Interest in LibreOffice, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, is on the rise, with weekly downloads of its software package close to 1 million a week. That’s the highest download number since 2023.
“We estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but it’s important to note that we respect users’ privacy and don’t track them, so we can’t say for sure,” said Mike Saunders, an open-source advocate and a deputy to the board of directors at The Document Foundation.
LibreOffice users typically want a straightforward interface, Saunders said. “They don’t want subscriptions, and they don’t want AI being ‘helpful’ by poking its nose into their work — it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,” he said.
There are genuine use cases for generative AI tools, but many users prefer to opt-in to it and choose when and where to enable it. “We have zero plans to put AI into LibreOffice. But we understand the value of some AI tools and are encouraging developers to create … extensions that use AI in a responsible way,” Saunders said.
See it wasn’t that hard:
- Common sense ? ⛔ IDGAF
- Freedom ? ⛔ IDGAF
- Privacy ? ⛔ IDGAF
- Subscription ? ✅ Let’s crack this software or find something free instead
It’s not just the subscription they want to avoid. Office has been steadily enshitified to the point nobody I know likes using it anymore.
It started going downhill when they got rid of word art.
Teams has decided it won’t recognise like 50% of word docs anymore. So you can no longer edit them within teams and have to download them. If you simply read and scroll down it, the scroll glitches so bad for no reason. Ugh
No matter who you ask, it still seems like everyone fucking hates it. I never heard a single good word about teams and still its one of the most widely used conference softwares.
It’s absolutely terrible. I’m looking at it now and just glancing at the screen I can come up with problems. All your recent chance are down the left hand side in chronological order with absolutely no way for you to organize or label them, It frequently just doesn’t work and you have to use the online version which has a different UI for zero reason at all, that is no configurable options for muting. It’s either on or off. Even WhatsApp has options to mute for 30 minutes.
That’s just the surface stuff. There’s a bunch of little annoying UI issues as well that only become really apparent when you use it for a while. So they definitely didn’t QA any of it.
Nice. Maybe now Microsoft will respond by
offering non-subscription optionsinventing a new proprietary industry-standard file format so their bloated ransomware remains mandatory.Fortunately platforms like docs are providing sufficient competition that I don’t think they’d be able to lock it down as effectively as they once could.
They’ll have to settle for “warning” the user if they detect a file that was made by libreoffice.
The warning can be disabled from the settings
It’s still enabled by default and acts as FUD for the average user who won’t know to disable it and will get spooked by it.
That it can be opted out of doesn’t change its propaganda value at all.
I agree, I would never give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.
I really like LibreOffice but I still need Excel. It’s a good 20 years ahead of the OSS software. It works find if your doing light work though
That’s the problem: if you want greater adoption, you must cover the needs of accountants, because Excel knows perfectly well that they are the fixed source of income for companies.
Makes me wonder, what exactly are you missing on LibreOffice Sheet?
For me biggest missing I’ve found is web/external queries. Excel has a system to log in to an API, retrieve that data and format it before it lands on your sheet.
Libre functionality here is lacking/non existent.
My workaround was to write a python query, add it as a cron job, write that data to a csv then call that csv from my sheet with a timed refresh. Not something the average user can or wants to do.
Everything else I’ve found achievable.
Easiest thing I can think of off the top of my head is dealing with pivot tables. UI is terrible in OpenOffice also integrations with PowerBI does not exist along with XLookup not existing last I checked
OpenOffice?? That thing is dead. I thought we’re talking about LibreOffice.
Is this better than Apache open office?
In my opinion, yes. I use it almost daily at work and I have it on my PC just in case.
Open Office is not maintained anymore
I ditched MS office for Libre long time ago, all I need it for is to open and view the occasional document anyways. For creating or editing documents I like Googles office suite better though
Does anyone know how to get endnote or a similar citation manager to work in Libre Office?
If you ever figure it out I’d love to know, too. I relied entirely on Libre Office as an undergrad but missed this feature of MS Word. I currently use a combination of Scribbr and Purdue Owl but would prefer an offline and open source solution.
Zotero has plugins for LibreOffice and other word processors: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_integration
Copying my response from above for u!
I’ve been using Zotero since I converted a few weeks back. It has some really useful plugins, so I would recommend adding this one first- it’s like a store where you can easily browse and add them :))
I’ve using using it with Obsidian (there’s a short guide you can find online), so while I’m writing an essay in Obsidian I can just hit a key shortcut and it lists every paper I’ve saved to Zotero. Then when I click one, it adds the citation!
I’ve been using Zotero since I converted a few weeks back. It has some really useful plugins, so I would recommend adding this one first- it’s like a store where you can easily browse and add them :))
I’ve using using it with Obsidian (there’s a short guide you can find online), so while I’m writing an essay in Obsidian I can just hit a key shortcut and it lists every paper I’ve saved to Zotero. Then when I click one, it adds the citation. So useful
Zotero is the tool you want. It works perfectly.
Oh, that’s fantastic! Thank you, I will give it a try!
Obligatory comment that endorses pirating software. We need to make sure this stereotype about Lemmy remains accurate.
I’ve been using LibreOffice for years and it is fantastic – although I have always had problems importing PowerPoints. Xcel and Word documents are fine, but PowerPoint is always a mess.
PowerPoints suffer from lack of smart objects, and in the case of using Linux, font conversion. But it’s just that we’ve got to persevere with it. 😅
Dropped the Word suite and used openoffice, then switched to libreoffice. Definitely a slightly clunkier feel to it, but avoiding yet more subscription, cloud based, internet connection needed, account needed software is becoming more and more important.
Been using openoffice for 15+ years, what made you switch to libreoffice?
Pretty much what everyone said, especially better import/export of microsoft document formats - but one of the things they didn’t mention is that LibreOffice can be easily downloaded and installed from repositories. If I do a fresh linux install it’s just a command line or some other software package installer away. Super easy. I find LibreOffice runs smoother. Only downside is that sometimes it takes a while to load.
And if you’re using a full featured turnkey kind of distro like Mint, LibreOffice is pre-installed and ready to update via the repo.
For me it was docx. Oo couldn’t get the formatting right but libre could. This was back when docx was new and i was in school ao the teachers didn’t take off for strange lines or bad formatting.
Oracle.
Libreoffice was created as a fork of OpenOffice because the development of OO became stale due to Oracle. If you’re still on OpenOffice, try LibreOffice - it’s kind of the same, but better
For the past like decade the only “updates” OpenOffice has been getting are questionable code comment changes from one dude. These changes literally do nothing, and people have suggested that the only reason he does it is to make OpenOffice seem like it’s still being developed, even though it was abandoned long ago.
Why? IDK, but I think it’s just some stubborn asshole with an axe to grind with the LibreOffice project. OpenOffice still has stronger name recognition than LibreOffice, so a lot of people still use it.
Lol is it really just like
// I did something, trust me
And he pushes it out lmao?
Open office isn’t getting much in the way of updates these days and is considered dormant and maintained by the Apache foundation. Libre-office is the office suite maintained by the document foundation and is where the bulk of developers moved over to.
OpenOffice’s old branding from Sun times was so nice though. Felt like modernity and magic in the sense of Star Wars prequels, Stargate SG-1, that warm kind of thing.
I used OnlyOffice thinking ‘Hey, this is a really similar alternative to MSO!’ Then bugs with slide previews and their ordering happened in the middle of presentations and even worse, memory usage ground my laptop to a halt (electron apps open up with close to 1GB of memory, such as obsidian).
Libre office still hasn’t crashed and the slide previews are accurate. The interface has always been a bit…unrefined even with the new tabbed layout but I can live with that.
I didn’t even know this existed until a few days ago. Downloaded an AppImage to try it out and was able to make a decent pdf with minimal hassle.
I was really worried I’d need to use Foxit Phantom Pdf just to edit a pdf a couple of weeks ago, but libre office draw was very little hassle, with the exception of a bit of shifting of text.
OpenOffice 3 had the best office suite UI I can imagine.
Dunno where all this “MS is good” comes from.
Don’t like today’s LO UI.
I’ve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again
and word is better at formatting?
The formatting… The formatting that you can easily modify. Sigh. It takes two minutes, my friend.
Anyway, you do you.
I mean, you’re likely right and I probably didn’t give it a good enough shot. I just haven’t had the smoothest experience with it. It took me twice as long to make an ugly Resume on libre than the time it took for me to make a decent one on “free” word
You’re keeping it entrenched.
Lack of quality replacement is keeping it entrenched. LibreOffice needs to step it up.
Have you tried OnlyOffice?
LaTeX is your friend
Yup. I used Libra in college but getting the formatting right took longer than writing my papers. If I had to pay for a subscription to office I wouldn’t, and I don’t, I just prefARR’ my office apps.
I get that… dealing with hanging indentation was annoying.
I’ve used LibreOffice for years, and formatting is a constant struggle. I end up looking online to figure out how to make a small, simple change, and it turns out the only way to do it is by messing with styles, which is way more than I want. The focus on styles is LO’s biggest drawback, IMO.
FOSS software will win eventually. It may take time, but if good FOSS software is being built by enthusiasts then a time will come where proprietary software fucks up. And when it does, FOSS is ready to take it’s place. And as soon as FOSS has become a standard in some field, why would there ever be a need to go back to proprietary?
if good FOSS software is being built by enthusiasts
LibreOffice is forked long ago from the extremely corporate OpenOffice effort, which in turn originated from the non-open-source Star Office. Not all FOSS comes from enthusiasts.
Maybe. I thought and fought for this from the 1990s on my own small ways with no luck and only to see the rise and rise of walled garden, proprietary, bullshit software.
The issue is end users have the prescience of a gold fish, i have zero solutions to that.
I managed to get my father in law to fully switch to libreoffice, which is in itself a great achievement, as he’s almost 70 and he used to be an msoffice user for most of his adult professional life.
Libreoffice is just great and Europe should start backing and using more open source, non greedy corporate backed projects.
Hi, I hope you don’t mind me asking how you achieved this, my father is 79 and has Parkinsons with hearing problems, he’s deaf in one ear and partially in other ear, so he has personality issues, really can be stubborn and difficult to deal with, been having trouble getting him away from Microsoft products like Windows or Office, any ideas or advice be really helpful and appreciated, ty :o)
Well, I guess there is no universal answer and it obviously can’t be some generic method of achieving this,but what I did was to explain in detail how MsOffice is basically just a standard because people made it so out of convenience and lack of true alternatives and it’s not cheap, plus whatever is made freely available by a corporation means it’s actually you paying with your data for it.
It’s a process and you’d have to convince him to at least allow you to show them side by side or explain how it’s always up to date and you don’t have to throw money at it every x years just because it’s called MsOffice202x, because the benefits of upgrading are not worth the money.
It ain’t easy, I know… but I am also providing support myself when requested, which can become a headache fast, especially with “difficult” people.
We should all get Signal as well. If you don’t have it you’ll probably be surprised how many of your contacts do.
In the usa its just texting
Not that much do though, but yea, people should
Why Signal, specifically?
Its as usable as WhatsApp while being cryptographically secure and private.
WhatsApp is cryptographically secure but yea, still collects your contacts
A backdoor isn’t a flaw?
It’s widely regarded as the gold standard for secure communications.
THIS is what I was looking for. Thanks.
it increases your chances of getting accidentally added to confidential group chats
I was looking for this comment.
If enough of us join up will completely suppress the United States’s ability to carry out military operations.
Nice try Hegseth
