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LibreOffice 5.0 Released

Posted by Soulskill on from the onward-and-upward dept.

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.

16 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. OpenOffice vs LibreOffice by Maddog+Batty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

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    1. Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice by nine-times · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    2. Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice by CritterNYC · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

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    3. Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm waiting for Nacho LibreOffice.

    4. Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:OpenOffice vs LibreOffice by ssam · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Three cheers for liberty! by LichtSpektren · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re: Three cheers for liberty! by Dan+East · · Score: 4, Funny

      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?

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  3. Apache Openoffice is "dormant"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Apache Openoffice is "dormant"? by Translation+Error · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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      When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
  4. Oracle Happened by BrendaEM · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!

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  5. Re:Question for user community by CritterNYC · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
  6. Re:Question for user community by RazorSharp · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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  7. LibreOffice works great for my company by sjbe · · Score: 4, Informative

    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".

  8. Re:apache foundation? by mwvdlee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  9. Re:apache foundation? by ssam · · Score: 4, Funny

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