LibreOffice 7.3 Released With Better Interoperability For Microsoft Office Files

[skeevy420]

That's what's called progress.

Updating programs is a bit distracting on Windows. You fire it up to do some office work and it prompts you to update. If I don't update it right then, there's a 50/50 chance I'll forget to update whenever I'm done working. Between the download and install it takes around 10 minutes.

And it has one of those installers that prompts for a reboot if I leave Firefox running....Jeez those kinds of installers are annoying.

I'm spoiled by Linux package management

[skeevy420]

True

I love that "Throw your 4000 away, it's a piece of shit" line. That line plays in my head during every benchmark article.

I've seen that clip a bunch of times and it's always funny and still very, very true.

[Artim]

Updating programs is a bit distracting on Windows. You fire it up to do some office work and it prompts you to update. If I don't update it right then, there's a 50/50 chance I'll forget to update whenever I'm done working. Between the download and install it takes around 10 minutes.

And it has one of those installers that prompts for a reboot if I leave Firefox running....Jeez those kinds of installers are annoying.

I'm spoiled by Linux package management

Well, Windows isn't made for productive use. For that you have to use Linux.

PS: an updater based on the one in Firefox is already in the works for a while, AFAIK The Document Foundation is offering a position for that at the moment.

PPS: it doesn't only ask for a restart if Firefox is open, for me it does it anyways.

[nado]

There is a tremendous amount of difference at starting times!

It's only the first time you launch it that it will take a bit longer, after that it's fast.

[kreijack]

Easiest way to get the latest Libreofficeis Flatpak.

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak/

Don't start messing around with deb and rpm when there is no meaningful difference in performance.

Debian sid:

dpkg --list libreoffice-writer
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-==================-=============-============-===========================================
ii libreoffice-writer 1:7.3.0~rc2-3 amd64 office productivity suite -- word processor

[TNZfr]

Still no fix for scaling when used with Wayland on KDE. It doesn't matter how much it wants to be like Microsoft if it isn't usable.

I agree, under Wayland on a 4K monitor ... LibreOffice is just unusable.

PS : I commited today a new protection in my script.

[Artim]

Debian sid:

dpkg --list libreoffice-writer
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-==================-=============-============-===========================================
ii libreoffice-writer 1:7.3.0~rc2-3 amd64 office productivity suite -- word processor

Well, everyone running sid add their main OS by definition is simply insane. But nobody stops you to either install from the LibreOffice website or just run the more stable still version. Plus, nobody running Debian is expecting the newest version of anything in the repos. That's what Ubuntu (or better yet, Ubuntu based distributions like Mint and Pop, that get rid of pretty much everything that's wrong with Ubuntu) is made for. Or if it doesn't has to be Debian based, Arch and Fedora... But that brings us back to litterally being insane and simply masochistic.

[Sonadow]

LibreOffice 7.3

• still breaks all docx files and pptx files that have even the slightest bit of complex formatting.
• still runs like a complete and utter dog on a Threadripper with 128GB of memory
• still has a document processor that can't use more than one CPU thread and slows down beyond anything usable if the document is chock full with tables and images
• still hangs for at least a full minute on startup
• still can't even open an ODF file created by other FOSS productivity suites without breaking its formatting even though ODF is supposed to be a fraction of OOXML's complexity
• still crashes randomly when used with the Qt5 backend or Skia renderer on Wayland
• still can't edit PDFs natively in Writer while Word has been doing so since 2013
• still exports PDFs that are much larger than MS Office's PDF exports
• still randomly exports a blank PDF when used with the Qt5 backend on Wayland
• still freezes when scrolling on any spreadsheet, presentation or document that has tables or images in it
• still doesn't know how to start a slideshow on the correct screen under Wayland
• is still a pile of steaming crap.

Thank god MS Office is still going strong.

[Artim]

LibreOffice 7.3

• still breaks all docx files and pptx files that have even the slightest bit of complex formatting.
• still runs like a complete and utter dog on a Threadripper with 128GB of memory
• still has a document processor that can't use more than one CPU thread and slows down beyond anything usable if the document is chock full with tables and images
• still hangs for at least a full minute on startup
• still can't even open an ODF file created by other FOSS productivity suites without breaking its formatting even though ODF is supposed to be a fraction of OOXML's complexity
• still crashes randomly when used with the Qt5 backend or Skia renderer on Wayland
• still can't edit PDFs natively in Writer while Word has been doing so since 2013
• still exports PDFs that are much larger than MS Office's PDF exports
• still randomly exports a blank PDF when used with the Qt5 backend on Wayland
• still freezes when scrolling on any spreadsheet, presentation or document that has tables or images in it
• still doesn't know how to start a slideshow on the correct screen under Wayland
• is still a pile of steaming crap.

Thank god MS Office is still going strong.

1. It's illusory to believe that this will ever change, MS has no interest of other programs being able to process their files correctly, they will always break something. Heck, they even can't handle their own files quite often.
2. Well I can't talk about such beefy hardware, but on my 2014 Laptop there's not that much difference between Word and Writer. I think Word just hides stutters better by reacting slowly with unnecessary animations
3. can't judge about that, but like I said, Word isn't any better in my experience
4. while that is true, so does Word, it's again just better at hiding it. It doesn't show the document and freezes for a moment, it just takes an eternity to even get that far and then is very unresponsive for a moment and stuttering like hell while just scrolling the document
5. yes, ODF is way simpler than OOXML, plus it's an actual standard. But are you sure the problem is with LibreOffice and not with the program that created that document? I haven't noticed such a behaviour myself. I just know for a fact that it's no solution to just use ODF as a common format between MS Office and LibreOffice, since MS Office can't process ODFs correctly and never was able to do so. While Google Docs can handle all my ODFs properly with the only exception that it can have trouble with fonts since it only supports very few, MS Office (365) totally wrecks any file and omits content without warning.
6. Never used LO on KDE, but the MS Office can't even compete since it doesn't even run on Linux, so there's that
7. Yes, LO doesn't support editing PDFs in Writer. But that doesn't mean it can't edit PDFs at all. It's just using Draw for that, not Writer. But keep in mind, PDFs where never meant to be edited, so neither Word nor Draw should ever be used for that. There are a few professional products that can do that in a limited manner, but you should only edit an editable version. Worst case, use something that uses OCR and can handle complex layouts to derive an editable Version, even Word isn't meant for that.
8. Well last time I checked, ODFs are always significantly smaller than MS' xml formats. I can't talk about PDFs created by the most current version of Office 365 since it refuses to export PDFs for years now, but I just whipped up a test: a docx with 3 pages, nothing special, created a few years back. Converted with LO 7.3: 110 kB (PDF/A 2-B, only lossless compression), with MS Office Online: 173 kB, converted with MSO 365 back then by someone else: 200 kB. So please stick to the truth.
9. Again, can't talk about Qt, but MS Office doesn't even run at all on Linux, not to mention Qt
10. It does but so does MS Office in my experience, very often.
11. Same as 6 and 9, MS can't compete
12. Well, that's your opinion. In my opinion it's still much better than crappy MS Office that always wants to be connected to the internet, has by far the worst extension system I have ever experienced (sure, sometimes they just pop up ready to go when the program that brought them with it installed them, but after I had to spend hours trying to figure out how to get the Citavi extension to show up not only in the extension overview but also in Word without finding any real solution and it just working for no apparent reason, and Word not seldom refusing to start because it's stuck loading it) and actively trying to force the users to not do what they want but what some arrogant programmers taught it the user has to want, I can only say: F*ck you MS!

[buovjaga]

LibreOffice 7.3[LIST][*]still crashes randomly when used with the Qt5 backend or Skia renderer on Wayland[*]still randomly exports a blank PDF when used with the Qt5 backend on Wayland

It's not normal to use the plain Qt5 backend as it is still experimental. Yes, Lubuntu has shipped it for some reason and ignored our pleas to stop, but that does not make it a good idea.

You should also not be using Skia on Linux as it only works with the fallback "gen (x11)" backend.