LibreOffice: Better or as good as OO?

Questions about applications and software
Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Locked
Steven Lake

LibreOffice: Better or as good as OO?

Post by Steven Lake »

I just heard today that LibreOffice's first release just hit the distribution channels, and from the report it is actually doing extremely well, and is even fixing a large number of bugs that were never addressed in the regular OO suite. So here's my question. Is LibreOffice at the same level as OO, behind it still, or is it actually better than OO at this point? Because if it's better, or even possibly just as good, then I might just ditch OO and go with Libre in hopes that it'll actually fix all the regressions that seem to keep popping up in OO.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
dawgdoc

Re: LibreOffice: Better or as good as OO?

Post by dawgdoc »

There are a number of articles about the 3.3 release of each office suite. LibreOffice should have all of the improvements coming in OpenOffice, or very nearly, since its developers were working on OOo up until about September. They have made additional improvements in LibreOffice, changes that are due to arrive in OOo as part of 3.4. This article from GHackers may clarify it a little, it includes:
The move has caused confusion for Open Office users. Popular questions that came up on various forums and websites were for instance:

* What’s the difference between Libre Office and Open Office?
* Which version should I download and install?

It is a bit of a hassle to compare the differences between Libre Office 3.3 and Open Office 3.3. There are not many on first glance. If you look at the new features and fixes page over at LibreOffice you see some features that are specific to the Office suite. Among them are:

* Load and Save ODF documents in flat XML to make external XSLT processing easier
* Import SVG pictures* into Draw and edit them interactively
* Lotus Word Pro import filte
* MS Works import filter
* SVG import into Writer
* PPTX chart import feature
* “Experimental” mode, to allow users to test out as-yet-unfinished features
* Show all appropriate formats by default on “Save As”
* New easy-to-use dialog box for creating and managing title pages
* AutoCorrections match case of the words that AutoCorrect replaces
* Vastly improved RTF export fixing many critical data-loss bugs
* Many Wordperfect import improvements
* Embedding of standard PDF fonts

The development team has made many changes that are not visible to the average user. The source code has been cleaned for instance.
Arstechnica adds this:
Navigation features in Writer have been improved, the thesaurus got an overhaul, and the dialogs for printing and managing title pages got major updates. LibreOffice Calc touts better Excel interoperability and faster Excel file importing. The maximum size of a Calc spreadsheet has increased to 1 million rows.

In addition to delivering feature improvements, the LibreOffice developers have also focused heavily on code clean-up efforts with the hope of reducing legacy cruft, thus making the code easier to maintain and extend. Progress has been made, but the effort is still ongoing.
Developer.com had this to add:
Overall, the key differences between LibreOffice 3.3 and Open Office 3.3 that Meeks cited boil down to a long list of bug fixes. He noted that bug fixes have been made all over the place to fix flaws big and small. And those changes are not all necessarily being contributed back to Oracle's Open Office.

"It's up to each contributor as to where the changes go, but typically the changes are going straight into LibreOffice and being contributed over to Oracle," Meeks said. "These changes and fixes are specific to LibreOffice."

Among the bug fixes in LibreOffice are memory and startup issues that could end up serving to improve performance.
There is more out there, not hard to find. I have not installed LibreOffice at this time. In fact I think a person would have to have been using Release Candidates 2, 3, and 4 to have used it long enough to have a personal opinion rather than just copying from articles as I did.
RichardM

Re: LibreOffice: Better or as good as OO?

Post by RichardM »

Hey - for what it is worth if anyone is reading this who has had trouble with openoffice, then try libreoffice! I made zero changes to openoffice but it has been nothing but a headache for me - taking a crazy amount of time to open, and then buggy - at one point erasing some data from several files without any notification that there was a problem (it happened more than once so I know it was not me). I replaced now with libreoffice - too soon to tell on the bug side but it opens like a normal application thankfully, and seems to run very well.
Chris_C

Re: LibreOffice: Better or as good as OO?

Post by Chris_C »

Let's not forgot that Libre is based off Open Office VIA go-oo.

Other MS office alternatives to consider:
Free:
Cloud-based: Google Docs, ThinkFree, Zoho
Installed: K Office (KDE)

Propitiatory:
Softmaker

My two cents: Have not tried Libre yet. I like Open Office (Except for alignment issues with some .docx)

Zoho and Google Docs work well with Zoho having the edge. Mainly because of all the extra free stuff you can get from them.

The closest I've used to MS Office has to be Softmaker office. It doesn't have the alignment issues and has frequent update/patches. I'm a student and got it for $35.00. $80 normally.

In conclusion, if you want FOSS then Libre might be the way to go if the project is continued to be supported and doesn't end up like go-oo.org which was discontinued in Sept. 2010 with all work taken over by Libre after 6 months.

If you are going to be doing a ton of professional work and need closer to MS compatibility then the Propitiatory program Softmaker Office might be what you are looking for.
gavinhc

Re: LibreOffice: Better or as good as OO?

Post by gavinhc »

I have been using LibreOffice on my Windows computer at work since beta 1 or 2 (didn't want to take the time to install it on Mint at home since I have been going through a period of frequent reinstalls) with no problems. They have even fixed some of the annoying problems introduced in OpenOffice.org in recent versions, like making all the file icons the same colour in OO.o 3.2.1 making it difficult to tell visually whether a file was a spreadsheet or a presentation.

The only major complaint I have about LibreOffice in its current state is that the UI doesn't feel quite as polished as in the recent versions of OO.o. I would assume that this is a result of the Document Foundation putting together a UI based on older versions of OO.o to differentiate themselves from the Oracle versions. I expect that in upcoming releases they will be working to bring the UI up to the level it is currently at in OO.o.
Locked

Return to “Software & Applications”