Has anyone tried LibreOffice?

Another Editor · Jan 29, 2011

Some developers of the popular OpenOffice.org suite have gone off to form a new development group that has created a new version of the software called LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/).

For those of you who don't know, OpenOffice.org is a full office suite, like MSOffice, except it is free of charge for download and completely stable. It has all the features that MSWord, Excel, and Powerpoint have, plus many other functions. LibreOffice seems to be an improvement of it. LibreOffice has better PDF exporting (more features that are found in Adobe applications, for instance), has more import and export filters, and has cleaned up the Thesaurus and other language tools. There's a good review of it here (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/...on-announces-first-release-of-libreoffice.ars).

I tried it once and it crashed while saving a file. I tried it again and again and the same thing happened. This file was only 12,000 words long. Maybe it was just a fluke or maybe it was my machine, but I am leery about switching over to it for the time being. Still, the program was created by a foundation that exists to ensure that this product will always be free and that's important considering that OpenOffice is a property of SUN; SUN was recently bought out by Oracle and Oracle has already started to drop many of SUN's other free and open-source projects.

So, has anyone else tried LibreOffice yet?

BradCarsten · Jan 30, 2011

it must have something to do with your computer. I have had no issues. I use ubuntu with openoffice, and my manuscript is currently sitting at 280 000 words.

the next release of ubuntu is switching from OO to LO, so I guess I will wait 4 months before I know, but if they are endorsing it then im all for it

Moonbase · Jan 30, 2011

I’ve been using OpenOffice Portable 3.2.0 (Windows) and OpenOffice 3.2.1 on both Windows XP and kubuntu 10.04 without any problems for quite some time.

LibreOffice 3.3.0 was released on 2011-01-25 (the Windows portable version on 2011-01-27), and since it offers some bugfixes and improvements important to me, I’m in the process of switching over.

So far LibreOffice 3.3.0 Portable runs great on my WinXP system, the full version is installed on my kubuntu 10.04 desktop and also runs without problems. Some very minor bugs seem to exist and are expected to be ironed out with the upcoming 3.3.1 release, scheduled for February this year. (None of these yet affected my use of Writer or Calc.)

All templates and documents I have were exchangeable without any problems. More important even, I use thesauri and hyphenation dictionaries for several languages, as well as the Linguist extension, and even these work as expected.

So if you’re a techie person that loves to have the newest and shiniest, its probably time to start thinking about switching over and trying it out.

If you’re the anxious non-technical writer-only type and are afraid you might not be able to help yourself if something goes wrong, I’d recommend watching how the situation further develops (my bet is on LibreOffice), and start trying it out when 3.3.1 gets released.

RandomJerk · Jan 30, 2011

I don't know which OS you're using. Perhaps a *buntu? There's been quite a few complaints about this bug. I know that the Ubuntu package is rather old. Last I looked, the latest update fixed this problem, and Ubuntu did not push through the update for over three months.

I personally run Arch Linux, so I've not had this problem.

Development is moving along quite well, and 3.3 final was released around the 25th.

Jamesaritchie · Jan 30, 2011

I use it. No problems so far.

ejket · Jan 31, 2011

I use LibreOffice on Arch Linux and Snow Leopard. Runs great for me.

Margarita Skies · Jan 31, 2011

I'd be crying right now if I lost 12k words. That's a lot. I am sorry this happened to you. I will try OO and LO in the future, no doubt. :Thumbs:

Has anyone tried LibreOffice?

Another Editor

BradCarsten

practical experience, FTW

Moonbase

RandomJerk

Jerk.

Jamesaritchie

ejket

Noobus Perpetuus

Margarita Skies