:Question for user community

[RazorSharp]

I find it hard to believe that you have such a busy schedule that you can't take five minutes to download and fiddle around with a piece of free software yet you have plenty of time to post regularly on slashdot.

Furthermore, if it takes you more than an hour to figure out how to complete basic tasks in a word processor that uses UI metaphors that have been around since the eighties then I suspect your lack of free time comes not from your hyper productivity but from your inefficiency.

Sorry to be a bit snide, but you did just refer to me as a kid and a fanatic, on top of insinuating that I lead an unproductive lifestyle, so I guess it's par for the course.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

At work, "M$ Word" takes approximately half a working day to start up, so you're setting a pretty low bar.

Maybe its time to ditch that 386.

Re:Question for user community

[exomondo]

Everyone makes so much money on their free time.

I have a lot better things to do with my free time than futz around with office suites. I've got Google Docs that I can get to from pretty much any device and I've got MS Office on my laptop and iPhone. That seems fine for me though my use cases are admittedly pretty basic.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft supports Office for like a decade. Security problems are not an issue. By the time Microsoft stops supporting any Office version, the only people who would care about support are Enterprises and Governments who are notoriously slow to upgrade software. Home users and small businesses usually upgrade well before then. Businesses will pay for support if they feel the cost to retrain is high enough. It's always been that way.

Also, the Ribbon wasn't a Random UI mutation. It was a good one. It groups commands, gets rid of those awful bloated menus, and makes things more discoverable. With the Tell Me... feature in Office 2016, even better. The Toolbars in LibreOffice don't take any less space than the Ribbon in Office. Don't knock it cause you can't move on with the times. Software changes, UIs change. Change is not bad just because you can't be bothered to accustom yourself to that change.

Part of the reason I've avoided LibreOffice is because it's being run by a foundation. A foundation that is just not as.... focused as a company like Microsoft or even Corel (WordPerfect Office).

Really, they're adding features like BeanShell Scripting and Logo into their Office Suite. When was the last time they actually improved the core scripting features in the native scripting language to any decent degree? For Excel Power Users who are thinking about moving over, that's a legitimate concern. They're wasting developer resources on stuff that really does not matter, and neglecting things that do. (They're the ones telling you they can help you "Excel at Excel," not me).

They still haven't integrated any consumer cloud services at the API Level, which is fairly easy to do if they wanted to do it (DropBox, Drive, OneDrive).

They are confusing users by using a foreign icon set and making apps that increasingly look out of place on anything that isn't Linux (depending on the Distro and Desktop Environment, and how much effort the Distro puts into making it look decent there - OpenSUSE probably does the best job). You're complaining about a Ribbon that organizes commands in a much better way while using icons that are largely the same as those that have been in Windows since the 3.x days, yet LibreOffice pops up with foreign icons and different menu organization... I don't understand how going from Office 2003 to LibreOffice 5.0 isn't any less jarring as going from Office 2003 to Office 2007 was...

And that was in 2006/7. By now, most Office users are over that, and Office's UI hasn't changed in any fundamental ways since then in terms of UI Navigation and Organization.

That means Microsoft had one big change in the UI of these office suites, given very little credence to your argument about their "next random mutation of UI." Really, that just sounds asinine.

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with this. Everytime doing something takes apparent effort the cost of Microsoft Office becomes less of an issue. With LO freezing on me all the time, I just couldn't see a reason to bother dealing with it. Office was basically salvation at that point, even if it cost money.

At least then, I could actually get stuff done.

Re: Question for user community

[UnsignedInt32]

I guess every situation is different, but how much of that can he get away by just sending a PDF copy to his customers?
I actually try to do that as much as I can, even for internal use. Worst nightmare is that every person who receive it gives me back an amended copy, ending up babysitting 5 versions of same document. (I'd rather get comments out of band and make an adjustment myself.)

Re:Question for user community

[Anonymous Coward]

Saving a few hundred bucks on software is pointless (to me) if I have to spend more than an hour dicking with it, for example.

So being on Facebook is worth a few hundred bucks an hour to you.

Re:Question for user community

[KGIII]

If you take offense at being called an open source fanatic then you probably do not belong here. I am an open source fanatic. I also use closed source software. In fact, I am using a Windows OS right now on this laptop to type to you. I am still an open source fanatic. I love open source. I love the cost, I love the learning curve, I love being immersed in the culture. I love finding bugs and reporting them (or, better, seeing if I can figure out how it is fixed). When I do write software that I bother to release I release it with the do what the fuck you want license and let it be truly free. I like it because it is free... I am an open source fanatic and I am proud of it. I am not, on the other hand, an open source zealot. The difference is huge and, well, I suspect you are not aware of it for any one of a number of different reasons.

Re:Question for user community

[KGIII]

If you are a fanatic are you ashamed of it? There is a difference between a fanatic and a zealot. Fan is short for fanatic. How could you, if you are, be ashamed of being a fan of open source? It is not derogatory even if they person said it as a pejorative. I am an open source fanatic. Closed source is fine too but I prefer open source. I will use the appropriate tool for the job. If that tool is open then I am even happier. If it is closed then, frankly, I do not care. I am a fan and not a zealot, there is a difference. I have no time and no respect for zealots, they are blinded by emotion and unable to be rational. It is okay to be a fan. I dare say it is normal to be a fan of things we like.

Re:Question for user community

[KGIII]

Your beliefs are not what determines another person's values. It is absurd that you think you can decide what the benefits are for other people. Being stupid and egotistical is no way to go through life. How you can have an ego that large with an intelligence level that small is astonishing but, then again, lots of people think they are smart when they are really about as numb as a cunt full of Novocaine. In case it is not obvious, yes, you fall within that category so you can, at least, feel good about fitting in somewhere.

Re:Question for user community

[vandamme]

So it takes zero time to learn Microsoft Orifice?

Three cheers for liberty!

[LichtSpektren]

LibreOffice now supports amd64, which is a huge boon for people that work with very large documents. It purports to have better .docx compatibility, although I myself have found that MSWord is more likely to screw up the formatting in .docx documents than LibreOffice is. All-in-all, a good day for free software, and a bad day for Microsoft.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[westlake]

All-in-all, a good day for free software, and a bad day for Microsoft.

Not to rain on your parade.

But LibreOffice remains nothing more than the generic stand-alone office suite of the nineties --- and conspicuously absent is a credible, full-featured, open source alternative to Outlook.

Microsoft positions MS Office ---- very successfully ---- as simply one component of an integrated office system that scales to an enterprise of any size.

Office 365 for Healthcare

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. This libre office has no outlook component? That is the only thing I use that forces me on windows office 2010.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[LichtSpektren]

All-in-all, a good day for free software, and a bad day for Microsoft.

Not to rain on your parade.

But LibreOffice remains nothing more than the generic stand-alone office suite of the nineties --- and conspicuously absent is a credible, full-featured, open source alternative to Outlook.

Microsoft positions MS Office ---- very successfully ---- as simply one component of an integrated office system that scales to an enterprise of any size.

Office 365 for Healthcare

Good morning, and thank you for the advertisement. LibreOffice does not need its own email server because there's already free software that accomplishes that perfectly fine. As an office suite, LO is a perfectly suitable replacement for MS Office. If you think otherwise, then tell me about how all of these organizations are getting along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (N.B. the Chinese government is on this list, although they use WPS Office instead of LibreOffice. But none of them use MS Office!)

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunde

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[LichtSpektren]

Wait. This libre office has no outlook component? That is the only thing I use that forces me on windows office 2010.

An office suite does not need tight integration with a mail client. If you want a free replacement for Outlook, try Claws Mail or Thunderbird. (Migration will likely be difficult because Outlook has some of the worst exportation functions I have ever seen, but it will be worth it.)

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[corychristison]

While I have no doubt Outlook can be useful in a giant corporate environment, its IMAP implementation is a horribly slow pile of excrement.

I had a client consistently complain to me his email was always so slow, and he wanted to switch email providers. Specifically, things like loading hia mailbox in the morning would take up to 10 seconds just to sync the header info of less than 20 emails, let alone actually download the whole message. Simple things like moving emails into folders/subfolders was even slower. There were points where the application would freeze up and Windows would do its thing and notify you the application had haulted. Waiting it out it would usually sort itself out in 25+ seconds.

I looked into it and he was using Outlook 2010 and Google Apps over IMAP. I, at the time, was using Google Apps over IMAP in Mozilla Thunderbird with zero issues. Always speedy and never an issue, despite the fact I am not a fan of how Google handles IMAP.

I switched him to Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning Calendar Addon and the problem has been solved. It is now 2 years later and haven't heard a peep about his email.

And just for reference the office computers are all of the same built. AMD 6-core full size CPU (not APU), 8GB RAM, Win7 Pro.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird + Lightning Extension + Davmail replaces Outlook in Exchange Server environments.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[jkrise]

According to the summary, the Android version of LibreOffice is available. Does it mean I can now edit my docs, spreadsheets and ppts on my smartphone if I want to?

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Says someone who has likely never tried to implement these things in the real world.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[Dan East]

I switched him to Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning Calendar Addon and the problem has been solved. It is now 2 years later and haven't heard a peep about his email.

Email didn't happen to be your only method of communication with him was it?

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[ahodgson]

Google over IMAP is ridiculously slow, whenever I've tried it. But yeah Outlook also hobbles IMAP. They want you to buy Exchange, not use free email servers.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

It works great for me, my boss has no idea I'm not using outlook etc.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[hackertourist]

If your documents are large enough that you run into file size limits on 32-bit systems, you're using the wrong tool for the job. Word was painful with 50+ Mb in one document, I shudder to think what a Gb-sized document will do.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Thunderbird circa 199something, with OS/2 Warp. It was with the browser, as I recall. Think so. Been a while. It was a downgrade having to switch to outlook 2000 or whatever it was back then, but that browser died, and so did OS/2, and what was left then?

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[psyclone]

I use the same setup, but you cannot schedule conference rooms with Lightning, nor examine anyone's calendar. At least in OWA you can schedule conference rooms, so I still haven't used Outlook in 10 years!

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[almitydave]

Thunderbird + Lightning Extension + Davmail replaces Outlook in Exchange Server environments.

Thunderbird ships with the Lightning add-on enabled by default as of June.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[TemporalBeing]

All-in-all, a good day for free software, and a bad day for Microsoft.

Not to rain on your parade.

But LibreOffice remains nothing more than the generic stand-alone office suite of the nineties --- and conspicuously absent is a credible, full-featured, open source alternative to Outlook.

Microsoft positions MS Office ---- very successfully ---- as simply one component of an integrated office system that scales to an enterprise of any size.

Office 365 for Healthcare

Not to rain on your parade, but LibreOffice/OpenOffice can do everything that MS Office does and more.

For instance, with scripting - MS Office is limited to VBScript; sure you can extend with custom libraries but that's really about it. LibreOffice/OpenOffice support many scripting languages (Python, JavaScript, BasicScript - derived from VBScript - just to name a few) in addition to adding custom libraries that any of those languages can load.

Document support? LibreOffice/OpenOffice supports Microsoft's formats typically better than Microsoft does, especially with respect to compatibility with older versions of MS Office. Not to mention the multitude of productivity suites that use the ODF format (AOO, LO, Calligra, GNOME Office products (AbiWord, et al, Google Docs, etc).

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[corychristison]

I switched him to Mozilla Thunderbird with the Lightning Calendar Addon and the problem has been solved. It is now 2 years later and haven't heard a peep about his email.

Email didn't happen to be your only method of communication with him was it?

I get what you are getting at, and it's funny, but no.

I had physical access to the office to set it up properly. He even brought in his home laptop so I could configure it the same way for him.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[corychristison]

Just to clarify, and while I don't think it actually makes a difference, he is using a paid subscription of Google Apps. Not the free Gmail service.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Outlook supports EAS, which is fast. Google removed access to EAS to upsell Google Apps for Business.

IMAP is crappy in any email client unless that client was designed around the mail service it accesses, like many Gmail clients are designed specifically for Gmail. Gmail is just bad in IMAP clients because of how the mail service works at that level.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[antdude]

I noticed EarthLink's new IMAP's synchronization is/are slow too compared to POP3 in my SeaMonkey v2.33.1's e-mail clients. Maybe I am just spoiled?

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

LibreOffice does not need its own email server because there's already free software that accomplishes that perfectly fine.

Sorry it appears you don't understand this discussion. Outlook is not an email server. Please try and understand this topic before contributing.

Having an email client such as Outlook integrated with the office suite is very beneficial and there is no viable replacement for Exchange email server in terms of push email support.

As an office suite, LO is a perfectly suitable replacement for MS Office. If you think otherwise, then tell me about how all of these organizations are getting along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That is a list of Linux adopters, not LibreOffice adopters. MS Office365 can be used on Linux. Also, unlike MS Office, LibreOffice also is not available as a cloud offering and is not available for Android or iOS.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

you are incompetant [sic]
I run outlook synced to my gmail and it is fine

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[dbIII]

But LibreOffice remains nothing more than the generic stand-alone office suite of the nineties

We're doing the same shit with these things that we were doing in the 1990s. "MS Word" is still no match for a dedicated desktop publishing program of the 1990s either, despite creeping featurism that's not what it's for. A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet and "MS Excel" is still just as shitty at graphing as "MS Works" was, but it gets the job done for non-technical stuff, and "scalc" is in the same situation. "MS Access" was never more than a toy database, "MS Project" really has the same feature set it had in 1992 when I first saw it - and "MS Outlook" has gone BACKWARDS since 2005. Ask a typical "MS Outlook" user to search for an old email to see how crippled the new interface is.

conspicuously absent is a credible, full-featured, open source alternative to Outlook

There's good reasons for that - it's a slow piece of shit that deliberately breaks standards and has an interface that confuses users. How slow? I've spent the last three days migrating a former employee's email to IMAP folders so the people who have taken up his role can read it. "Thunderbird" syncs to all the stuff it's exported in a few minutes, as would dozens of other email clients. The only place where "MS Outlook" is the best option is on a misconfigured "MS Exchange" server. Fix that server and the users can run any mail client they like, and in the age of email on phones a broken "MS Exchange" server that isn't set up to do it will get you fired. As you wrote above it's not the 1990s - we don't even need "MS Outlook" for the calendar thing in the age of iPhones etc, so that just leaves us with a slow as shit email client that confuses the fuck out of users. With the interface change a migration to "Thunderbird", or anything else, was a lot less painful for them than the new interface.
If you haven't seen a better email client than "MS Outlook" then you haven't even tried to look. There are dozens.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't installing Thunderbird on someone elses computer a contravention of the Geneva conventions?

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[KGIII]

I don't think you managed to get one damned thing right in your speech. You're not helping... You seem to be young and new to the computer world. Sometimes it is better to read a while before chiming in. Outlook is not a server. Linux is not an office suite. Here is the real kicker... For some folks, Microsoft Office is the correct tool for the job - there are places, see Excel, where you can not use OO.org or LO and accomplish the same things. That is but one instance. For others OO.org or LO is just fine. When you grasp these basic concepts then you might have something to contribute if, and only if, you are experienced with all of them to be able to make a valuable contribution.

Don't worry, however. We were all new to computers and to open source software at one point. We all have to learn and we all had to take time to understand. If you stick with it then, perhaps, you will find you have an aptitude for computer science. I highly encourage you to talk about the things you do understand and to read the things that you do not understand. This site is a great resource, follow the many links people post and try new things. It would likely serve you better in, what I am assuming is your youth, to listen more than typing at this point. We appreciate your enthusiasm and we do not want to discourage you from participating but, really, it is best to stick with what you know. Even if that is just a little - you can share that. For the rest? Read and be aware of your limitations.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[KGIII]

Thunderbird has actually become good. I am reminded of the Outlook Express 6.0 which, honestly, was fantastic. Thunderbird is very near that pinnacle. Well, it slows down and dies after a while so you need to close it once a day or so - or at least I do across multiple operating systems and the most recent version of Thunderbird. I just remember to close it once a day if that computer is staying on all the time. Usually that is not the case so it does not affect me much. So, yeah, really - it is pretty damned good from my observations. I accept that it is not perfect but it seems silly to let perfect get in the way of good.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Searching your mail in Outlook is broken and has been since forever.

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[serviscope_minor]

While I have no doubt Outlook can be useful in a giant corporate environment

Having used Outlook in an corporate environment, I can confirm it is a *fantastic* piece of software. Firstly it has excellent integration with Lync. Lync for those not in the know is Microsoft's home-brew VOIP/IM system and is probably the primary reason they purchased skype. Outlook is also still completely unable to do quoting in emails in any sort of sane manner, which means that when people quote incorrectly (and they always do eventually), something important might end up buried in what looks like quoted text. This gives excellent plausible deniability for when you want to ignore something irritating, but want to have your butt covered. This is important in as large corporation as plausible reasons for work avoidance is de-rigeur.

It also seems to integrate well with lots of "products", so the one I used had this funky system where you could arrange phone meetings and it automatically set up some kind of audio meeting room where you could either Lync in or dial a number. Natrually, the voice quality on the POTS line was somehow on a par with the reliability of Lync's use of audio equipment[1]. This is of course another important thing: once people have automated meeting systems they looooooove to arrange meetings constantly. Fortunately the general unrelaibility of the components could be used as an excuse to bail out of any given meeting because there was usually at least one person having genuine problems. Trust, me, if you've never worked for a large company, being able to avoid phone meetings for plausible reasons is important if you ever want to actually get work done.

There's also the nice thing where ^F doesn't work for searches within chat messages, and the menu option is missing. Most people don't realise you can hit ^F on an email, then keep the search window open when you switch to chats thereby allowing search within chats. Now you know this, keep the secret carefully guarded because knowing it means you can't put off work by passively aggressively sending email requesting information you already know but "can't find" because it's in chat and no one knows how to search that.

Oh and then there's the Webmail variant. I liked that a lot. It allowed me to change the theme to a cat related one, which was nice because who doesn't like cats? On the actual plus side it is less lavishly wasteful of screen space than gmail and they haven't (or hadn't) yet gone for the oh-so-fashionable UI that's SO flat that some widgets have nothing incating their presence at all. It also uses even more different quoting mechanisms to the desktop client thereby reinforcing the important plus points listed above.

[1] This reminds me. Lync serves another fantistic purpose which is to make PulseAudio look good. After spending 3 months on Windows, I was just blown away with the "just works" style of Pulse. It took months for that feeling to fade when I returned to Linux.

Re:Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even thorough the parent said "server" not "client" the point still stands, "Having an email client " is valuable, but "integrated" has very low marginal value, and comes with enough costs and restrictions that it may be a negative "value add" depending on organisational needs.

Again the Parent's link is not the best but perhaps this is better,
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#Users_and_deployments"
I do not know of anyone who uses "Office365" on windows or on Linux Given the amount of news that MS would generate if it could show even the most minimal usage share on Linux I see no reason to think that any large Linux using organisation does so.

As for cloud android,
https://libreoffice-from-collabora.com/icewarp-and-collabora-are-working-on-libreoffice-online-document-editing-an-open-source-alternative-to-google-apps-office-365/
(so not yet but soon)
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/android-viewer/
(already available)
though nothing for IOS at the moment...

Re: Three cheers for liberty!

[Anonymous Coward]

Has the Thunderbird been optimized lately? I used it at home until I subscribed to LKML and after few months of heavy traffic the email client just became unusable. If opening a mailbox with few dozens of thousands of email takes half an hour of CPU time, there is something wrong with the application. At work the Outlook handled my inbox with few hundred thousands of emails without any problem.

Apache Openoffice is "dormant"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having no release manager and no one contributing code for 9 months seems like more of a "Dead but hasn't stopped twitching" sort of state.

Re:Apache Openoffice is "dormant"?

[TemporalBeing]

Having no release manager and no one contributing code for 9 months seems like more of a "Dead but hasn't stopped twitching" sort of state.

Dev and user lists are still very active. I would hardly consider AOO to be "dead" by any means.

Re:Apache Openoffice is "dormant"?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you consider mails on the dev list about buildbots down and how to find a release manager and a resigning project chair to be "very active" ...

Re:Apache Openoffice is "dormant"?

[Translation Error]

Don't worry! I'm sure SourceForge will revive it and add a shiny new installer!

Re:Apache Openoffice is "dormant"?

[jdk1]

Recently I put in a bug report for AOO and after a few months they had a fix incorporated into a new release. It seems like there is still life there.

On the other hand, LibreOffice didn't have that bug at all. I like the streamlined feel of AOO, but LO is so much further ahead.

Re:Apache Openoffice is "dormant"?

[JImbob0i0]

Recently I put in a bug report for AOO and after a few months they had a fix incorporated into a new release. It seems like there is still life there.

Link to bug ID? I question your value of 'recent' given there hasn't been an Apache OpenOffice release since August 2014 ...

UI changes?

[MMC Monster]

I like the old UI. It works well for those of us who are working on desktops and laptops.

Hope they have the old UI or something similar as the default when it realises you don't have a touch screen.

Re:UI changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what you're talking about, the desktop UI changes were incremental. The Android version, including the UI, is a separate product.

Oracle Happened

[BrendaEM]

Oracle bought out Sun. When they looked at their IP portfolio, they appeared to have lost their minds, and assert their ownership over several open-source projects. Yes, I believe it was some 26 programmers who left Open-Office and started LibreOffice. Then Oracle was falling out of brainshare, and didn't seem want to appear as an orgre, but it was already out of its cave by then.

What happened: Oracle's possessiveness made LibrieOffice into the superior office suite it is today!

Re:Oracle Happened

[BrendaEM]

It would be in poor taste to mention that, I hope the wall Oracle is pounding it's head against over this has a coat-hook somewhere on it, so I won't.

Re:Oracle Happened

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle's possessiveness made LibrieOffice into the superior office suite it is today!

Actually, it's LibreOffice taking all of Apache's OpenOffice improvements that make it what it is today.

Re:Oracle Happened

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be in poor taste to mention that, I hope the wall Oracle is pounding it's head against over this has a coat-hook somewhere on it, so I won't.

Knowing the type of person Larry Ellison is, I would be very much surprised if anyone at Oracle noticed. McNealy, drooling idiot that he is, only bought StarOffice in an attempt to use it to spite M$; it was never intended to be (nor was) a money maker for Sun. With no revenue coming in from it, Larry probably couldn't care less about it.

(Corporate goodwill? Once they have you by the family jewels (i.e. using Oracle products), Larry doesn't need your goodwill.)

Re:Oracle Happened

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I have seen less than 10% of the total improvements from the time they forked are from Apache and almost all of those are from the IBM code dump, so, no.

Re:Oracle Happened

[TemporalBeing]

Yes, I believe it was some 26 programmers who left Open-Office and started LibreOffice.

Not quite. There were only 3 people that actually founded LibreOffice; everyone else were more or less lemmings in the matter, and those three made decisions "for the community" when they wanted the decision to go a certain way even before the community was finished discussing the matter (f.e CLA's). That's why I dropped out of TDF/LO - it wasn't really a community.

Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

And I just got around to installing 4.4.5 over the weekend too. Woe is me.

And the Java thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you still need it, forget this silly charade and stick with Microsoft, for real compatibility with your workmates.

Re:And the Java thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

SHOTS FIRED

Re:And the Java thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heheh, you are funny

Re:And the Java thing?

[LichtSpektren]

If you still need it, forget this silly charade and stick with Microsoft, for real compatibility with your workmates.

My coworkers use MSWord. When they send me files, the formatting gets fucked up in MSWord, but look just fine in LibreOffice. How that is even possible, I don't even know, but you know what the moral of the story is? ... If you want real compatibility with your coworkers on MSOffice, use LibreOffice.

Re:And the Java thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially for older MSWord formats, compatibility between MSWord and MSWORD is pathetic. I used to save in old formats to get rid of macro viruses (when I still ran Windows), and when loading these older formats in the _SAME_ MSWord version that created them, all images would be rotated by 90 degrees.

Re:And the Java thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

When they send me files, the formatting gets fucked up in MSWord...

You have to remove Java from your system. Java is the cause of all your problems.

LibreOffice 5.0 Released

[bluefoxlucid]

The Document Foundation has announced LibreOffice 5.0, the tenth major release since the launch of the project, bringing new features including Windows 10, Android, and Ubuntu touch compatibility; superior interoperability features; an updated UI; and lots of under the hood improvements. For people still running OpenOffice, it is probably time to move over.

Appropriate use of commas and semicolons. This doesn't even cover the poor sentence structure (is The Document Foundation bringing new features, or is LibreOffice 5.0? Methinks submitter meant "which brings").

LibreOffice works great for my company

[sjbe]

Last time I tried using Open Office 6 or 7 years ago it was a massive pile of shit.

I standardized our company on OpenOffice (and later LibreOffice) about 5 years ago. It's worked great. There may be specific features in Microsoft Office that make it a non-starter for some people but I think most people will hardly notice the difference. If your company already is tied to Microsoft then switching might be painful but if you are starting from scratch I would go with LibreOffice in most cases over Microsoft Office.

Is LibreOffice a significant improvement?

OpenOffice in my experience has been progressing more slowly than LibreOffice for the last few years. I switched our company to LibreOffice as a result.

Does the word processor start up as fast as M$ Word?

Kind of a meaningless question. Both can be loaded on system startup and thus will "start up" in just a few seconds as a result. If that is your biggest concern however I think you really didn't take a very hard look at OpenOffice "6 or 7 years ago".

Re:LibreOffice works great for my company

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice moving more slowly could also be an advantage, if they fix bugs and adopt to newer versions of operation systems and package managers/installers. For me Office applications have long been 'done'. There is nothing new to be invented, the only thing that happens is UI overhauls that confuse many users.

apache foundation?

[SkunkPussy]

Why did apache foundation agree to take on responsibility for openoffice? It was kind of a poisoned chalice.

Re:apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because OpenOffice devs agreed to relicense under Apache license, which Apache Foundation kind of likes.

LibreOffice is poisoned by GPL so it's a big no-no in corporate environments.

Re:apache foundation?

[mwvdlee]

Why would the GPL license be a problem for corporate environments?
Unless you change the code and distribute the changed version outside your organisation, the license really doesn't matter much.

Re:apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is libre office being GPL have make it a big no-no in corporate environments? Do corporations usually modify word processing programs themselves? Like, how many corporations have their own version of MS office? How many have their own version of open office? None i would suspect. And you can always make plugins to better libre office, so what are you on about?

Re:apache foundation?

[ssam]

Companies won't use any software that they can't make closed source derivatives of. That why no company uses MS Office.

Re:apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of corporations have a no-GPL-in-the-door policy. Yeah I know, but still a fact.

Re:apache foundation?

[FranTaylor]

A lot of corporations have a no-GPL-in-the-door policy. Yeah I know, but still a fact.

they confiscate your android phone at the door?

Re: apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

This may get modded as funny/FUD or whatever, but this is a real thing. So many companies have no idea what OSS licenses mean, and Microsoft scared the shit out of everyone when they basically stated that bringing OSS into your organization meant that you had to give away everything: your own code, documents, Rolodexes, and any extra copy paper you had laying around.

I recently had to sign a contract with a vendor whose web services APIs we use to use their online services. That contract included an OSS clause that said something to the effect that /we/ wouldn't do anything to cause /them/ to be compelled to release the source code to any of /their/ products.

Is there a way we could possibly use their APIs in such a way? No, but they are all scared shitless over the open source bogeyman.

I signed the contract, but with a written objection to that clause, asking for clarification for that nonsense. I have not received such an explanation.

Re:apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, then shoot you.

Re:apache foundation?

[Desiree Hindenburg]

A lot of corporations have a no-GPL-in-the-door policy. Yeah I know, but still a fact.

they confiscate your android phone at the door?

Those with Android phones have to climb in through the window. LOL

Re:apache foundation?

[FranTaylor]

A lot of corporations have a no-GPL-in-the-door policy. Yeah I know, but still a fact.

they confiscate your android phone at the door?

Those with Android phones have to climb in through the window. LOL

Most data centers don't have windows, many of them don't have Windows.

Re:apache foundation?

[kthreadd]

They used to run Linux but I heard everyone switched their 10 000 server infrastructure to OpenBSD because of systemd.

Re:apache foundation?

[kimvette]

They can make it "closed source" in the sense that they do not redistribute any changes they make for use within their environment, providing they do not deliver the compiled product to external parties. The GPL only kicks in when you want to redistribute derivatives of the project - not when you want to make changes for external use.

So, you're wrong.

Re:apache foundation?

[kimvette]

not when you want to make changes for external use

s/external/internal/

sorry about that.

Re:apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do corporations usually modify word processing programs themselves?

Isn't that the big sell of free software? If you focus on "free of charge" then its just a race to the bottom, companies rarely choose something on the basis of it being cheap. They also rarely like to rely on "community support" so the costs have to include a support contract and ultimately the price differences don't end up being that significant so why not just use the defacto standard MS Office?

Re:apache foundation?

[exomondo]

Why would the GPL license be a problem for corporate environments? Unless you change the code and distribute the changed version outside your organisation, the license really doesn't matter much.

Can LibreOffice support proprietary add-ins? I'm not sure whether the GPL allows this.

Re:apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Practically all LibreOffice code today is MPL licensed + APL2 for code from AOO. There is no GPL/ LGPL code with exception of some external libraries that are LGPL, but even these have been replaced or complemented by a more "libreal" alternative.

Re:apache foundation?

[exomondo]

Well that's good then.

Re:apache foundation?

[Antique Geekmeister]

I can attest to this. It's usually a matter of confusion by the managers or corporate attorneys. In other cases it's pure greed: they wish to proprietize the basic product of others and sell their added features, their "secret sauce", at a premium. This was the core of many, many failed dotcoms, and I've seen it at the core of development teams who provided no benefit to the company in the long run. But they did manage to defend bureaucratic turf and departmental resources from review by essentially hiding the genuine sources of their code.

Re:apache foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you don't distribute them outside the organization, GPL shouldn't care -- GPL is all about distribution.

Re:apache foundation?

[exomondo]

As long as you don't distribute them outside the organization, GPL shouldn't care -- GPL is all about distribution.

A lot of the organizations that make addins do generally want to distribute them to companies to use them.

Re:apache foundation?

[vandamme]

Because "you get what you pay for", and so no cost = worthless. Same reason they don't consider Linux.

Re:apache foundation?

[mwvdlee]

If Linux can support proprietary drivers for graphics cards, any GPL software can support proprietary add-ins.
As long as these add-ins don't require the recompilation of the host's sourcecode with proprietary code, in which case it isn't really how most people would define an "add-in".

Re:apache foundation?

[exomondo]

If Linux can support proprietary drivers for graphics cards, any GPL software can support proprietary add-ins.

No. The Linux kernel is a special case and has a preamble to the GPL in its COPYING file to explicitly allow this:

NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".

As long as these add-ins don't require the recompilation of the host's sourcecode with proprietary code

So the GPL can be circumvented with dynamic linking?

Data binding?

[MarkvW]

Is there anything out there that straightforwardly automates databinding LibreOffice controls to an XML data structure?

I'm talking primarily about controls where you can type in text and that text will automatically appear in other content controls that are bound to the same XML data node.

I've done it in Word via VBA, but it's not something that I would recommend for others to use. Is there something like this for LibreOffice that makes the process easy for the user.

Re:Data binding?

[FranTaylor]

rube goldberg called, he wants his thesis project back

Re:Data binding?

[MarkvW]

Is there a better solution available in LibreOffice? Any hint, Rube?

Rounding error?

[Pascoea]

LibreOffice 5.0, the tenth major release

Version 5 = 10th major release? Were they using excel to calculate their version number?

Re:Rounding error?

[kthreadd]

No, they just count each x.y as a major release, which is not unreasonable since there is quite a lot of new features going in to each of them. They started out at 3.3 since that's where they forked from OpenOffice; so there have been 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 5.0. That gives 5.0 as the tenth major release.

Re:Rounding error?

[dbIII]

LibreOffice 5.0, the tenth major release

Version 5 = 10th major release? Were they using excel to calculate their version number?

It's almost as bad as going 3.11, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10.

and they *still* haven't got outline mode

[tadas]

I don't understand why either of these guys (Open OR Libre) can't get their act together and implement something with the functionality of MS Word's Outline Mode. This has probably been the singe most requested feature in Open/Libre Office for *years* (requests go back to at least 2002), and it has steadily been ignored. It's the *only* reason I continue to use Word...

Re:and they *still* haven't got outline mode

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the biggest single problem I have with FOSS: Lack of accountability to the users. If MANY people request a feature but the developers don't want to add it for whatever reason -- it's not fun to develop, they personally wouldn't use the new feature, whatever -- then the users are, in effect, told to go fuck themselves. I've been involved with Linux since the days of buying a book that included a Slackware floppy, and I've seen this little scenario play out many dozens of times.

The real shining moment is when the more militant FOSS supporters tell people (who very often clearly are not programmers) to "pick up the source and add it themselves". I wish I could find a way to make it clear to the people saying that just how much they're damaging their own cause. I've done custom programming and consulting for numerous companies and almost without exception when they hear "open source" they think "software with no support written by a bunch of arrogant kids". Whenever it comes up I do my best to explain that that's not how it is, open source has matured greatly over the years, etc., but it's a very tough argument to make when people "know" something different.

Re: and they *still* haven't got outline mode

[Anonymous Coward]

There is another possibility that is somewhat better than "code it yourself, asshole," and it's a strategy that I think makes a whole lot of sense:

Hire someone to build that feature for you.

Look, you are getting the product for free, and most OSS users give fuck all back to the projects except for feature requests. Why not take your MS Office budget for a year ($1M?) and hire someone (or a few someones) to build that feature for you, then use OpenOffice or LibreOffice forever at no cost?

This is essentially what IBM does, except that they are not hiring others to build those features... they are the ones being hired by others to do this stuff.

So if nobody will build a feature you want for free, try incentivizing the community by offering to pay for it. You have a small company? Try a kickstarter or similar and get everyone agitating for outline-mode to give $5 to try to hire someone who knows their way around OpenOffice.

I just checked, and there is a "Send Outline to Presentation" option of my File menu (LibreOffice 4.4, Mac OS X) and also the ability to send it to the clipboard. I know it's not the same, but it might work in a pinch.

Re:and they *still* haven't got outline mode

[dbIII]

While I've been asking MS for a "show codes" feature in MS Word since before 1995.
Some things that people think will be very useful are just not cared about by the people releasing software.

Re: and they *still* haven't got outline mode

[rjstanford]

Why not take your MS Office budget for a year ($1M?) and hire someone (or a few someones) to build that feature for you,

You know, even at full retail, that'd get you 10,000 copies and include a very long-lived support agreement. And - protip - if you're spending 7 figures you can get a pretty hefty discount, too.

Not switching

[sproketboy]

Not switching to a stupidly named Mexican wrestler product.

RPM packaging awfulness still present with 5.0

[rklrkl]

If your distro (e.g. CentOS 6) doesn't carry the latest LibreOffice release, then you have to download it from the official LibreOffice site. Unfortunately, a litany of RPM packaging disasters still abound with 5.0. I've never seen any Open Source software as badly RPM-packaged as the official LibreOffice RPMs!

It's a word processor

[ShieldW0lf]

We've only been doing word processors for decades now.

Why do word processors need new features at this point? Why is this not a "done" thing?

So many software projects are destroyed by the inability of developers to say "Well, that tool is finished."

When are we going to see LibreOfficeOS, I wonder. It kept the browser developers amused, maybe you guys should do that?

Re:It's a word processor

[footNipple]

If this is where it's heading, then I'm holding out for a LibreOffice phone.

Re:It's a word processor

[Anonymous Coward]

We've only been doing word processors for decades now.

Why do word processors need new features at this point? Why is this not a "done" thing?

So many software projects are destroyed by the inability of developers to say "Well, that tool is finished."

When are we going to see LibreOfficeOS, I wonder. It kept the browser developers amused, maybe you guys should do that?

Thanks G.R.R.M.

Re:It's a word processor

[steelfood]

That's because MS Word and L/OO Writer are not word processors anymore. They're WYSIWYG document creation tools, i.e. they attempt to combine text input, text management, and document layout into one tool.

Besides which, word processors aren't feature complete yet. Even advanced text-only word processors like Textpad and Notepad++ are constantly adding new features, and has a leg up on Word/Writer on things like search and cursor movement.

And with persistent connectivity, there's a whole new layer of features for everyone to add.

Re:It's a word processor

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Why do word processors need new features at this point?

Unicode for multiple languages, and the desire to embed graphics.

Re:It's a word processor

[Osgeld]

They're WYSIWYG document creation tools

they have been since the mid 80's and still do the same job as my mac SE, so back to the op...

Re:It's a word processor

[dbIII]

That's because MS Word and L/OO Writer are not word processors anymore. They're WYSIWYG document creation tools, i.e. they attempt to combine text input, text management, and document layout into one tool.

They attempt to do it but still fall short of the desktop publishing stuff of the early 1990s, which is probably just as well because a lot of features to tweak can be a serious time sink. That leaves it neither fish nor fowl, a kitchen sink full of parts that has way more than you need for one task but not quite enough to do a decent job at another, mostly just as a feature list for box art. To use a car analogy, it's a fairly normal family car with automatic transmission on a small engine with a spoiler and other racing parts glued on as an afterthought. Try to go fast and bits fall off.

Re:It's a word processor

[Anonymous Coward]

> desire to embed graphics

The state of the art has improved, but see: CopyArt on Radio Shack Model 1

Re:It's a word processor

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because MS Word and L/OO Writer are not word processors anymore. They're WYSIWYG document creation tools

All GUI Word processors are WYSIWYG tools.
.

Meanwhile, still no decent HTML word processing (

[rduke15]

So LO has a few more features, and hopefully fixed a few bugs.

But there is still no decent writing tool for our current needs.

When I need to write something, it usually doesn't need to be printed on A4 (or Letter) paper. It is to be viewed on some digital display. And it doesn't need to be pixel-precise. Just well structured to be understandable. So the natural format would be HTML with CSS, which has become a universal format that can be displayed on anything, and can even be searched as plain text with grep and the like when needed.

But there is no word processing program that produces sane HTML/CSS. The real word processing programs which have all the features and tools to help for writing produce totally insane HTML. The HTML tools are designed for programmers or "web designers" (whatever that really is these days), not for plain writing of content. In the end, I often just send an HTML email done in Thunderbird, or I use Amaya, and mostly a plain text editor with a browser window to re-read it. But none of this is a comfortable solution. The alternative is to write in MS Word or Libre/OpenOffice, and produce a f*ing PDF.

I have been longing for a modern "Ami Pro for HTML/CSS" for the last 15 years...

No VBA Compatibility == No Go

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got too much time and functionality wrapped up in my various Excel spreadsheets to give up on Office. The instant there is VBA compatibility, MS Office is dead.

Re:No VBA Compatibility == No Go

[Agronomist Cowherd]

I was extremely surprised when my Excel spreadsheet that uses a VBA macro opened perfectly in LibreOffice 4.4. I have no idea how complete the VBA compatibility is, but there definitely is some. I suggest you try your Excel spreadsheets using VBA in LibreOffice; they might just work, or might only need very minor changes. My VBA usage is not enormous, so my success may not be representative, but it's worth a shot.

I for one welcome our well documented overlords

[WillAffleckUW]

I for one welcome our well documented Libre Office code overlords.

But mostly because some of them are friends.

Minor complaints

[Daetrin]

Button icons were huge at first, but i figured out how to fix that.

I don't really like the sidebar thing. Minimizing it is easy, but then there's a very dark, very obvious, poorly aligned button on the right side. Preferably i'd like to remove it entirely, but getting the color toned down might be an acceptable alternative.

They still have the messed up column and row header colors. Back in 2.1 the headers were a nice solid dark grey. Then sometime between then and 3.4 they added shading. The "inner" half of the headers is dark grey and the outer half is light grey. I find it visually distracting, and since the line runs right down the center it sometimes makes it a little hard to read the letters/numbers. I'm sure it doesn't bother most people at all, but i don't really see what the supposed benefit is and i wish there was a way to turn it off.

Not so minor complaint

[Daetrin]

Addendum: there is apparently no longer any local help. Going to Help->LibreOffice Help opens up a browser window to the online documentation. Searching for help on the internet is fine in general, but the search results in this site seem very cluttered and it seems far less convenient than the offline help present in OO 3.4.1. Not to mention the fact that i frequently have to use VPN software at work that disables my regular internet.

Re:Not so minor complaint

[innocent_white_lamb]

Did you miss the (large green) LibreOffice Built in help in English (US) download link that is located right below the Main Installer download?

Re:Not so minor complaint

[Anonymous Coward]

Help is a separate download, "LibreOffice Built in help " which is bellow the main installer download. This is done so the main installer does not have to include every language of help file, which would be bigger than you expect, though offering to add this at install time would be good.

Re:Not so minor complaint

[Daetrin]

Actually i did miss it. The large green button is actually a deterrent in this case. It's such an eye-searing shade that my eyes keep automatically trying to skip over it to save themselves. (I also didn't notice it on the first page because it was below the bottom edge of the window, but it also shows up in all its painful glory on the donation page you get redirected to after hitting download.)

Thanks for pointing it out though!

Yes, but it's still beta (see link for more)

[Anonymous Coward]

https://libreoffice-from-collabora.com/android-editor-prototype/

How to Become a Millionaire Selling Open Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

Start Out as a Billionaire! Larry and his legal team are learning quite a bit about open source and GPL the hard way. Look at what happened to their portfolio:

Sun / Oracle - > GPL
Open Office - > Libre Office
Java - > Iced Tea
MySQL - > Maria DB
Solaris - > __________

They can't even support code that they legally lifted:
Unbreakable Linux - > Red Hat

This has been great for the Linux community and SUN executives in particular.

Completely Doable

[Anonymous Coward]

Just replace explorer.exe with LibreOffice and you are good to go.

How do you think Google made ChromeOS out of Gentoo?

Jeeze...

[Anonymous Coward]

Still Looks like Office 2003 with a terrible Icon Set. Still has Java Dependencies. Still hijacks file associations when you tell it not to (the QuickTime Player or Office Suites...).

Really, I tried LibreOffice on several occasions but I cannot get over the bloated menus and toolbars - and the fact that it can stop working at any time. Just start up and freeze, over and over again. Had that happen every time I tried the software. It also stole all file associations literally every time and I told it not to.

I ended up just buying Microsoft Office. It wasn't worth the trouble trying to fix the issue, and Office can Open-Edit-Save ODF fairly impeccably - even the Tablet and Online versions... I have been thinking about using it on my iMac, but I think I will just buy a perpetual Office 2016 License for that. The apps don't look native, at all, on either OS. I don't like the way it looks. It's ugly, and the ugliness is kind of distracting.

The Icon Set is a big problem because some of the icons they use are completely foreign compared to the common icons that thousands of Windows or Mac Apps use on those platforms.

I find it odd that they're adding B.S. like Beanshell scripting, etc. when they should be working on better bundled Templates for the Office Suite, making the apps actually look fully native. Why waste resources on that, when they should be making the original scripting engine/language/experience better instead, developing a decent set of stock templates, integrating cloud services (or is that off-limits, never know with F/OSS Politics).

Any why aren't they putting their apps on the Mac or Windows App Stores? It makes keeping them up to date stupid easy. Just put it up there for $0.99 for the convenience and call it a day.

Re:Jeeze...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Still Looks like Office 2003 [Good] with a terrible Icon Set.[Your opinion] Still has Java Dependencies. [For now... lot of progress but not their yet (database engine needs to be upgraded first but this is almost done)] Still hijacks file associations [Yep a bug...ugh still only an issue if you keep on re-installing regularly]"

"bloated menus and toolbars " How are they bloated? compared to the ribbon they use less space, and they have removed many less used icons in the latest versions (4.4 & 5.0) to add in icons for more useful features

"I don't like the way it looks." use "Tools > Options > View " then select "Icon Size and Style" you can also use a Firefox persona to customise the appearance use "Tools > Options > Personalization " and select "Own theme"

"the fact that it can stop working at any time" To get rid of the old and hard to maintain code they had to make a lot of risky changes early on, but since then stability improvements have been among their top priorities, when did you stop trying? Take a look at the use of coverity scan or crash testing for import and export in the "under the hood" link at the top to get some idea of the effort they have been punting in, the improvement has been quite noticeable.

" B.S. like Beanshell scripting, etc. when they should be working on" There is no singular they, the foundation is gathering point for individuals and diverse organisations not a single business with many employees. If other people make a feature then what it is is dictated by their own needs (or abilities coders are easer to attract than template writers) not those of the project as a whole, if it does not actively detract form what you want stop wining.

"integrating cloud services " The CMIS protocol for accessing remote documents was added in 4.0 and can be used by "Alfresco, IBM FileNet P8, Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, Nuxeo, OpenText, SAP NetWeaver Cloud Service and others" (see https://blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/07/29/the-road-to-libreoffice-5-0/) further improvements to this feature and it's visibility will soon be available from GSOC (see http://eszkadev.blogspot.co.uk/) they are also developing LibereOficeKit which is used by the android and Ubuntu clients to make an improved cloud version available through the browser (see https://libreoffice-from-collabora.com/icewarp-and-collabora-are-working-on-libreoffice-online-document-editing-an-open-source-alternative-to-google-apps-office-365/)

"Any why aren't they putting their apps on the Mac or Windows App Stores"
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2937816/open-source-software/libreoffice-debuts-in-the-mac-app-store.html
nuf said.

Re:Jeeze...

[rjstanford]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2937816/open-source-software/libreoffice-debuts-in-the-mac-app-store.html

From that article: "There are a rather large number of quite tedious technical problems to fix.” These included adding the required sandboxing, changing the behavior of LibreOffice to obey rules about read-write access to files within packages,"

You know, that's possibly not the best attitude the team could have taken. Sandboxing and obeying rules about not writing to your declared program files are actually both good things, and I hope the they make it back into the core package. Yes, they're "quite tedious technical problems," but if the app had been well-behaved to start with they wouldn't have taken any significant time. The fact that they did shows that the time was needed, and that's exactly the kind of boring investment in quality that rarely comes as a requirement from the community.

Re:Jeeze...

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed out the last part of the sentence, which does distort the apparent attitude quite a bit, the last part was
code signing, and -- most challenging of all -- dealing with changes in Apple’s rules while the process was in progress.

i.e the changes in the rules which happened while they where in progress where more tedious than any of the other parts...

Either way, you have to start with what you've got, not what you want to have, also the "community" includes local governments and police forces... I expect them to care as organisations even if the users don't.

Re:Jeeze...

[rjstanford]

I left that out as sour grapes. I submit apps to the app store (and also develop for other platforms); Apple's rules are actually both well-documented and fairly static. I'd be interested to see what it was that they thought was a major change, especially since with an office suite its not like they'd get into content issues (the most classic gray area).

As for code signing being a "tedious technical problem to fix" ... really? Really?

Re: Meanwhile, still no decent HTML word processin

[msobkow]

1. Create .html text file
2. Open .html text file in browser
3. Write content in text editor.
4. Save file.
5. Refresh browser window
6. Fix any broken tags
7. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If all you're doing is creating content, that's all you need to do. If you want fancy WYSWIG features, you're barking up the wrong tree to expect to do it with "real" HTML support. WYSWIG implies that you have precise control over layouts; HTML presumes you have no precise control over layouts. The goals are incompatible.

Re: Meanwhile, still no decent HTML word processin

[msobkow]

I mean [W]hat[Y]ou[S]ee[I]s[W]hat[Y]ou[G]et.

Man I hate migraine days...

Hyper Hipocresy in /.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember the release of LO 4.0 the flood of comments was almost "OO is the king and LO is shit also OO is the one that comes with my Linux flavor". And now why everybody says that LO is the best and OO is a pile of shit?

Tsk,tsk. You guys are a failure of fanboys. ;)

Misunderstanding. Let me help.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is calculated 2 to the version number power. So, Windows 10 is 4 times as evil as Windows 8. Windows 10 has:
1) Forced updates for Windows Home users, even though Windows updates are often faulty.
2) Vastly reduced privacy.
3) Intent to take more anti-customer control, later, apparently.
4) Deletion of an important program, Windows Media Center, with no notice to those who use WMC for watching television and recording shows.
5) Too many more to mention.

Re:Misunderstanding. Let me help.

[demonrob]

Hadn't heard about point 5 but I should have expected it.

Re: Meanwhile, still no decent HTML word processin

[rduke15]

That is exactly what I have been doing. It works fine for converting content into HTML. It is horrible for creating the content.

The important thing when writing is not pixel-precise rendering as the word processors do (on an obsolete A4/Letter format). It is to be able to just press a key for titles, subtitles, whatever, to have a visual representation of the structure. Without having to switch your thinking from content to tags, syntax and all that stuff which is totally irrelevant to what you want to concentrate on.

Anyway, I would be glad to contribute into a Kickstarter campaign for a resurrection of Amaya, or development of Kompozer, or a new project for an HTML "word processor". If only there were developers interested...

Currently, an alternative is to write in Word or *Office, and in the end export to .txt and do the HTML afterwards. It's sort of OK for the writing part, and then boring to have to do the HTML by hand.