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LibreOffice 5.1 Officially Released

Posted by timothy on from the good-gets-better dept.

prisoninmate writes: After being in development for the last three months or so, LibreOffice 5.1 comes today to a desktop environment near you with some of the most attractive features you've ever seen in an open-source office suite software product, no matter the operating system used. The release highlights of LibreOffice 5.1 include a redesigned user interface for improved ease of use, better interoperability with OOXML files, support for reading and writing files on cloud servers, enhanced support for the ODF 1.2 file format, as well as additional Spreadsheet functions and features. Yesterday, even with the previous version, I was able to successfully use a moderately complex docx template without a hitch — the kind of thing that would have been a pipe-dream not too long ago.

111 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. What do you mean... by Nutria · · Score: 4, Funny

    "redesigned user interface for improved ease of use"?

    If it went "ribbon", that'll suck rocks.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Clippy!

    2. Re:What do you mean... by steveha · · Score: 5, Informative

      "redesigned user interface for improved ease of use"?

      You might try watching the demo videos. They made improvements to the menus, improvements to the context menus, and improvements to toolbars (including a pop-out side panel formatting toolbar thing that I guess is new to the 5.x series).

      No ribbon.

      Here, have a playlist URL that lets you watch the demo videos directly from YouTube instead of using the embedded videos in TFA.

      https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0pdzjvYW9RHSwdRnZfaxAWICrkBrQl7k

      --
      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    3. Re:What do you mean... by Nutria · · Score: 1

      I did watch them. Four and a half minutes, and nothing about the UI.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    4. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The ribbon has been around for almost a decade, and people are still hating on it...?

    5. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Is this why debian stable is stuck on LO 4.x? Oh wait, that's just the usual Linux BS where you're not allowed to have new apps unless you meticulously install it from the command line and take responsibility for updating it by hand.

      Debian stable is really meant more for a server than for a desktop, as in "a stable (albeit a little stagnant), well-tested, and rock-solid platform where you can run an application for years without unwelcome surprises creeping into the underlying software stack or into the environment in general." Servers and desktops have different needs.

      If you want a desktop environment, maybe consider running a Debian-based distro that pulls responsibly from Debian Testing or Sid, or better yet, an Ubuntu LTS based system where you can use PPAs to grab fresher versions of applications. If you want more cutting edge than that consider running non-LTS Ubuntu versions or go to Fedora, accepting more frequent OS upgrades. If you really want the hot metal that has barely even solidified yet, look to Arch.

    6. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So try Ubuntu/Mint. They're usually only a couple of dot versions behind the official LO release. Same with FF (counting FF's seemingly monthly full versions as dot releases). I use LO in Windows, have used it for several years (and Star/OpenOffice before that), and seldom have problems exchanging files with MSOfc users unless they use truly obscure formatting and functions. Even commenting usually works cross-platform. Frankly, at the rate LO is going, MS might just have to buy them someday - more compatible with MS than MS.

    7. Re:What do you mean... by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 2

      Is this why debian stable is stuck on LO 4.x? Oh wait, that's just the usual Linux BS where you're not allowed to have new apps unless you meticulously install it from the command line and take responsibility for updating it by hand.

      You mean how you can download the .deb package from the LibreOffice website, and double click on it to install it? You're right, that's such a huge, painful operation of cryptic commands that nobody could possibly remember. :-/

      While you still have to update it manually, that's the same for just about every single program on Windows, including Microsoft Office, if you've still got the default settings for Windows Update.

      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
    8. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Improvements" to the menus usually means that they moved things around so I now have to look for them again. Oh well ... could be MSOfc. The "properties" sidebar is nothing really new, and on my old-school non-wide-screen monitor will squeeze the actual document into an unusable sliver of screen space as most do. Hope the sidebar can be disabled or only pops up on demand.

    9. Re: What do you mean... by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're just haters. No modern computer user can honestly say they'd prefer searching through dropdown menus over the ribbon that focuses on putting the most used features at the users fingertips.

      *Raises hand*

      I dislike the ribbon. But then I'm a keyboard shortcuts guy. I know dozens of them for MS Office, and whenever there's a feature that I use often, I look up a keyboard shortcut if possible.

      Which means the ribbon is useless to me. It takes up a bunch of space with buttons I don't need, and on the rare occasions when I need a feature advanced or rare enough that I don't know a shortcut, it's often not even on a ribbon button -- I end up going through advanced feature dialogs anyway. I use a Mac at work, so luckily I still have the drop down menus, which are usually at least twice as fast as wading through a bunch of non-intuitive icons in a half-dozen ribbon tabs with 20 buttons each.

      Text was invented for a reason -- it communicates quickly, clearly, and efficiently. So I find it a lot easier to navigate when I'm searching for a feature I don't know -- which is the only time my mouse generally goes up to that part of the screen.

      If you actually use the ribbon for common everyday tasks, I can understand how it might be useful for you. I'm not against offering a ribbon interface, but I do think it should be one option rather than the only one. I'm not a "hater." I just work differently and I'm just glad Mac versions of Office still give the menu options.

    10. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Take a look at your response and ask why a simple issue like installing a current app has to be so complicated.

      BTW, debian is very much a multi-purpose distro and (as with many distros) a lot of its users sell it as the ideal desktop. The fact is that current apps only appear on beta-quality OS releases, and PPAs introduce a _fourth_ party to the chain of trust. A person has to use OSX or Windows to get current FOSS apps (even Firefox!) without bending over backwards.

      And the insinuation that new public releases of apps are "cutting edge" is clearly the kind of bullshit that results from Linux groupthink. You want people to keep doing risky upgrades every year to beta OSes because those are "desktop", just so they can access fully-tested, publicly released apps.

      BROKEN MINDSET. BROKEN PLATFORM. Too much hassle for app devs to package and distribute, too much hassle to download and install.

    11. Re: What do you mean... by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

      I hated it to at first, but it IS much easier to find options that were once 10 minute hunting trips in the menu's mostly because the menu's were jumbled and not broken down into certain tasks like view, review, etc.

      Having gotten used to the Ribbon I can say I completely believe the millions MS spent on usability testing that the Ribbon is easier to learn for new users and not just a little bit, it's significantly easier to learn. Though it was a pain to learn as an experienced user it's far more productive and easier to find lessor used options than before IMO, this is mostly because the ribbon titles now accurately reflect the type of commands to be found on the ribbon which was almost never true of the old menus.

    12. Re: What do you mean... by dwywit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hear, hear. Google is your friend. It took me all of 10 minutes searching and reading to learn how to customise the toolbar system in MSOffice versions prior to the ribbon, e.g. remove and add toolbar buttons for features as desired, and even create a keyboard shortcut for things in frequent use.

      Thus, the features that I use most frequently *are* at my fingertips, and the items I don't use are banished back to their menus. It seems the ribbon was created to pander to those people who weren't able to figure out toolbar customisations. The ribbon is harder to customise, takes up far too much screen real estate in the "full" version, is almost useless in the minimised version, and it took a long time to get used to it.

      And while we're at it, Microsoft's UI design team should be sent to a real design school. White, light grey, and dark grey are the colour schemes available in Office 2013, and I had customers complaining that they couldn't see things easily. How did such a design get past testing and QA? The response from the "experts" on answers.microsoft.com was to set the entire computer's colour scheme to "high contrast" - never mind ruining the interface for other programs, sheesh.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    13. Re: What do you mean... by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      Completely agree about toolbar customization. That was the first thing I'd do in older versions after install. Much more useful for users who know what they're doing and what they need.

    14. Re:What do you mean... by chipschap · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I deal with it just fine, as do most people who care to run Linux.

      I pay nothing for Linux. I pay nothing for LibreOffice. I don't complain about having to do a little work, which has the side benefit of allowing me complete control and choice over what I have on my system.

      If you want it all done for you, more like if you want it all done to you, stay with Microsoft.

    15. Re: What do you mean... by Espectr0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can't believe you got upvoted. Means none of them, including you know that you can use keyboard shortcuts with the ribbon. Just press the damn ALT key, watch and learn.

      It's a better interface. Sometimes change can be good, and i tell you this as a hater of windows 8 menu and even windows 10 inferior start menu.

      --
      Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
    16. Re:What do you mean... by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 2

      stable has 5.0.4 in backports and one would assume 5.1 soon after it reaches testing.

      But if you weren't busy trolling you'd have learned how to configure sources.list

    17. Re: What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If it were truly a better system I wouldn't have to switch endlessly between ribbon tabs while performing simple formatting tasks. Once configured (even minimally), the toolbar stayed *put*, allowing muscle memory to speed operation.

      The ribbon is great for discovery and people who never get past "ransom letter" documents. It sucks ass for experienced users.

    18. Re:What do you mean... by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      For me, it's the super laggy performance the new widgets seem to have, especially the document objects and popups. In contrast, 2k7 and 2k10 are quick (not as fast as office 2003 though).

      WTF they need quit grafting crap on top of crap on top of crap on top of win32.

    19. Re:What do you mean... by epyT-R · · Score: 1

      Shit deserves criticism until those who can (or are allowed to) fix, fix.

    20. Re: What do you mean... by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 1

      I look up a keyboard shortcut if possible.
      Which means the ribbon is useless to me.

      The shortcuts are still there, in fact there are more of them now.

      It takes up a bunch of space with buttons I don't need

      And the ribbon is hidden by default, you have to pin it if you want it visible all the time.

    21. Re:What do you mean... by chipschap · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Social isolation for Linux geeks is a stereotype which, like most stereotypes, don't apply universally, and in this case (Linux users) I suspect don't apply even to the majority.

      Nice try, but you get a fail on this one.

    22. Re:What do you mean... by chipschap · · Score: 1

      I just installed LO 5.1 on my Linux Mint system. It (LO 5.1) is both highly functional and beautiful in appearance (my opinion). I look forward to using this new, open source, free (as in free beer and free of spyware) software.

    23. Re:What do you mean... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

      "You're not Ulysses
      La la la la"

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    24. Re:What do you mean... by ohnocitizen · · Score: 1

      You might try watching the demo videos.

      Who has time for that? Seriously, 5 seconds to read the following:

      a completely reorganized graphical user interface that makes it more convenient and faster for users to access the software's commonly used features. There's now a new menu for each of LibreOffice's core components, such as Calc, Impress, Draw, and Writer. Furthermore, many of the menu commands and icons have been repositioned.

      vs 4 minutes spread over 3 videos.

    25. Re: What do you mean... by Njorthbiatr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Programmers aren't designers. And one of the things they do the worst is design UIs for end-users. Every time I hear a programmer complain about how graphic designers don't know anything all I do is laugh, because it's elitist and pretentious to presume you know about designing graphics. You don't. You weren't trained to do that, and you probably don't even have the aptitude for it.

      MS's ribbon UI, which is getting so much hate, is because programmers are biased. They're biased because they know what "Window" is but not what "Review" is. They know what "Format" should do, but not what "Design" should do. You're so caught up in your own jargon that you stop thinking like other, normal people do. Do you honestly people think that the Window menu item is going to have everything you need that would manipulate a window object in it? Come off it.

      There's a reason why Office and Windows have such a large marketshare. The only reason ANY business, outside of maybe some select tech companies even use libreoffice is because its free. It's time to wake up and realize it's not MS's aggressive business tactics that really make them win the game here: it's that they sell a superior product and you can leave your overly convoluted menus to yourself and the few select people who mistakenly think it's better because they're too inflexible to learn new ways of doing things.

      Enjoy your coding in C, since I'm sure you have the same issues with thinking everyone should be managing memory.

    26. Re: What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Works for me; if being a Linux/Libreoffice user keeps more slack-jawed mouth breathers away, sign me up!

    27. Re:What do you mean... by KGIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have a nice, pretty, and many years my junior girlfriend. Why? Because I just happened to have my laptop bag with me and a Live USB disk handy. It was Lubuntu (as we seem to recall) but she's been using Mint Cinnamon lately.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    28. Re: What do you mean... by dwywit · · Score: 1

      Oh, I still use Microsoft Office - I've just chosen to stick with Office 2003. It meets my needs, and I'm happy with it. I tried 2007, and 2010, and neither made any improvement in productivity. Your mileage may vary, and that's what's nice about being able customise an interface - the toolbars. Your needs are different from mine, and we can both have the way we want it.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    29. Re: What do you mean... by dwywit · · Score: 1

      My customers complain about the UI colour choices, and they complain about the ribbon. They pay me for advice and I try to be honest. I'll sell them MS Office if that's what they want, but I'll also inform them about other options.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    30. Re:What do you mean... by wwalker · · Score: 1

      So, you are saying that all generalizations are wrong? Including this one?

    31. Re:What do you mean... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I thought the layout was user-changeable? But it's been a while since I used it.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    32. Re: What do you mean... by TinyTheBrontosaurus · · Score: 1

      +1 insightful. I don't think you're a troll. But I do think everyone should be doing memory management. :-)

    33. Re: What do you mean... by nashv · · Score: 1

      You do know that you can hide the ribbon, don't you? You can get back your screen space that way.

      --
      Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
    34. Re: What do you mean... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Graphic designers design posters, magazines and LP covers. They don't design user interfaces.

      Or rather they didn't when I was a lad, and they still shouldn't.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    35. Re:What do you mean... by DrXym · · Score: 1
      Personally I don't believe there is anything inherently better about using a toolbar or a ribbon. The most important thing is usability and task centric design. I think the ribbon is a shock to the system but when you get used to it and it works. It is task centric, it's far easier to set styles on text, things are nicely spacial and don't jump around depending on context such as text selection and all the common actions for the task are right there and available. The biggest failing is that loading / saving is split out as a task which is disconcerting if you wish to see the document you're saving since you lose context.

      But on balance it's a good solution.

      LibreOffice is also fairly usable but doesn't spend as much time on usability as it should. There are a mess of toolbars and buttons on the top, the sides and the bottom. And they appear and disappear depending on context, e.g. click on text in a bullet point and suddenly a bullet toolbar appears at the bottom. It makes the experience very disconcerting and it's very wasteful of space too. Compared to MS Office, all those toolbars mean less space for the actual document. It's philosophy seems to be small iterative changes to the existing experience rather than wondering if the existing experience is fit for purpose in the first place.

    36. Re:What do you mean... by Burz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Oops! From the readme:
      --
      As a general rule, you are recommended to install LibreOffice via the installation methods recommended by
        your particular Linux distribution (such as the Ubuntu Software Center, in the case of Ubuntu Linux). Th
      is is because it is usually the simplest way to obtain an installation that is optimally integrated into
      your system. Indeed, LibreOffice may well be already installed by default when you originally install you
      r Linux operating system.

      This "stand-alone" LibreOffice installer is provided for users in need of previews, having special needs,
        and for out-of-the-ordinary cases.
      --

      They recommend against direct user installs! Who knew?! And BTW, to most people your 'easy' command line install looks like you had an epileptic seizure at your keyboard.

      Oh, almost forgot to mention... You just installed unsigned code.

    37. Re: What do you mean... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      That's odd. You can customize the ribbon in exactly the same way as you customize toolbars (right click, drag and drop). All the keyboard shortcuts are the same and you can still make your own. How on earth did you fail to realize this?

      Also, there is a little icon to hide the ribbon if you don't want it. It looks exactly like the icon that hides toolbars in previous versions. Again, how on earth did you miss it?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    38. Re:What do you mean... by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Oh, almost forgot to mention... You just installed unsigned code.

      So? For most purposes, for those of us not specifically targeted for intensive surveillance, checking md5s will do

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    39. Re:What do you mean... by j-beda · · Score: 1

      I have a nice, pretty, and many years my junior girlfriend. Why? Because I just happened to have my laptop bag with me and a Live USB disk handy. It was Lubuntu (as we seem to recall) but she's been using Mint Cinnamon lately.

      So was it the laptop bag or the USB disk that caused you to age? Or did one of them make her younger? You should sell that to the cosmetics cartel.

    40. Re:What do you mean... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I can't tell you... Then it wouldn't be a secret. Maybe it's a secret, maybe it's laptop-bagiline. (Do they still use that tag-line?)

      It's actually a remarkable (which is why I remarked on it) story and I wrote about our meeting on Slashdot when it happened. Later, we figured we'd try that whole dating thing. You get some funky looks when you date someone that much younger than yourself. The ladies stare at you like they're gonna stab you in your sleep and the guys just look confused. It's even more amusing when their spoused notice 'em starting.

      Linux, making me happy but a social pariah once more.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    41. Re:What do you mean... by tobiasly · · Score: 1

      You mean how you can download the .deb package from the LibreOffice website, and double click on it to install it? You're right, that's such a huge, painful operation of cryptic commands that nobody could possibly remember. :-/

      What a pain... I prefer the Windows way, where every program launches a system tray icon to burn CPU cycles checking their website for updates on their own schedule, then pester me at all times of the day to upgrade and reboot because I wasn't really doing anything important anyway (and of course, having to reboot to upgrade a userspace program just makes me feel safer).

    42. Re: What do you mean... by MSG · · Score: 1

      No modern computer user can honestly say they'd prefer searching through dropdown menus over the ribbon that focuses on putting the most used features at the users fingertips.

      The ribbon wasn't introduced to improve the UI, it was introduced to create a UI that was consistent between desktop and web applications.

    43. Re:What do you mean... by Burz · · Score: 1

      Of course, because no one ever heard of people downloading infected software from compromised distribution sites. And that's just for starters... what about the ability of security software to validate installed apps?

      And the fact that you're cozy with your boyscouts-at-the-NSA image has exactly what bearing on this issue? There are people at all levels of society who try to spread malware and they will even fuck around with your LAN to do it.

      No, sorry.... The norm for software distribution has to be app authors signing their code and distributing it in a form where verification happens automatically. If you have to tell users they cannot have both verification and current releases then the software ecosystem is sick.

      And note that large FOSS authors like LibreOffice and Mozilla do not operate their own PPAs. They leave it up to fourth parties whom even most /.ers have never heard of before. Linux software distribution methods are too much of a hassle even for large FOSS projects. This should be a clue as to why non-libre products cannot grow on these non-platforms (in fact, there are hardly any robust desktop apps from any sector): If you want to have hope of reaching a large segment of a Linux distro's users, you have to hope that your app gets into a default or pre-approved repository and even then your fanbase will be isolated from exciting developments, stuck with stale versions, unless they also suffer the idiocy of upgrading the OS yearly and the high incidence of their systems becoming inoperative.

      FOSS platforms need to find ways to facilitate direct relationships between app developers and users - safely. Most are seriously not in ANY sense trying to do that, and instead just get in the way.

    44. Re:What do you mean... by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      What is wrong with the ribbon? I'll be first to say that their first attempt at the ribbon was messy but as of version 2010 everything is fine. Is the problem conservatism?

    45. Re: What do you mean... by Blue23 · · Score: 1

      If it were truly a better system I wouldn't have to switch endlessly between ribbon tabs while performing simple formatting tasks. Once configured (even minimally), the toolbar stayed *put*, allowing muscle memory to speed operation.

      The ribbon is great for discovery and people who never get past "ransom letter" documents. It sucks ass for experienced users.

      I'm glad that the tasks you do are so constrained that they fit into a single toolbar. As an experienced user I use many different features and being able to switch context to have a much wider selection then would fit into one toolbar is beneficial. This is even more true in Excel then Word.

      Swore at it for a month when I first started using it because I needed to unlearn some habits, now find it much easier.

      --
      LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
    46. Re:What do you mean... by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Well then, it's time to stop recommending it to people! We don't want the supply of younger and prettier women to run out.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    47. Re:What do you mean... by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      It's better than the previous collection of icons. You can also edit it or hide it. And it takes up less screen real estate than the Ribbon does. Still too cluttered for some tastes (but remember you can edit it) but not bad all in all.

    48. Re:What do you mean... by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      The toolbars are editable. You can add or remove icons from them or hide one or more of them completely.

    49. Re: What do you mean... by iampiti · · Score: 1

      They also released an unusable color scheme in one Visual Studio version (I don't remeber which it might be 2012 or thereabouts). When users complained loudly they fixed it. It seems they do pay more attention to users which matter more to them (developers, developers, developers).
      The thing is, most of these stupid UI changes, like the unreadable color schemes the Win 8 Start screen, etc. were implemented by political/marketing (Start screen) or fashion (colors) reasons. It was obvious they were disliked but were implemented anyway.
      That's the kind of company you want to stay away from.
      Unsurprisingly they've gone worse with Win 10.

    50. Re: What do you mean... by danomac · · Score: 1

      MS's ribbon UI, which is getting so much hate, is because programmers are biased.

      I support 120+ users at work (in a non-technical workplace) and I hear complaints about it all the time.

      Just recently (a few weeks ago), one person was trying to do something, and after fifteen minutes of looking through all the ribbons she gave up and asked me. It took another five minutes to figure out it wasn't available in the ribbon and was under some other obscure dialog that you had to pop up using the ribbon. This person knew what she wanted to do, and she told me if there was an actual menu she could have found it, not what Word "thinks" you need to use most.

    51. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      A typical Monday for me is like this:
      * Pack lunches for the kids while my wife cleans them up and get them dressed
      * Kiss our son goodbye when he walks off to school and nex I drop our girl in kindergarden
      * Go to work on my Linux only work station in an 1400 person company - using ..... Libre Office now and then
      * Pick up our son and girl and coach them (and 20 other kids) in Power Tumbling with four other coaches.
      * Come home all three of us and have the dinner my wife prepared.
      * Tuck the kids in and spend the evening with my wife or maybe I go enjoy a nice game of floorball with other men wit a little too much belly.
      After that I am so tired I dont have the energy to isolate me socially.

      But that is probably just me....

    52. Re:What do you mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The norm for software distribution has to be app authors signing their code and distributing it in a form where verification happens automatically.

      Well, then I hope you are using Secure Boot in "Secure" mode without changing the keys in the EFI.

      /sarcasm

      Seriously, ever heard of "time to check, time to use"? You can sign that code all you want, but if there's even the slightest crack in the system's security, it will not protect you. All it takes is the ability to change the address argument to a few jump opcodes in the verification code and you are pwned. As for the auto verification requirement, well it might get verified, but do you trust it? Who made the signature? How do you know that person was acting in good faith, and not being coerced? How do you get that information? (Automatic implicit trust is no trust at all unless it's verified out of band.)

      Code signing is not a good policy. It creates a false layer of trust, by automating the creation of that trust, it can be easily abused by a sufficiently equipped person in a way that can make that abuse permanent. (By using the same trust system to enforce the abuse. See also: Secure Boot, Intel's ME, AMD's PSP, TPMs, etc.) Further the end user is clueless about what code signing even is, even if they do know typically the only method to determine compromise is the same vector that they used to get the signature in the first place, multiplied by the number of unique digital certificates that signed each of their software packages. As such the end user can't be expected to perform the checks needed for code signing to be used effectively, which renders the policy useless. The only place it may work as intended is in the corporate environment, but even then a corporation must still deal with the issue of detecting compromise.

      unless they also suffer the idiocy of upgrading the OS yearly and the high incidence of their systems becoming inoperative.

      Letting a system go out of date for years because of "stability" reasons will get you hacked, as you are not keeping up with the security updates. That's just as bad as running an EOL'ed version of Windows. Yeah with proper precautions you might squeeze out a little bit more time before you HAVE to upgrade, but you become more vulnerable by the day. Although I will agree that "updates" for the sake of updates (UI / API redesigns that occur annually, and go off on different directions each time) are a plague that needs to die off.

      And note that large FOSS authors like LibreOffice and Mozilla do not operate their own PPAs. They leave it up to fourth parties whom even most /.ers have never heard of before. Linux software distribution methods are too much of a hassle even for large FOSS projects.

      I do agree with the current third party repository issue. That mess is what gives us such bugs as library naming conflicts, multiarch issues caused by improper separation of libraries from programs, bugs introduced by the distro maintainers due to their patches that are not properly documented / maintained. (That we devs have to figure out and debug.), etc.

      Sadly the flip side of that coin is (or rather the issues with first party repos is), immature devs that drop crap all over the filesystem instead of the standard locations. (Try installing steam under linux, by default it drops everything in the user's home directory. Which breaks things if that partition is set to noexec via fstab.) Different library names per distro, (good luck trying all of the possible naming combinations for use with dlopen() when you need to use it, again time to check, time to use.) Dep hell in general due to different distros having different versions / patch levels of available software, some of which may not even exist for one reason or another. (Good luck with that.)

      I don't think there is an easy solution to this. Of course many would say let the devs provide the repo,

    53. Re:What do you mean... by Burz · · Score: 1

      You're sssuuuuuch a brave iconoclast!

      /popcorn_time :D

      Code signing is not a good policy. It creates a false layer of trust...

      It creates a layer of trust that fails passively which is exactly what people need when they cannot check a billion details about what's running in their systems. You seem to be advocating active security measures, IOW keeping umpteen antisocial numbskulls with ninja hax0r text-mode window managers and other frippery on retainer at great expense. Its also the kind of mentality that actually lends appeal to clusterfucks like Intel ME, and tries to stuff every PC user into only completely opposite roles: you have to be either full-time hacker or proverbial grandma. Fuck that!

      The handwaving about secure boot and TPMs is also really special. It sounds like "Get off my lawn!". Qubes already has an open implementation of firmware verification that only requires memorizing a short phrase. Having machines authenticate themselves to users (instead of only the reverse) is a quite natural extension of what they're already doing.

      Letting a system go out of date for years because of "stability" reasons will get you hacked, as you are not keeping up with the security updates.

      Yeah, way to show you don't know the difference between upgrades and updates. I'll leave you on that brilliant note.

    54. Re: What do you mean... by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      I can't believe you got upvoted. Means none of them, including you know that you can use keyboard shortcuts with the ribbon. Just press the damn ALT key, watch and learn.

      Actually, no -- of course I know that. Stop being a jerk and assuming everyone else is an idiot.

      As I said, I prefer something else. You like the ribbon. Congratulations. I said explicitly I can understand why some people like it. I find it less useful than you do. I said why, and it had nothing to do with using shortcut keys WITH the ribbon. In case you misunderstood, I wasn't talking about using shortcut keys to NAVIGATE menus -- I was talking about shortcut keys as direct commands. Obviously one can use shortcut keys to navigate the ribbon, but that's not what I was talking about.

      Cheers!

    55. Re:What do you mean... by chipschap · · Score: 1

      For LibreOffice, I actually find it best and easiest to download the latest release from the LO home site, and install manually, which is very easy. I do this because the distro repositories lag significantly, and I prefer to have the latest version.

      So, it's not "a right mess" or "an epileptic seizure" or anything like that. It's a deliberate choice. Linux is about choices. Linux allows choices. If you're content to be a few releases back, you can use the repositories and it's a bit simpler. Up to you. If you really hate the command line, you don't have to go there.

    56. Re:What do you mean... by mcswell · · Score: 1

      The problem is that for those of us who grew up with alphabetic writing systems, rather than hieroglyphics, the ribbon is a mess of useless pictures that you can't get rid of. (You can hide the ribbon, but when the ribbon is open you can't get rid of those useless and indecipherable icons.)

      At least that's one of the problems. Another problem, IMNSHO, is that the ribbon only has room for a small number of actions, most of which I (and probably you) don't use. Like in Word, everything under the Mailings tab.

    57. Re:What do you mean... by mcswell · · Score: 1

      Yes, I am, every day I have to use it (it's the only choice on my office computer).

      And yes, I am a people.

    58. Re: What do you mean... by mcswell · · Score: 1

      Amen, brother! I too can honestly say I prefer searching through menus (not much searching required, actually) to searching through a bunch of hieroglyphs, I mean icons, on the ribbon. And you could have disagreed with the part about "putting the most used features at the users fingertips"--most of what's in the ribbons is not stuff I use (when was the last time anyone used "Mailings"?), and some of the stuff I use is not on the ribbons.

    59. Re:What do you mean... by Ravaldy · · Score: 1

      The problem is that for those of us who grew up with alphabetic writing systems

      How does that help the original menu system. It was categorized, not alphabetic (Except within it's sub menus).

      Another problem, IMNSHO, is that the ribbon only has room for a small number of actions, most of which I (and probably you) don't use.

      What makes the ribbon powerful is your ability to customize it to look however you want and make it context sensitive. From an end user perspective I can agree that one needs to relearn where things are and most people don't like having to adjust.

      Like in Word, everything under the Mailings tab.

      Not useful for you but I can assure those features are often used in smaller businesses.

    60. Re:What do you mean... by mcswell · · Score: 1

      >> The problem is that for those of us who grew up with alphabetic writing systems
      >How does that help the original menu system. It was categorized, not alphabetic

      I wasn't clear, I guess: I wasn't referring to the order, I simply meant that the menus were written in an alphabetic writing system (that's how we write English), instead of with icons. In the ribbon, I never look at the icons, because most of them are meaningless to me; instead, I read the labels, and the icons just get in the way.

      > What makes the ribbon powerful is your ability to customize it

      That is true now, it was not true of the original ribbon; it was like a Ford that you could have in any color you wanted, so long as it was black.

      >> Like in Word, everything under the Mailings tab.
      > Not useful for you but I can assure those features are often used in smaller businesses.

      I guess if you're sending out Word docs in spam mail, that might be true. But I can't think of any time I've gotten Word docs where it looked like someone might have used Word's "mailing" features. So to me it's just a symptom of Word putting things in front of me that neither I nor anyone else I know ever uses.

      > From an end user perspective I can agree that one needs to relearn where things are and most people don't like having to adjust.

      In the last five or so years, I've adjusted to the changes in Word by learning LaTeX. It does "legal" section numbering (1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1...) right the first time, something which I've never gotten to work reliably in any version of Word. Afaict, rather than fixing the bugs in section numbering, in the last ten years Word has made it almost impossible to set it up. (There are websites that tell how to set it up: it looks incredibly hard to get right.)

    61. Re:What do you mean... by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 1

      That's stupid: Besides not being able to update it easily, you installed unsigned code. Glad to know you make a habit of compromising system security to get up to date apps.

      Wrong. LibreOffice signs all their apps, and provides their PGP public key to verify them. But you wouldn't know that, because if you actually looked it up, you'd have to let the facts get in the way of a good argument.
      Unless you're meaning that they haven't had the package signed by a code signing certificate bought at stupidly high cost from a conventional CA. Because we know CAs are all perfect and NEVER do anything that screws up security for the entire planet......

      Oh, and you can't install a tar full of debs just by clicking on it. If you extract it first then multi-select and choose Package install from the dropdown, it says the "action is not supported". You have to right-click and install all 46 files individually. Slashdot is full of morons who will upvote the worst, weasel-y defenses of their dysfunctional Linux desktops.

      On what planet have you ever managed to find somewhere where you could download "a tar full of debs" to even try to install software in the ass-backwards way?
      And another question: What happens when you try to multi-select and install 46 msi files on Windows? Seriously, what happens? I don't know, because I've never been stupid enough to try it. I'd imagine it would puke in the exact same way, though, or at the very least, make you finish installing one before you started installing the next, otherwise you'd get an msi installer service error, because the Windows Installer can only install one package at a time.
      So, what you're saying is, this feature of Linux sucks because it's just like Windows. Well...you might actually have a point, there......

      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
  2. Congratulations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Well done guys!

  3. Re:Prisoninmate, didya really have a need for .doc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
    In the odd world of the 21st century office setting, people do strange and magical things with documents: share them.
    Some documents get created by one person, and then, wait for it, get USED by somebody else! Such wizardry these days!

    If using proprietary (but dominant) formats were such a non-existent case, why would the LO team bother to build in the functionality?

  4. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    OpenOffice kind of sucked.

    Want to know what sucked and sucked really badly? Having to pay for the mighty flagship Microsoft Office for the PC. Then paying for the mighty flagship Microsoft Office for the Mac. Then when you take a document from one to the other, they hardly resemble each other. If' I'm paying for a program on two computers it might be nice to have the same document look the same on each computer

    After standardizing on the supposedly inferior free Office on my Mac's my PC's and My Linux boxes, documents are passed back and forth without an issue. Been several years now, and Microsoft Office is the incompatible one, the outlier.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  5. Congrats, team! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Big thanks to everyone who contributed to the LibreOffice project! Great product I couldn't live without. Your work is much appreciated!

  6. I was able to successfully use a docx by sciengin · · Score: 2

    > I was able to successfully use a moderately complex docx template without a hitch
    Im sorry what?
    How is that a new feature?
    LibreOffice has been more compatible to MS Office than MS Office to MS Office, for years!
    The only way nowadays to open old doc and docx files that were created with ancient versions of MS Office is to use LibreOffice since MS likes to drop support for its own file formats.

    1. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by BlueLightning · · Score: 2

      It depends on the document. I still regularly encounter Word docs and Powerpoint presentations that don't render properly in LibreOffice; it'll be interesting to see how 5.1 improves that though.

    2. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by markdavis · · Score: 1

      >"It depends on the document. I still regularly encounter Word docs and Powerpoint presentations that don't render properly in LibreOffice; it'll be interesting to see how 5.1 improves that though."

      Most of the time, although not all of the time, it is due to either a very poorly formatted document, or using non-standard fonts, or both. At this point, it seems almost as likely that different versions of MS-Office with different OS's and different font sets have about the same success/failure rate as sharing those proprietary formats with LibreOffice (of course, your results may vary).

      It is rare I have any cross-software issues with typical documents, although it does happen sometimes, and I use nothing but LibreOffice and get all kinds of proprietary MS-Office documents every day.

      What is interesting is that I sometimes will send ODF files back at them now, and rarely get complaints anymore. Not sure if this means MS-Office can generally/finally read ODF files. (I used to send only PDF or if I knew they had to edit it, I would send an MS-Office format back to them, exported from LibreOffice, IN ADDITION to the ODF file).

    3. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by JanneM · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yep. I always use LibreOffice to edit and send back documents for work. It usually works OK, but with frequent glitches. I worried about that, so I once asked our admin if she had a problem with the docs I sent back. She said mine were no worse than those she got from everybody else, and she had never realized I wasn't actually using MS word to edit them. Glitches and formatting errors is apparently completely normal even with the same version of MS word on different computers.

      --
      Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
    4. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The only way nowadays to open old doc and docx files that were created with ancient versions of MS Office is to use LibreOffice since MS likes to drop support for its own file formats.

      I've heard this repeated time and time again on Slashdot and in other nerd circles without a single example of such a document file ever posted to back up the claims. Do you actually have one to back up your claims? I routinely open doc files created back in Office 97 that open just fine in 2010 and beyond. Even saved back out and work perfectly fine in the older versions of Office as well.

    5. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      In my copy of Word 2010, under "Save As...", I see the following supported formats:
      Word Document (*.docx)
      Word Macro-Enabled Document (*.docm)
      Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc)
      PDF (*.pdf)
      Word XML Document (*.xml)
      Word 2003 XML Document (*.xml)
      OpenDocument Text (*.odt)
      Works 6-9 Document (*.wps)
      and a bunch more besides, like HTML, plain text, rtf, xps, etc...

      For opening documents, there are even more options, like old WordPerfect 5.x and 6.x documents. I didn't see an option for opening .wri files from twenty years ago though, so there's that. Aha, gotcha M$!

      Word 2010 opens lots of old file formats, and can save to quite a few of them as well. Did MS drop support for these in newer version of Word? I have no idea, but that would seem pretty strange to me. Smells like FUD to me.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    6. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by jones_supa · · Score: 1, Troll

      Most of the time, although not all of the time, it is due to either a very poorly formatted document, or using non-standard fonts, or both.

      Doesn't matter. That's still denialism. It still does not work. The end user will throw the software in trash. There must be compatibility even for badly-designed documents, because in real life we have those as well.

      Often Linux is defended by saying that the BIOS writers simply did a bad job. Well, maybe they did, but at the end of the day, we just want a computer that works. So in the operating system we must write good workarounds for firmware bugs if we want a good user experience.

    7. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      While both are interesting opinions: a) that we need to write compatibility, b) that nobody seems to notice minor incompatabilites.

      Of more interest is actually watching for LibreOffice developers are actually doing:

      1. Roundtripping thousands of documents to find crashers and keep them fixed.
      2. Exporting all documents into other formats and fixing issues.
      3. Adding missing features and building tests to validate them and keep them working correctly.
      4. Testing and adding spreadsheet functions and compatibility. I've seen massive work on corner areas of speadsheet functions that I'm sure most /. users will never use unless they're statisticians. This areas is interesting as its not just about correctness but they have to code in roundtripping, cater for incorrect functions in LO, MS and other suites, make corrections to their own functions and maintain backward and forward compatibility. Amazing work really.

      Based on the work that the LibreOffice developers do they're clearly hard at work in camp a). So instead of people focusing on what might be a case of incompatibility and interpreting it as LibreOffice not caring, it would be rather more helpful to realise that they do and that its a big mountain to climb.

      One way to seriously help is that if you find a document incompatibility is to create a tiny use case of the issue. Then watch how fast LibreOffice people actually fix these things.

      You got the software for free. Its a majorly important part of breaking people free from lockin. It's certainly easier to post an snide comment on /. but when a projects shows such commitment to something we care about the least we can do is help them by helping fix these incompatabilites. And lets be honest they're pretty slim knowadays. Even the past font issues are solved by having foss fonts that have the same metrics as propriety MS fonts.

    8. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Wait, Word reformats the document automagically for your default printer? That's the funniest thing I've ever heard, not because I'm doubting you, but because I believe you

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

      I have a claim to backup. It's pretty rare, but I occasionally encounter a Word doc of some type that LibreOffice pukes on if it will open at all and sometimes flat out crashes the application. Strangely, if I use the otherwise vastly inferior (IMHO) predecessor OpenOffice, those files, so far, reliably open. So I always maintain an installed copy of OpenOffice for this rare event. I am about to install 5.1, maybe this will now be a thing of the past. It will be hard to say since it's pretty rare. I'm not bashing LibreOffice. I love LibreOffice to death. Just pointing something out.

      All-in-all I think it is safe to say that word processing, mostly in the MS Office sense, is a disaster area. There is more than a couple posts above this pointing things out along the lines where someone with one version of office saves a file, and someone else one or two versions off opens it and the formatting has gone to hell despite the fact the fact the file type should be compatible between the two. I am sure most of us have been there. This is likely why PDFs are used whenever possible.

      I have had the opportunity save and open files across multiple versions of LibreOffice and of different file types going back about five years. Never had a problem. This is LibreOffice to LibreOffice in the absence of MS Office.

      --
      Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
    10. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You haven'tnoticed theMS Office 2007and 2013 disappearingspaces problemhave you? Itis ratherannoying.

    11. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There was a time about 10-15 years ago that MS had a auto-downloading update to MS Office that removed the ability to open certain formats of documents. Although one would think that things live forever on the Internet, I've been unable to track down the story, either in Google or on Slashdot. Searching for the obvious terms just brings back tons of links to MS documentation; the original story is buried.

      Of course, this is just the word of some AC, but I can assure you, it's not FUD. MS did remove formats at one point, without asking the user whether it was o.k. People just did an update and, voila, they couldn't open files that they could open before the update.

    12. Re: I was able to successfully use a docx by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 1

      The best bit of incompatibility with MS office products was the ability of MS Works to open MS Word documents ... and the inability of MS Word to open MS Works documents. There was a downloadable plugin one could install to convert Works to Word, but the flagship office product couldn't load the files from their other office product.

      Was a real pain back when MS Works was included by default on new machines that people used for work/school, and they couldn't transfer files to computers using the full MS Office suite without jumping through a bunch of extra hoops.

  7. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Want to know what sucked and sucked really badly? Having to pay for the mighty flagship Microsoft Office for the PC. Then paying for the mighty flagship Microsoft Office for the Mac. Then when you take a document from one to the other, they hardly resemble each other. If' I'm paying for a program on two computers it might be nice to have the same document look the same on each computer

    It's worse than that. How about setting up a document, getting pagination, margins, font size, etc, all figured out, so it looks perfect. Then, you go to print it, and change the printer from your cheapo inkjet to your good laser, and suddenly your document formatting takes a dump.

    --
    "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
  8. Can this be co-installed with the stock version? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2

    Can this be co-installed with the current version (for instance, 4.8.2.8 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, the latest Long Term Support Ubuntu release)?

    Or do you have collisions which require you to purge the old one in order to try the new one, or which cause foulups if you don't?

    (Honest question. I've seen a lot of that kind of thing with other projects. So now I'm a bit shy of trying the latest-and-greatest release of any tool on the production machines I depend on for time-critical work.)

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  9. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by MSG · · Score: 2

    The tool you were after was Adobe FrameMaker

    Or Scribus. Or TeX. Or anything that makes PDFs.

  10. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    The tool you were after was Adobe FrameMaker

    Or Scribus. Or TeX. Or anything that makes PDFs.

    Or Apache Office. Where I don't have those issues. They give a free refund as well, if I'm not satisfied.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  11. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    These days if I want someone to have an exact copy of a document, I produce it in LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) and export to PDF.

    If exact were the metric, sure. But you don't think that the same program for two computers that you paid hundreds of dollars for shouldn't at least look sortakinda similar on both?

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  12. Re:Improved UI or just changed UI? by turbidostato · · Score: 1

    "Do any genuinely objective metrics exists for office suite user interfaces?"

    It shouldn't have to be too difficult. Just give a test document to a bunch of users and ask them to type it. Average time to type, typeset, etc. goes up or down? How about average deviations?

    Want to go beyond that? add some instrumentation: how much non-typing time takes for people to put a text in bold? how much time between mouse-button clicks? how many clicks per hour? how many chars typed per hour?

    Want to go even beyond? Use eye-tracking to see where the eyes stay their time. It is in the text? in the menus?

    "But they don't say how that's measured. "

    Ah! that's a different issue: one thing is how difficult is to gain objective metrics from an UI, another one if these people have in fact taken objective metrics.

  13. Re:My Mac Experience by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

    Did you bother to submit a bug report and include the document in the bug report? Or do you expect the developers to be psychic?

  14. Re:Can this be co-installed with the stock version by caseih · · Score: 2

    Yes you can install the latest version alongside the existing stock version. It's always a good idea to keep the old working version around should you encounter any bugs in the new version. Just grab the latest deb packages from libreoffice.org.

  15. Re:My Mac Experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dude, the guy already stated that he's not a communist. So unless someone is paying him for working on submitting his bug reports, he ain't doing squat.

  16. Re:Can this be co-installed with the stock version by sanf780 · · Score: 1
    The Wiki is out of date with regards installation instructions. I am not sure about Debian based installations, but I read somewhere else that the RPM package provides an install script that lets you install anywhere you want. You can then use something like I do at work, use "module" to differentiate which version you want to run. Not too graphical for most earthlings, but a good way to have different versions installed.

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

  17. Re:My Mac Experience by pz · · Score: 2

    I run a conference where the abstracts of presenters are published in a book. After a teeth-gnashing experience dealing with the output of Pages, much worse than the experience with Word or OpenOffice output, I decided to no longer accept submissions written in Pages. I just don't have the time for incompatibility for the sake of incompatibility.

    --

    Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
  18. Re:Improved UI or just changed UI? by scdeimos · · Score: 1

    After watching the demo videos I can't see any *substantial* changes from the 4.x series (additional menu options and a pull out formatting dock, that's about it). Sounds like marketing bullshit to me.

  19. Re:My Mac Experience by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    or even better, drop your pages/keynote combo, they are the worse of them all, their native format changes without forward or backward compatibility in mind, has no documentation whatsoever,, nobody cares about the .pages that changes every year with hooks to iCloud and IOS versions.

    I know you "think differently" but man, pages, really?

  20. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    I've used MS office all my life, and never actually PAID for it.

    Well, working for the folks I did, we sorta had to pay for it.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  21. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    Yep, first thing Word does when it opens a document is reformat it for the default printer you're connected to and you can't stop it.

    Ach - I forgot about that one. It was a nuisance doing posters in PowePoint with that "feature."

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  22. Re:Prisoninmate, didya really have a need for .doc by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

    It's also not necessarily a good thing. There's good reason that almost no one jabs knives into their eyes. It's not because their "sheeple".

  23. Does auto-update work yet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Does auto-update work yet? I'm getting pretty bored with downloading the whole thing over and over and installing it on every computer, latpop, virtual machine, alternate OS over and over. RSYNC diff the working dir, download changes, save 99% of your bandwidth, lose a fair chunk of CPU cycles, save the world.

  24. Re:Prisoninmate, didya really have a need for .doc by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    Humans also evolved way beyond lemmings. Anon was appealing to popularity.

  25. Re:My Mac Experience by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 1, Troll

    I just don't have the time for incompatibility for the sake of incompatibility.

    You've hit on the crux of the issue with alternatives to MS Office. People expect to be able to open a document to and have it look right, and if it doesn't it's the senders fault, not theirs. In a work environment. That's a show stopper. Sure PDFs are great but if you have to send an editable document your SOL. I used to recommend a free OSS Office product to friends who were sending kids to school since for most of what they needed to do, at zero cost, that solution works as long as they remember to save it as a .doc file; but since many schools now offer Office360 for free that's a better solution since it simply works.

    --
    I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  26. Wonderful, but a sloppy UI by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    LibreOffice is wonderful, but the user interface is amazingly poor. Want italic? Click on a bold italic lower case letter a . Why not an italic letter I ?

    Yesterday I spent several hours writing an article using LibreOffice v 5.0.4.2. Many very seriously weird and time-consuming things happened.

    It would be sensible, in my opinion, for governments to get together and support LibreOffice, so that Microsoft Office could be abandoned.

  27. Re:Prisoninmate, didya really have a need for .doc by Alumoi · · Score: 1

    Humans also evolved way beyond lemmings. Anon was appealing to popularity.

    No, they didn't. Peer pressure takes care of those who stand in the crowd.

  28. Does matter by markdavis · · Score: 1

    >Doesn't matter. That's still denialism. It still does not work. The end user will throw the software in trash. There must be compatibility even for badly-designed documents, because in real life we have those as well.

    Yes it does matter, because the point is that a very badly formatted document or one that uses non-standard fonts is just as likely to not look the same from various people USING MS-OFFICE as is does when viewed by various people using LibreOffice.

  29. Yes, I know... by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    How long is it since Hitler? He's still not very popular.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  30. Hopeful LibreOffice user here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've (finally) installed Linux Mint end of last year (dual booting with Win7 ATM) as well as LibreOffice 5.0. Here are my particular observations (YMMV):

    * I have a quick&dirty (not too dirty for continued use though) tool made in Excel using Macros, for I18N purposes. It takes tabular data and generates plain text .properties files from it (a bit more complicated than exporting to .CSV). The macros worked "almost"-as-is in Libre Office, it took me no more than half an hour to port it. Very happy to use LO for that in future.

    * I occasionally (freelance) write some information material that gets sent to customers. The volume does not warrant professional brochure printing, but given that it is inkjet printed, one would still like to put a nice neat "publishing" touch to it. MS Word worked very nice for this kind of "light desktop publishing". Admittedly, it does have some slightly more "advanced" features like paragraph styles, custom gradient backgrounds behind graphics with transparent areas, text flowing around graphics, page headers and footers, custom borders. Gets broken by LO. Also, as of yet I have not been able to create an equivalent document from scratch in LO, it seems not to have all the functions. So stuck with Win+MSOffice on this one for now.

    * I regularly give talks and relied heavily on PowerPoint for slides. What is especially nice for me in PP is that I am able to enter slide notes on the same screen as the main slide. Also presenter view, which shows (on the presenter's local screen) the current slide, notes, thumbnails of the following slides, as well as a timer. Afterwards, the presentation file is often requested by members of the audience. Currently using LO, but in a limited fashion. Conversion to/from Powerpoint is not viable, fonts for one get lost as well as some of the graphical effects. The way I make it work for me is to export to PDF and use that for slides. Notes are handheld/handwritten (still need to finetune this), timer gets delegated to a timer on the mobile phone. There are some nice 3rd party templates for LO to be downloaded, although not quite on the level of a PP "theme" that also does fonts and suggested color combinations and generally makes the look&feel a no-brainer. Not ideal but workable. On the positive side this frees me from the lectern with the notebook running the presentation, so I can move about on the stage and even in the audience.

    * Oh, and apart from MS Office the other thing that I haven't gotten lucky/happy with on Linux is Sketchup.

    So I will certainly be upgrading and trying this with a lot of interest, and be hoping it will get me closer to my goal of ditching MSOffice. On the other hand, I doubt that that will happen soon for people that are "almost" power users of MS Office as its not only a matter of menu option position and maybe file format, but extends all the way to how these apps are actually used.

  31. Warning: Java broken on Mac by kwack · · Score: 2

    LO 5.1 does not detect the Oracle 1.8 JRE on my Macbook. Reverting to 5.0.4 fixed this. If you're on El Capitan and need LO Java functionality, spare yourself the trouble of upgrading until this is sorted out.

  32. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    I gotta break this to you, because it's hilarious... so did Wordpenis, I mean wordpervert, I mean wordperfect.* It had no problem with this even back in the DOS days.

    * This is what we called this stuff back then, adults and not-so-adults alike, and if you don't like it, you can suck me while I'm Micro$oft on some Compu$erve.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  33. Re:OpenOffice kind of sucked by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Or Scribus. Or TeX. Or anything that makes PDFs.

    Has Scribus stopped exploding? I found that if you tried to do anything more complex than a newsletter, it was crashes all the way down. Went back to using Adobe CS2 in a VM and I couldn't be happier compared to using Scribus and Inkscape, even if it is a bit poky.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  34. Cloud mount! by wnfJv8eC · · Score: 1

    Well, interface wise I don't see that much difference. I use a desktop with 1280x1080 and a laptop with what 13xx by what ever. The point is a little less bling with respect to toolbars is just great. I Never use a toolbar. I go right to the menus. So wasted space. There are, at least four ways to save a file. Really? four ways. File/Save, clt-s, a curious icon at the bottom of the application and in the toolbar. Four. Over fu*king kill. The ability to cloud mount! YES! I'm OK with Google's online editor. But that also means I have to be proficient in two editors. But this also means I can store my files on google drive and drop my git backup system, moving files from desktop to laptop and back. It's not difficult, but now, not needed as I always have a wifi or G3 connect. So for the first time, I'm donating to Libreoffice! $50 US. Easily the best money, besides contributing to Bernie Sanders, that I have spent this year.

  35. Still Waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Does Libre Office yet open old WordPerfect documents? WordPerfect was the de facto standard for law firms for over a decade. There are millions of legal documents in WordPerfect format, and being able to open them can be critical. OpenOffice opens them. I know the Document Liberation Project allows it to some extent, but the compatibility wasn't as good as OpenOffice last I checked.

  36. Still no Normal View by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    After 15 or so years, still no Normal View and no hope to get it. I do have LO on my PC just in case, but it'll always play a secondary role just because of this.

  37. I switched and switched back by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

    About a month ago OpenOffice 4.0.1 started crashing hard when exiting - freezing up the whole system UI, although streaming audio continued playing (Linux, Fedora 20, KDE. Push Reset button and reboot.). I switched to Libre Office and happily used it for 2 days, until I discovered it wouldn't save to the .sxc filetype. Installed OpenOffice 4.1.2, everything seems good now.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  38. Re:Prisoninmate, didya really have a need for .doc by epyT-R · · Score: 1

    I didn't say peer pressure wasn't a force, but humans have a choice. Lemmings do not.