LibreOffice 25.2 Alpha 1 Open-Source Office Suite Released

[JPFSanders]

Completely false! After have been trying to replace MS Office with LibreOffice, the conclusion is that MS Office is far, far superior for both novice and professional users. The reason is MS Excel, which is the most popular and critical of them. Here LibreOffice is a nightmare, in comparison, when working with charts and Pivot Tables, and does not have the easy-to-use non-destructive features of Power Query.

LibreOffice Calc is were MS Excel was in the early 90s. It just can't work as a replacement unless it is used for extremely basic applications, below any of the level applied by average users. LibreOffice is unfortunately one of the strongest weaknesses of the Linux community, since its inferiority even for simple tasks pushes the users back to Windows.

OnlyOffice is definitely better, and possible will be the solution to start to move larger masses from Windows to Linux. Maybe.

*Edit*
I find LibreOffice Writer superior to MS Word (god I hate MS Word), however, the main application the average users are using in the field is MS Excel, by a massive margin compared to the other applications. LibreOffice Calc is the anchor of LibreOffice, and they just must fix Pivot Tables and the chart functionality first, if it is ever going to be considered anything remotely as a replacement to MS Excel.

I write more large text documents than I use large and complicated spreadsheets, for what I personally need LO's Calc it is good enough, my main complain with it has always been that it is generally slower than Excel and that in the past used to lack a lot of Excel functions (The functions not been a problem for me for a long time) It is possible that my usage of Calc is very basic compared to what an advanced user does with Excel, and that I am missing the larger picture, I do not work in Finance or with Scientific stuff. Office app usage is a comparatively small part of what I do daily.

I'm not saying this in particular regarding you yourself, but most of the complains I observe people have with complex software are generally that they are trying to work in one particular way with one particular program rather than trying to find a way to solve a problem/task.

I used to be an avid Ami Pro and Lotus 1-2-3 user back in the day, I was forced to start using Word and Excel not because they did anything better at the time, but because MS predatory practices forced my hand if I needed to exchange documents with other users/customers.

[oiaohm]

The problem with Microsoft Office 365 and OnlyOffice is that they are online services. If you are the kind of person who has lots of doc and ppt files on their hard drive and wants to quickly open them without having to upload them to an online service, LibreOffice is pretyy good. Markdown and LaTex don't even open doc and ppt files, so they are irrelevant.

BTW LibreOffice has a ribbon interface, but the Document Foundation people have been keeping it as an experimental feature since forever for reasons only they know.

OnlyOffice does have desktop editors you don't have the libreoffice downloadable offline help. Now this comes quite a limitation when internet disconnected.

Libreoffice has more than 1 ribbon line interface. Everyone can agree how the historic memu and toolbar should work. There has been a failure to get agreement on the ribbon/tab interface. Yes the default is the equally hated/linked solution that turns out to be the historic menu toolbar.

Yes most people don't notice in your interface choices you have 2 versions of a tab toolbar with LibreOffice because agreement could not be got.

[kurkosdr]

OnlyOffice does have desktop editors you don't have the libreoffice downloadable offline help. Now this comes quite a limitation when internet disconnected.

Can the desktop editors open doc, ppt, docx, and pptx files I have locally on my hard drive without uploading them to some online service first? Or are the "desktop editors" a browser and a webpage in a trenchcoat?

[uid313]

[QUOTE=kurkosdr;n1509284]The problem with Microsoft Office 365 and OnlyOffice is that they are online services. If you are the kind of person who has lots of doc and ppt files on their hard drive and wants to quickly open them without having to upload them to an online service, LibreOffice is pretyy good. Markdown and LaTex don't even open doc and ppt files, so they are irrelevant./QUOTE]

OnlyOffice can be downloaded and installed.

[kurkosdr]

The problem with Microsoft Office 365 and OnlyOffice is that they are online services. If you are the kind of person who has lots of doc and ppt files on their hard drive and wants to quickly open them without having to upload them to an online service, LibreOffice is pretyy good. Markdown and LaTex don't even open doc and ppt files, so they are irrelevant.

OnlyOffice can be downloaded and installed.

As I've said above, can the installable versions open doc, ppt, docx, and pptx files I have locally on my hard drive without uploading them to some online service first? Or is it a browser and a webpage in a trenchcoat?

[WeAreDoomed]

As I've said above, can the installable versions open doc, ppt, docx, and pptx files I have locally on my hard drive without uploading them to some online service first? Or is it a browser and a webpage in a trenchcoat?

Both. It is a browser and a webpage in a trench-coat, but it is offline. (based on the Chromium Embedded Framework and QT5, as far as I can tell)
On windows, you can easily install it via unigetui/chocolatey

[kurkosdr]

Both. It is a browser and a webpage in a trench-coat, but it is offline. (based on the Chromium Embedded Framework and QT5, as far as I can tell)
On windows, you can easily install it via unigetui/chocolatey

Yes, but can it open local doc, ppt, docx, and pptx files without uploading them somewhere?

[oiaohm]

Yes, but can it open local doc, ppt, docx, and pptx files without uploading them somewhere?

Yes that does work without uploading. I have onlyoffice desktop editors installed by flathub with flatseal setting network access to disabled. Help is completely busted with no way to fix it with networking disabled..

Yes since both cost nothing I have both libreoffice and onlyoffice since using both I am aware of limitations in both.

[WeAreDoomed]

Yes, but can it open local doc, ppt, docx, and pptx files without uploading them somewhere?

Yes, it is what offline means.

[oiaohm]

I write more large text documents than I use large and complicated spreadsheets, for what I personally need LO's Calc it is good enough, my main complain with it has always been that it is generally slower than Excel and that in the past used to lack a lot of Excel functions (The functions not been a problem for me for a long time) It is possible that my usage of Calc is very basic compared to what an advanced user does with Excel, and that I am missing the larger picture, I do not work in Finance or with Scientific stuff. Office app usage is a comparatively small part of what I do daily.

Back in time there was over 100 unique Excel functions. This today is down to 30 so you hit it way less often. Its 25 if you are using desktop installed Excel. About 5 percent of functions are Excel or Calc unique. But then there about another 5 percent of functions that have been removed from Excel completely.

The 5 percent of removed functions from Excel create the fun event you have some historic Excel document you want to open and it does not open yet Libreoffice and other alternatives have no problem because they still have the function. Bad part is MS Office tells user that their document is corrupt because it contains a removed function usage.

This issue with spreedsheet functions has moved to effecting MS Office Excel more than Libreoffice and alternatives..

Yes you are missing the larger picture that Libreoffice has improved and Excel has degraded in this area.