LibreOffice 6.1 Released

The Document Foundation said on Wednesday it is releasing LibreOffice 6.1, the latest major update to its productivity suite. It is available to download for Linux, Windows, and macOS platforms. The new version offers, among other features, Colibre, a new icon theme for Windows based on Microsoft's icon design guidelines, which it says, makes the office suite visually appealing for users coming from the Microsoft environment. The Document Foundation also reworked the image handling feature on LibreOffice to make it "significantly faster and smoother thanks to a new graphic manager and an improved image lifecycle, with some advantages also when loading documents in Microsoft proprietary formats." Other new features and changes include: The reorganization of Draw menus with the addition of a new Page menu, for better UX consistency across the different modules. A major improvement for Base, only available in experimental mode: the old HSQLDB database engine has been deprecated, though still available, and the new Firebird database engine is now the default option (users are encouraged to migrate files using the migration assistant from HSQLDB to Firebird, or by exporting them to an external HSQLDB server). Significant improvements in all modules of LibreOffice Online, with changes to the user interface to make it more appealing and consistent with the desktop version. An improved EPUB export filter, in terms of link, table, image, font embedding and footnote support, with more options for customizing metadata. Online Help pages have been enriched with text and example files to guide the users through features, and are now easier to localize.

LibreOffice 6.1's new features have been developed by a large community of code contributors: 72% of commits are from developers employed by companies sitting in the Advisory Board like Collabora, Red Hat and CIB and by other contributors such as SIL and Pardus, and 28% are from individual volunteers. In addition, there is a global community of individual volunteers taking care of other fundamental activities such as quality assurance, software localization, user interface design and user experience, editing of help system text and documentation, plus free software and open document standards advocacy at a local level. You can read the full changelog here. Here's a video that walks through the new features and changes that LibreOffice is receiving with v6.1.

Comments

Why adoption is low

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Here's my analysis on the root cause of why very few people still use this. From TFA (or at least the summary):

>> new features have been developed by...: 72% of commits are from...companies...like Collabora, Red Hat and CIB ...individual volunteers taking care of ...user interface design and user experience

When you have your JV team on the part consumers care most about (i.e., can I actually use this thing; is it easy enough to use that I'd install it on my mom's/grandma's/kid's computer), and you're developing a consumer product, you are really just shooting yourself in the foot. Because:

>> major improvement for Base, only available in experimental mode: the old HSQLDB database engine has been deprecated

No one cares. Really.

Re:Why adoption is low

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a common problem with FOSS software. Proper UX and the general stability and ease of use are not major developmental concerns. It isn't sexy. Most FOSS contributors fall into one of two camps. They are either employed by a company that contributes code or they are a volunteer. The corporate coders write what they are told to write which is almost never going to touch on stuff that consumers care about. Red Hat does servers so they care about server side systems software. Microsoft is mostly interested in EEE so they are going to mostly contribute code that allows Windows to borrow the best parts of *nix and little else. Google cares about Android and their data centers. etc etc. Very little of this has anything to do with Grandma trying to use her email except for Android. As for the volunteers they do what they want and usually its what involves glory or has cool appeal. Improving stability isn't sexy. Its a lot of boring work and fixing other people's bugs. They would rather be the next Linus and be known as the guy who made whatever. So you end up with unnecessary and often inferior crap replacing established systems such as SystemD and Wayland. You also end up with bloated and horrific windowing systems like what Gnome and KDE have become. Corporate contributors could do a better job but they dont care about the Window Manager. All server deployments are CLI and usually headless anyways.

Re:Why adoption is low

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a common problem with FOSS software.

Bwahahahah, have even looked at all the abnominations coming out from Redmond the last 20 years or so? Sorry, one sentence was all it took, it's impossible to take you seriously after that. You could have saved the rest of your effort.

Re:It's still crap

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> if you have any office suite on your resume

OK, I'll bite. There are at least three exceptions to this that I can think of:
1) you're applying for a top desktop support role, where you might want to list a successful Office roll-out that you designed/managed/cleaned-up-after
2) you aren't at least a 8 (or a 6 in some states) and female, and you want an entry-level receptionist/assistant job
3) you need to get your resume past a brain-dead HR department that stapled "Microsoft Office" to its "languages" requirements (in addition to C#, Ruby, etc.)

Re:systemd?

[Anonymous Coward]

for the love of tux, put it to rest already, ffs. there's nothing in libreoffice to even fucking use systemd for.

if you don't like systemd... don't fucking use it. don't fucking talk about it (most don't even know what they're talking about).. don't whine about it, either. and shut the fuck up already. it's NOT going anywhere.

and besides, you could always use the real openoffice, part of the apache family since 2011, instead. perhaps its slower pace of development and stable performance on all supported platforms would suit you better. slow and steady wins the race, after all. and if you're that fucking paranoid about new shit in your precious linux, why the fuck would you use libreoffice's hack job?

Re: LibreOffice isn't very good

[Bearhouse]

That's the entire point unfortunately, MS goes to extradinary lengths to ensure nothing will ever threaten truly be able to be compatible with their formats...including launching their own "standards"...that's what Libre and Google should concentrate on, rather than adding point less features that 90% of users never need or even understand.
Can open and modify a simple "word" document, fine...people will get over the UI differences...
Cannot open a PPT or PPTX that your boss has stuffed some weird animations in using MS PowerPoint, bam, your shiny new competitor is dead.

Re:LibreOffice isn't very good

[nagora]

Even documents saved in MS Office format sometimes don't convert properly.

The same is true of different versions of MS Office, of which there are many.

Re:LibreOffice isn't very good

[Archtech]

Publishing specifications and claiming adherence to standards is quite "good enough" for Microsoft from a business point of view - which of course is the only point of view it has ever had.

The number of people who notice that the software doesn't quite jibe with the specs, or doesn't quite implement the standard (or, usually, both) is small. And, by their very ability to understand software, they are wholly without influence in business circles.

So, from Microsoft's point of view, screw 'em.