LibreOffice 24.8 Alpha 1 Open-Source Office Suite Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: LibreOffice 24.8 Alpha 1 Open-Source Office Suite Released

Ahead of the planned release in August, the first alpha release of the LibreOffice 24.8 open-source office suite is now available for testing...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/LibreOffice-24.8-Alpha-1

[guiaiolfi]

I had high hopes for the project. I even tried to migrate all machines in my work to use it. But after years of bugs, slowness and ugly interfaces I gave up. I don't think it's worth for me anymore. It's a shame and I hope in the future I can be proven wrong. But after reading another change log I can't stop thinking: too little, too late. AGAIN!

[Robust0522]

Xlookup was probably the biggest missing function for me, there are other functions which can achieve the same thing but Xlookup is significantly more convenient. Glad to see it's finally released.

[mirmirmir]

24 already? Damn, Last time I used it, it was 7.

I'd whine, but someone's already done that, exactly how i experienced it. So... Lots of luck for the project 👍👍

[reba]

After years of use LibreOffice is my one and only office suite. Very very fast, no noticeable bugs on all my workflows.
I use it on all my installations. Perfect.

I despise it everytime I have to use slow and buggy MicroSoft office when doing stuff for work, it's a pure chore. The ribbon UI alone makes me jump out of the window.

[Daktyl198]

LibreOffice is a great project, but I just find myself using Google Docs or Word Online 95% of the time these days. They have more features than LibreOffice, while also being faster to open and lighter on my PC. It's nice that they don't have to be installed as well.

Office Suites is just one of those applications where there's not enough developer interest so the projects get "left behind", unfortunately. I'd love for LibreOffice to eventually compete against Microsoft Office but I don't think it'll ever happen.

[andyprough]

adding XLOOKUP / XMATCH functions

Oh my! This is going to be fun.

[kurkosdr]

LibreOffice is a great project, but I just find myself using Google Docs or Word Online 95% of the time these days. They have more features than LibreOffice, while also being faster to open and lighter on my PC. It's nice that they don't have to be installed as well.

Office Suites is just one of those applications where there's not enough developer interest so the projects get "left behind", unfortunately. I'd love for LibreOffice to eventually compete against Microsoft Office but I don't think it'll ever happen.

I use LibreOffice to open local files without having to upload them to my Google Drive or Outlook account, so there is still use for LibreOffice.

But if your job depends on being able to open DOC/XLS/PPT or DOCX/XLSX/PPTX files correctly, then you should use some version of Microsoft Office (browser or native).

[chocolate]

The Calc spreadsheet component of LibreOffice 24.8 is adding XLOOKUP / XMATCH functions...

Hey, that's cool. I remember coming up with a macro to do that ages ago. It wasn't particularly difficult, but I had to resort to ancient OpenOffice(.org) documentation for the language, and the result was quite slow. I just checked, and official documentation around macros still isn't great.
I found the possibility to make the macro part of the UI super cool: you could manually configure a dedicated drop-down menu (or more than one), with macros grouped however you liked. I'm not sure anymore, but I think Unity global search could pick them up as well. It's a pity that desktops didn't retain that macOS-like functionality. I still find drop-down menus easier and faster for lots of things, as you're only "hunting" in, as well as memorizing, one-directional movements, instead of looking in all directions on a plane, like for "ribbons" (what a stupid idea and waste of vertical space; if I wanted tens of tiny icons on screen, I'd rather have them on vertical columns, like you can easily do in LibreOffice). And for stuff that you still didn't know about, global search was a godsend.
Maybe LibreOffice could have a rofi-like pop-up internally? Does it already have anything of the sort?

But if your job depends on being able to open DOC/XLS/PPT or DOCX/XLSX/PPTX files correctly, then you should use some version of Microsoft Office (browser or native).

OnlyOffice works very well for Office Open XML formats (.docx...).
LibreOffice works better than (any) Microsoft Office for Microsoft Office XML formats (.doc...) and, of course, is the best suite for OpenDocument formats (.odt...).

[rene]

Cross compiles for RISC w/ T2 Linux, too: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2151405789