LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs
computerworld.comTo my surprise, what used to be called iWork has been my main "Office" replacement for years now. It's good enough, and it's free. I have switched over most of the non-technical people in my life to it, and they have no issues using it (except if they email a .pages document to a Windows user).
I especially enjoy Numbers and the way you can arrange multiple tables on a page. It's a different paradigm coming from Google Sheets or Excel and takes some getting used to, but to me it now makes more sense.
Of course, if I need something "done right", I'll drop down to Affinity, LaTeX, or InDesign. But I rarely have these needs nowadays.
A similar argument could be made for going all in on Google Docs/Sheets/Slides, but I feel queasy knowing that all of my data is in a free Google account, after reading some of the stories here about reaching Google support if something goes sideways.
I tried using Numbers across my Mac and iPad. It has some show stopping sync bugs there which result in it completely destroying documents. Then when you try and recover previous versions you get a lesson in Apple's commitment to things other than the facade on the front of their stuff: not a lot. The document versions thing sometimes doesn't even work and if it does it's so slow it's unusable. Probably backed with some low tier S3 stuff. Also the formula editor is painful at best.
TeXshop on the Mac is however rather nice.
Yeah. I was using numbers and it's not serious software.
I needed "true" or "false" in certain cells. When typing in a cell, sometimes it would capitalize it to TRUE and you would need to type "'true" to avoid that; and sometimes it randomly would accept typing "true". I simply couldn't figure out which would happen at any time.
The whole program is riddled with things like that.
I have run into similar issues and I agree, it’s not without flaws. The formula editor is another example, as others have pointed out.
A good solution I have found to your particular problem is to use checkboxes in the cells. You can select them as a cell type and it converts from Boolean value text to checkbox. I also prefer that, as a user, to typing True/False.
Another common problem with Numbers is the low performance as row count grow and calculations complexity rise.
It can make some very pretty sheets but don't count on it if you have needs for something like pivot tables (which it doesn't have natively).
I think Apple is fucking everyone with those apps. They are not good enough for serious work but decent enough that people will use them; all to get a built-in lock in because of course it only runs on Macs...
I sometimes wish Claris Works 5 was still around. It was small and fast, did everything I actually needed when writing documents or letters and nothing I didn't need, and had a clean, uncluttered UI that made sense.
I wonder what it could have been like if we got the 1990s vision of the future where one could have ClarisWorks 5 anywhere they want as an OpenDoc Part: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/clarisworks-5-opendoc
I also like the Pages/Numbers/Keynote suite. Of course, I'm not a heavy user of office apps at home, so large or complex documents aren't something I'm encountering day-to-day. If I needed to build such a beast, I would probably lean on the 'old standbys' like LaTeX and the like. LibreOffice is still a great platform and one I reach for if an oddly formatted document comes to me, but it's not something I'm using for crafting from scratch.
> iWork... It's good enough
I would argue it is not just good enough but better than Office for normal consumers. For 99% of my usage and SMEs, Page is insanely better at layout. Numbers are much better for simple chat, formulas and comparison. Keynote.... well i haven't touched powerpoint for 20+ years so I dont know.
The only thing Office is better is when you need slightly complex formulas in Excel or some enterprise that has been using Excel for so long you need to use it to guarantee absolute 100% compatibility. For business Excel usage is still king. And will continue to be for at least another 10 - 15 years if not more.
Does it still has this fatal flaw of ignoring the format of the currently-opened file when you press ⌘S (which should be a common occurrence)? I work with OpenDocument formats and I hated iWork products for that behavior.
I agree, but Numbers is sooo slow! When opening a huge file it is unusable.
Would you not say it’s sort of a stretch calling Apple software free, which only works on (anything but free) Apple hardware?
Maybe they meant free of the subscription costs mentioned in the title.
Have used Pages/Numbers/Keynote for years, alongside MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint, and always found the former to have better or nicer workflows for most tasks, and especially for page layouts. (Excel is however superior for very large or complex spreadsheets.) Highly underrated software.
I also use the iWork suite because that's what I have, and I despise Numbers
Pages and Keynote are fine but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do anything with Numbers. It looks beautiful and I want to like it but as you say it's (too) different from Excel, at least for me.
If I'm evaluating a potential application whose core functionality does not require external resources/servers (Dropbox for example) and they don't at a minimum offer some kind of perpetual fallback license (aka the Jetbrains annual subscription model), then I straight up bounce.
Examples of good alternatives
- Pixelmator > Photoshop
- Davinci Resolve > Premiere
- Reaper > Audition
I have no interest in renting my tools.
You actually can still buy Office. It's quite expensive though.
I suppose it always was.
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=2113574&CLCID=0x10...
Here's what Microsoft won't tell you: If you buy standalone office and it is not allowed to phone home to Microsoft at least once a month, it stops working. This can happen if you use it on a disconnected computer or you just have a reverse firewall rule blocking microsoft domains.
I’m not sure that’s true. Last Office I bought was “Home Edition 2016” and it’s been running on a machine that doesn’t have internet access since 2017 without any issues.
My standalone copy of Excel (which is the only member of the Office suite I use) is version 16.54 for MacOS "© 2021 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."
If I block it from accessing Microsoft domains in Little Snitch, it goes into readonly mode after about a month. Opening a hole in the firewall lets it start working again. Previous versions from several years earlier didn't do that.
Fuck 'em — pirate that shit with a clean conscience https://massgrave.dev/office_for_mac#office-activation
2016 is almost a decade in the past. The phoning home thing hasn't really taken off at the time.
Microsoft doesn’t release an Office version every year. They technically released 2019, 2021 and 2024, but they have all been “Office 16” versions. As far as I could tell they are more or less “service packs” + random improvements/small features on to of the 2016 base. I was planning to upgrade last year but life got in the way and I only use that machine in the deep winter. Do you know what release they introduced that in?
I recently helped my sister upgrade from an extremely old MBP that couldn't upgrade past 10.13 to a pre-retina MBA that couldn't upgrade past macOS 12. Her ancient version of Office from the MBP wouldn't run on the MBA.
I was unable to figure out how to download/purchase a version of Office from MSFT that would run under macOS 12[1]. But in my searching, I ended up here:
https://github.com/alsyundawy/Microsoft-Office-For-MacOS
So she's now running a volume-licensed version of Office 2019. MSFT seems to tolerate not necessarily legitimate volume licensing I guess as these have been floating around the internet forever.
[1] e.g. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/what-...
My go-to strategy still seems to hold up: https://www.g2a.com/search?query=microsoft%20office
> I suppose it always was.
I have a very vague memory that is was $200 in the 2000s, so if accurate the price has gone down.
That's honestly less than I would have expected. I still have an old copy of Microsoft Office 95 though I no longer have the hardware with which to run it. Ditto a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 which I believe was the final version before they went full on subscription.
i reckon these software ought to run fine in a VM, perhaps running something like windows xp. Unfortunately, with photoshop, the hardware drivers for the various drawing tablets will probably not function (or remain available).
Also work on a brand new Linux with wine.
Actually come to that, my wife has Windows 10 and runs Photoshop CS2 occasionally.
I tested PS7 on ARM64 Windows and it ran fine even. A little blurry on the high DPI display though.
I hear https://ms.codes/ sells office and stuff.
I would also like to throw in Lightworks into the “very good Premiere alternatives”. If you are ok with exporting 720p, the free version is pretty capable but if you want higher export resolution it cost money.
It has a subscription option, but also a “buy outright” option, and it’s often on sale for half price for the permanent license, ends up costing around ~$200 and it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
I think it’s very good, though I am not a professional video editor by trade.
I haven't personally used it much, except for a very simple cut but I have heard very good things about KDENLive too.
I've used KDENLive and it's about as comparable to Resolve or Lightworks as Windows Movie Maker is to Premiere.
I think you need to distinguish between classes of users, e.g. home consumers needing some basic editing features vs. a hollywood studio, and the spectrum in between.
I use KDENLive a lot and I find it to be an excellent product. Not perfect, but well thought out and powerful. Documentation I give a C grade too. It's awesome that some exists, but it tends to be outdated and frequently omits details about the specific thing needed. On Linux I do recommend using the App Image or Flatpak though as I have run into dependency issues (mainly codecs) when using system packages such as Fedora's.
For a typical user/consumer who just needs a video editor that can do more than just trivial cuts, I think it's an excellent option and it's the one I use and recommend to others. Unless you're looking to do advanced or highly complex products, it can do it all and in a fairly intuitive way. There are also youtube videos and such that demonstrate nearly everything you might need to do so there are plenty of available resources.
I dunno, all the home users I know use Resolve. It's pretty easy to learn Resolve, with their tutorials you can go from "never edited a video" to "able to edit a simple short film" in about a day.
I upvote any option that has a “buy outright” baked in.
You are easy to satisfy.
Once upon a time, we complained about undependable applications that, although installed on a computer, dared to "phone home".
Before that, we complained about undependable applications that, while not fucking around with remote servers, employed invasive and annoying anti-piracy measures.
I don’t love that Lightworks phones home, but FWIW, Lightworks’ support has been very good when I have contacted. They were very helpful when I needed to migrate a license when I had to swap to another computer.
This might not seem like much but that has been something I have struggled with other companies over.
I really enjoy the affinity suite.
Yeah, likewise, just wish they did Linux
Same.. it'd totally be a take my money moment... same for Topaz Labs' software. Though I accept that I'm a minority user and it probably isn't worth the efforts for them... similar to codec support issues for Davinci Resolve's free version on linux.
Do you have any good alternatives to Photoshop that are open source? And that are not GIMP.
Nothing against GIMP, I just found it too hard to learn coming from photoshop.
I'm looking for a simple editor that can do color adjustments, crop/resize images, and add text.
> I'm looking for a simple editor that can do color adjustments, crop/resize images, and add text.
Those are all pretty simple in GIMP though? I'm not doubting that they are different from Photoshop but how long could it take to learn the GIMP way?
I'd like to know more about color adjustments. I know GIMP can do them in some form, but I have no idea what the options are or what kind of results I should hope to be able to achieve. Documentation doesn't really seem to address these questions, though it is available if your question is "how do I run this menu item I found?" (Answer: open the menu, and click on the menu item.)
Cropping and resizing are trivial. It would take less than one minute to learn how.
You can use the gmic plugin alongside with Gimp, and adjust the CMYK values. I use that all the time. Color adjustments like yellow -> orange, or green -> purple, might exceed your expectations. Photoshop is excellent at it as well, i have never used Photoshop to compare though.
For more professional work Clut (Color Look Up Table) is supported by gmic as well.
I also made my own open source tool to pass gmic filters to whole videos, see an example here [1].
There's a Colors menu in Gimp 3. But it's destructive and only for the selected layer, not the special layer type you get in Photoshop.
The biggest issue I had migrating as a Photoshop user since 1996 was the key bindings. But using the config files people shared online sorted that.
I'm not going to link to a specific one implying I'm recommending it, but a web search will show multiple.
One important gimp note is if you don't have 3.0+ already, get it. It finally has non-destructive editing, which is the main reason I had to keep using ps for for a long time.
> The biggest issue I had migrating as a Photoshop user since 1996 was the key bindings
RIP GIMPshop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMPshop
It's easy to change keybindings on Gimp, most of mines are ones i used in photoshop 4-CS2.
>It finally has non-destructive editing
not for the fonts unfortunately, if you resize a text with the scale tool, it gets rasterized
I use Photopea which tries to mimic Photoshop UI and runs entirely on your browser. In fact, you can even install it as a Web App to run it offline. Pretty intuitive UI.
Yeah, but Photopea has a monthly cost and this post is about avoiding that. I love pwa, but I need image editing maybe once a month, I'm not going to pay a subscription for that
Paint.Net on Windows. Though on Windows there is Paint, that is less capable, but still no equivalent is on MacOS OOTB. (Also the drama around Paint is worth its own bashing).
I'd be interested in a similar basic tool as paint for mac and Linux (and possibly also for windows, if MS crappifies Paint, after it has tried to kill it earlier)
Pinta (essentially a reimplementation of Paint.NET) exists for MacOS as well as Linux and Windows: https://www.pinta-project.com/releases/
I want to like Pinta, but some of the load/save behaviors are just weird... not sure if I last tried the Flatpak version or not, but I've tried it on both Mac and Linux a few times... It's my go to for quick edits, but far from a fav.
I tried Pinta, and honestly it has so many subtle differences from PDN, it was really uncomfortable and unproductive for me. I could not get to like it, but will give it some more time.
Also the icons are terrible (at least on the mac), I find it really hard to identify a tool, these monochrome icons set me off and slowed me down since Visual Studio 2012. This fad is a really good example for design trends ruining productivity.
There are some subtle quirks where pinta just doesn’t play ball in a way that is intuitive to a PDN aficionado.
Photopea is very close but i keep coming back to PDN either VM or RDP
GIMP takes some time getting used to, but it's reliable, it will stick around and having used it for the past 20 years, I have issues switching to something else.
I use Paint.net for simple tasks like those you listed. I paid $10 for it in the Microsoft store but I think you can get it for free from the website.
Paint.net isn't free software, it's proprietary freeware. It used to be free a long time ago, but the author is a tool and made it closed source because people were creating other versions of it.
Pinta is a free reimplenetation: https://www.pinta-project.com
For simple things, I use mtPaint on Linux and PhotoFiltre on Windows. They are easy to figure out and very stable.
Isn't it dogmatic to think so. Sometimes it makes sense to rent tools.
Naturally. I've rented an mini excavator in the past to dig up stumps for a one time job. It made sense more sense to rent it since it was for a one-time task, and purchasing the kubota would have cost more than 5k.
Given we're on HN news, I thought it was implied that I was referring mostly to the exhaustion at being faced with a perpetually increasing amount of rent-seeking in the form of SaaS.
Additionally, for a lot of professional software, we aren't given the option for short term rental. For creative cloud, I pay monthly but agree on a annual basis. There's a more expensive month-to-month sub, but still you have it at minimum for a whole month.
With software subscriptions, I don't have the option of saying "I need to rent lightroom for 3 hours to edit this session." and have it be priced accordingly. No matter what, I'm on the hook for at minimum a month. On the flip side of that, since I use it so frequently, it's insulting that my only option is just to rent it. I can buy other tools outright and own them, so I'd also like to own my digital tools as well.
While those producing tools for living might not have an interest on keeping offering them free of charge.
Eventually that guy/girl in Nebraska is going to look elsewhere.
OP did not assert that they wanted software free of charge.
Resolve is cool for pro users for others who basically just want to do small edits with straightforward software chrck out kdenlive
Honestly, Resolve isn't that difficult, especially if you're OK with watching some tutorials to get used to it. It's certainly no more difficult than Premiere (for basic tasks, of course).
I teach those programs (after working with them for years as a freelance editor/colorist).
Resolve is worth learning, and not that hard, you're right. But Resolve is not a "pick it up and it pretty much explains itself" software either.
Wishing there was a capable Lightroom alternative.
Darktable? https://www.darktable.org/
Also Capture One, they have a perpetual license but the changes they made in 2023 to the perpetual license was quite bad. Now if you buy that version, you’re locked to the version you purchased and don’t get new features.
> I have no interest in renting my tools.
While I appreciate the sentiment, the world where you could use the same software for many years without updates is gone. These days developers have to invest significant time and effort into making sure the software just runs on the constantly updated operating systems and platforms — which costs money on an ongoing basis. Expecting your software to be updated regularly without paying regularly makes no sense.
So either you intend to run that exact binary that you downloaded (because that is the tool you bought), or the ongoing costs need to be covered somehow. Some companies do it through subscriptions and some play a game of "no, you don't have to update, but here is this new shiny (more bloated, too) version that we produce every 2 years, you can get it for $50 and OWN IT FOREVER (well, until the next shiny comes along in 2 years time". But it's a game, and the drawback is that there is incentive for bloating software instead of just maintaining it and fixing bugs.
It's simple. I buy a computer and buy the software. This software is installed on this computer and will will work unless the computer is broken. When you bought a CASIO keyboard you do not expect it to stop working after 3 years because it's installed newest updates.
Of course CASIO is not connected to the internet, it won't allow me to steer it with my fancy phone app. So maybe, just maybe, connecting everything to the internet is a simple mistake?
I bought my Lightroom when it was possible and am using with my camera. Once I buy a new camera, it won't be supported in lightroom. And I won't be able to upgrade it because now they moved to the subscription model. And I make photos every 5 months let's say... And lightroom them even less often
Darktable is an excellent lightroom replacement that does exactly what you need it to do for people that open it once every 5 months.
Thanks. Will check
Reaper’s “i’m going to stop you from using the software for six seconds with a sufficiently obtrusive, non-arrogant, guilt tripping message about being non-free and you should really purchase a license but you can keep using it and download new versions even if you don’t purchase a license” is absolutely genius and a good sort-of counter example to your covering ongoing costs point. at least it highlights the problem for me i guess. (edit: actually, it’s the same problem i guess that you allude to in your last sentence).
i’ve used repear for years on and off without paying anything. new updates come out all the time. fixes, new features etc. (every time i open Reaper I hang my head in shame for not having bought a license).
repear isn’t a profit optimised entity. i gather it is software created and maintained primarily for people to use. licenses cover costs.
adobe/microsoft are profit optimised entities. people using the software is secondary to them making money off it. subscriptions are there to make them profit, not to cover their costs.
I got a reaper license 10 years ago because I too insist on paying for good software, then I never used it.
While I do recognize those concerns I'll note that it is still a viable model and not just for indie devs. Look to the DAW world (Ableton, FL Studio, Bitwig, Logic, etc.) if you're ever curious about building a sustainable business model around a flat pricing structure.
You listed software that range between $500-$15k. Last time a “I want the option to pay for my software” posts here I replied to was about Infuse. And people complained that “$80 is an absurd amount for a software” and “Why isn’t there a free version?”
A software that costs $500-15k is only feasible for a B2B type business.
> You listed software that range between $500-$15k.
i’m confused… all versions of the DAWs they mentioned in the parent comment are as near as makes no difference below £500.
> Live 12 Suite: £539
> Live 12 Standard: £259
> Live 12 Intro: £69 (nice)
https://www.ableton.com/en/shop/live/
> FL Studio Full: £469 (nice)
> FL Studio Signature: £279
> FL Studio Producer: £199
> FL Studio Fruity: £89
https://www.image-line.com/fl-studio/compare-editions/
> Bitwig Studio: £339
> Bitwig Studio Producer: £169 (nice)
> Bitwig Studio Essentials: £79
> Logic Pro: £199
—-
in case you were replying to their original top-level comment
> Photoshop £22.99 pcm (£276 pa)
> Photoshop Photography £19.99 pcm (£240 pa)
> Photoshop All Creative Cloud £59.99 pcm (£720 pa)
this last one ^ bundles all the proprietary adobe “rented” software they mentioned into one package.
https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/plans.html
so even then your figures don’t seem to make sense?
> Photoshop All Creative Cloud £59.99 pcm (£720 pa) > this last one ^ bundles all the proprietary adobe “rented” software they mentioned into one package.
And the worst thing about that 'package' is that if you need (say) just Photoshop + Illustrator - well suddenly the 'cheapest' way to do that is paying for the entire package of garbage that you don't want and will never need.
Wow. Flat out wrong and/or hallucinated for both DAW software and the original recommendations.
In USD currently:
FL Studio Producer Edition = $180
Logic X = $200
Bitwig Producer = $200
Ableton Standard = $450
Reaper = $60 (personal use) or $225
Pixelmator = $50
Davinci Resolve = Free or $300
> the software just runs on the constantly updated operating systems and platforms
Don't forget that VMs exists.
I don't mind paying the upgrade price when I need the newer version, but that should be an informed decision. These day, subscriptions are actual gatekeepers to features where when you cancel it, you lose access to the software "pro" features.
VMs don't solve the problem. I was also a fan of running stuff in VMs (using VMware), and then the Apple Silicon transition happened and my Windows VMs no longer work.
I understand where you're going with performance and feature updates, but what about security updates? Those are often flaws that were present at time of shipping.
If I buy a physical lock that's found to be easily opened with a toothpick once it's in the mass market, I'd expect a recall and it to be fixed. With software, it's even easier to deploy a fix.
There's an expectation that purchased software is usable. A server that's connected to the internet that can be compromised easily is no longer usable. Firms selling software applications have an obligation to provide security updates for the life of the product.
> These days developers have to invest significant time and effort into making sure the software just runs on the constantly updated operating systems and platforms — which costs money on an ongoing basis.
What’s different today?
The Internet happened, and operating systems evolve much faster. You could buy a piece of software and run it on MS-DOS 5.0 for a long time if you didn't need networking and the software did what you wanted it to do. You didn't have to update.
Today everything is connected to the internet and exposed to threats, so the updates are much more frequent, and OS makers take advantage of this to push additional stuff and even more changes. The result is a treadmill.
That’s only sustainable if we pour a humongous percentage of our GDP in upgrading all software all the time.
Well, yes, that's what's going to happen .. because that churn increases the GDP number.
The professionals who still use unstable platforms are forced to rent their tools, sharecropper style. What about professionals like me who made the leap to a stable platform? "Exact binary you downloaded" hasn't been in my toolbox for a long time now.
I don't know many people left who pay for their OS these days.
If you are actually using the software for important tasks, you don't update the OS. If you need something from a new OS, you buy another machine.
It's easy to keep your machines secured even if they are using a decades old OS. Businesses are still depending on a lot of old software and hardware, because it gets the job done with great efficiency.
A day later, as I'm reading the responses and looking at the negative points on my comment: I have to learn to avoid commenting in certain topics on HN. It seems that most people here want their software to be FREE, or at least sold for an inexpensive one-time fee, which I can understand. But they also have a certain model of running a software business in their minds, which is simply wrong.
My bet is that none of the commenters in this thread (full of mentions of sustainable development) actually run a full-time software business and make a living on it. I do. Which is why I understand why subscriptions make sense.
Time to settle on wine as portable API. Bloatware is custom drawn anyway, so a drawing context is all environment they need.
I wish everyone would switch to LibreOffice so I can stop having to explain why their documents are formatted weirdly after I edit them
It's probably also related to the geopolitical context.
The US has threatened war at least against Canada, Europe, Panama and China, while clearly eyeing an alliance with Russia, which would in turn threaten many countries bordering Russia. That's a pretty large number of users who don't feel safe using US products anymore.
This could be checked by someone with access to country level sales numbers (or download numbers for libreoffice). Absent that, the recent price rise to pay for AI that most people don't need (since there are currently free of charge options elsewhere) is a more plausible explanation at a time when cost of living is a big topic in multiple countries.
That's a sensible response that seems to not be informed by recent buying trends in countries that are now grappling with sudden U.S. trade policy shifts. The sentiments are very strong, and need to be examined seriously by folks in the U.S. who will suddenly be feeling the negative effects. This is the world today, and it is taking a decidedly anti-U.S. tone for buyers and shoppers in other countries. To wit:
https://www.newsweek.com/kentucky-bourbon-boss-bemoans-canad...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn7vjlv7pzdo
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/danish-viking-bloo...
Trump wants to disrupt global trade so people making their own small disruption is an odd way to protest that, although I understand the sentiment. Shipyard Brewery are not my enemy and I hope I will continue to be able to buy their beer in the UK.
When one person makes such a disruption, it is small. When entire countries are actively suppressing or removing U.S.-made products from the marketplace, the effects are of course much stronger, which is why I gave those links as only just a few examples.
I am one of those annoying LaTeX people now, so my “word processor” ends up being tmux, NeoVim, and Nix, but I understand that that’s not for most people.
LibreOffice is honestly fine nowadays. I feel like Excel is probably a bit better than Calc, but Calc is still capable enough for most tasks.
The documents look decent enough, it’s easy to use, it’s reasonably fast, and you can’t really beat the price.
I have to admit that a reason that I haven’t touched it much is pretty silly: I like the icons for OpenOffice better. LibreOffice’s icons look too…childish? Hard to explain, and obviously subjective, but I wish I could get import OpenOffices icons into LibreOffice.
>I wish I could get import OpenOffices icons into LibreOffice.
I haven't tried it, but I think it's quite possible: https://documentation.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/Documen...
No question, though I don't think I'm anywhere near ambitious enough to do that.
I might compile OpenOffice and see how well that stacks up nowadays.
LibreOffice comes with six icon themes. Do you mean every single one of them is childish or only a particular one?
I guess the default one. I haven’t tried the other ones.
The default one is different per operating system or desktop environment. On KDE it's Breeze, on Windows it's Colibre, on macOS it's Sifr (off the top of my head).
I just checked, the one I was using, the default on NixOS with Sway, was Elementary, which I didn't like. I will admit that I liked the other built-in ones better, but I still like OpenOffice's better than any of them.
It's a scale. While straight up writing TeX is not for must, there's also stuff like LyX and TeXmacs.
You know, I have really tried to like TeXmacs, and I just can't. It's kind of cool, but it really feels like an amateur product to me. The UI is hard to navigate, everything feels kind of clunky. The documents it produces look nice, so it's not "bad" or anything, but I found it kind of awkward to use.
As it stands, the compromise that I do is write Markdown and render it to LaTeX or XeLaTeX with Pandoc. Not claiming it's the "best" or anything, but the documents look nice to me and Markdown is easy to write.
I usually used InDesign for presentations on PC. Switching to Scribus now that I run a linux only office has been trivial.
Specific to LibreOffice - as an academic I've had to create a couple presentations in ppt format recently. It sucks, but it was a requirement of the conference. Anyway - LO Impress still has many of the annoyances of PowerPoint, but head to head it's actually an objectively better, faster program than PowerPoint.
I’d be grumble to go back to Libre Office which I used for years but it was the company standard. Mostly just use Google Workplace these days. )As does my former employer.) I find Google does a good job of including features most people need 95%+ of the time and does a good job of those.
Given the number of people who still right align texts with spaces or tab if they are professionals I think for mist people programs like Word and LibreOffice Writer are overkill
These people need an multimodal AI assistant that does geometrically correctly OCR of the page s screenshot and then determines the appropriate number of spaces and sizes for the spaces to accurately right-align the text.
I think that is in copilot but it will cost you one AI credit from your o365 subscription
What the fuck?
I dare to say Word is so poorly designed that there are so many ways to screw up formatting... that bad behaviors (like right aligning text with spaces) are inevitable.
For 90% of documents, software like Word was a mistake and you should be using google docs level of detail or markdown or so. And for the rest you want publishing software, not Word :(.
Hugely agree with markdown.
99% of the time people want bullet points, headers, maybe a table or two. Using a word processor is very overkill and actually makes the simple stuff more arduous.
Markdown is the best too because:
1. Sending as plaintext is so convenient and it looks pretty decent
2. Most software (gitlab, jira, etc) accept markdown input so you can just copy-paste
I've commented as much before but what do people even use office for these days? Like I hear individuals complain about the prices and I'm just like I have not needed a real office suite in years. Google Docs has been enough to get by with for free for well over a decade.
Are you... creating and printing documents? Why? I haven't had a real need for a word processor since email was invented.
While I sometimes hangout with non-Engineering folks, I see following activities:
- preparing various letters, reports, audits, notices, terms/contracts etc. by modifying or using very specific templates and Office tools are very well entrenched for fixed templates
- Financial reports, analysis on excel(yes, most professionals are trained and feel comfortable there, same as how we feel good in terminal/console), building specific forms with constraints and checks, data sharing, special report of field data collection and audits, technical specifications/spec-sheets, quick complex calculations, think MS Excel as best candidate which everyone and there pet dog learned since elementary school
- Presentation, brochures, special fliers, quick reports, course reference/speech deck, lecture slides, product marketing/sales docs are mostly being handled by PowerPoint
Of course, we have numerous best-alternatives which can all replace these or “why not google docs”, but these people are trained on these specific ms office tools since dawn of civilization when people stopped cave painting and stone tablet based accounting in favor of computers. While we tech folks love to pickup and learn new tools, the other 99.99999% people see diminishing return adapting new tools. And lets be real, who wants to mess with the official template in some new tool that purchasing and procurement will not ever care about and scold the applicant back into the MS Office tools that already comes pre installed and licensed from their IT vendor?
Not google docs, because they can contain confidential information.
Google docs are fine for anything non-private and stuff that can go to the cloud.
I usually use Google docs for stuff like language learning for convenience and libreoffice for financial spreadsheets, work related stuff, and anything I don't want to be snooped by Google systems.
Kids' school "teaches" it, meaning the kids have to memorize where to click to do X in various Microsoft products. So you're stuck with Microsoft if you want decent grades for your child.
For some government and commercial interactions, printing things out is the only way to get something done
Sure, but printing forms doesn't require a word processor. You have to be creating things...
unless the form is a word document.
I use LO Writer for my resume, and Calc for my taxes.
MS office has been removing features, ruining the UI and adding bloat. No wonder people are jumping ship.
This has been the story for 20 years now. It's a case study in what happens when a product has a guaranteed revenue stream and the company has 0 incentive to innovate or improve anything. However, managers still need to have "launches" and leave their grimy fingerprints on the UI so they can pat themselves on the back and advance a rung on the career ladder. From a would-be user's perspective it appears this dynamic is the sole driver of changes to MS office.
> This has been the story for 20 years now.
Even longer. I remember in college in the '90s we would pack two things away over the summer to make sure the next year would go well: 1/4 oz weed because it took so long for the market to pick back up in the fall, and a floppy disc holding Word 5.1 since Word 6.0 for the Mac was such garbage.
That is great, hopefully it continues.
I am far from a heavy WP/Spreadsheet user, usually Emacs for me, but at work I need to mess with spreadsheets. I use LibreOffice for that and to me there is no difference.
LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, both have been a great since I switched away from Office 365—feeling I get overcharged for a function I will not use—for use with Nextcloud. It is even better to get a $39 ('refurbed' license for Office 2024) if you have to use (MS)Office.
Onlyoffice is awesome, if you’re buying recycled keys you may as well just MAS it since they’re both technically against TOS.
... they are marked as `refurb` at the reseller I use, but they are mostly just bulk licenses; although I do not know how they do this (Note: they are official resellers).
I started using OpenOffice a couple decades ago when I got tired of pirating the market leader. Not wanting to start any religious wars, but I still haven't made the leap to Libre.
It's extremely risky to keep using OpenOffice. Apache has marked its security status as "Amber" with "three issues in OpenOffice over 365 days old and a number of other open issues not fully triaged."
It's also worrying that The Apache Foundation continues to promote and distribute OpenOffice despite unfixed security issues and zero updates to the software. So many people in the FOSS world have called on them to finally retire it, put it in the Attic and keep up a good reputation for FOSS - but they won't do it. It still gets hundreds of thousands of downloads despite being unfixed.
It's irresponsible of The ASF IMO.
BTW, anyone concerned can email apache at apache dot org and ask why they're still distributing OpenOffice despite vulnerabilities. A few people on Mastodon have done that but gotten no answers yet. The more pressure there is to put it in the Attic, the sooner this awful situation will end...
I'd recommend switching, OpenOffice is basically abandonware. There's been security issues that were reported over a year ago that have gone unaddressed. If you look at OpenOffice's git repo (https://github.com/apache/openoffice), the vast majority of the commits are from two people who solely focus on manually fiddling with the code formatting and fixing typos in the comments.
It's so impressively underhandedly sneaky how Microsoft named their ODF-competitor format “Office Open” just as the OO.o hype peaked with OO.o 2.0 having ODF as its native format, when MSOffice finally had a viable and popular competitor for like the first time ever lol
https://www.openoffice.org/press/2.0/press_release.html (2005-10-20)
https://news.microsoft.com/2005/11/21/qa-microsoft-co-sponso... (2005-11-21)
I don't want to start any wars either, but I think people should make informed choices.
By choosing OpenOffice, you should be aware that you are at an increased risk for attacks. One of the consistent problems with OpenOffice over the past years has been that they have often not published security fixes for many months, sometimes critical ones, for vulnerabilities that were publicly known.
(Due to the shared codebase, obviously, many security issues affect both LO/OO, yet, with the difference that LO usually fixes them in a timely manner.)
LibreOffice is vastly more stable and has more features and compatibility fixes that OpenOffice. I recommend using it.
When most OpenOffice devs called Oracle's bluff, left, and LibreOffice was released, I switched right away and never regretted it.
Thanks for the replies re OO's security issues, they're lighting a fire under me to make the move.
It also supports WordPerfect formats, Which MS Office dropped. My wife was in a group email editing documents and someone emailed their edits using WordPerfect format. I loaded it in LibreOffice and exported it in DOCX format and it worked.
I need a Calc which doesn't suck. I don't necessarily need Excel, but the spreadsheet shouldn't be unusably slow at 100x100 cells with simple calculations and a literal couple of V/XLOOKUPs.
Gnumeric may be the answer for you. It was the answer for me. It's amazing how quickly both excel and libre office documents shit the bed and produce outright wrong behavior once they hit a few MB of data and/or a few dozen plots. Not to mention the fiasco of all the genetic information corrupted by excel's boneheaded auto complete (which they STILL haven't fixed afaik).
I have gnumeric documents with hundreds of plots containing fits etc that I view in 4k without any lag or delays whatsoever. The plotting options can also be made suitable for publication much more easily. All the important functions are there.
My main complaint about spreadsheets in general is the fitting options are still in the stone age compared with software like ROOT using minuit, where you can easily do a proper chi squared minimization with arbitrary functions where error bars of all points are correctly used. However, it seems only the sciences use such features as apparently there is no demand from the business world (or other MS customers) for spreadsheet tools supporting thought or analysis beyond a 5th grade level.
Microsoft has had decades and millions of dollars to make excel usable, and should be embarrassed about how their flagship productivity software is rightfully seen as unfit for purpose by people doing rigorous work. Seeing nontrivial information in a scientific talk rendered in the telltale excel style is visual shorthand for "the real analysis hasn't been done yet" or "I don't know what I'm doing and won't be able to answer questions about uncertainties."
Nice to see gnumeric getting a mention. Might be worth pointing out that it can use glpk [1] which provides a subset of ampl [2]. I use it about once a year to demonstrate a simple linear programming model. Gnumeric's file format is plain text as well which is nice.
Given their download page[1] doesn't have any binaries, can you clarify if they still don't have Pivot tables, as Wikipedia claims?
XLOOKUP was implemented last year. Submit a bug report with an example document and the perf issue can be looked into. Calc's performance is being improved constantly.
Have you tried Google Sheets? Its not open source, but its free and gets the job done.
I ditched MS office last year (for libreoffice) when MS updated their terms to allow them to hoover up all my content, even that stored only on my computer, to train their AI. Subscription costs (which I'd bought a version several years ago) pale by comparison to the wrongness of that.
I don't mind paying for MS Office. I do mind that every new version seems to be worse than the previous one for doing actual work on a real computer.
I realy feel the PM's at Microsoft consider you a dinosaur if your primary "productivity" device is not your phone.
I stopped buying Office after 2003. Past then they added the Ribbon UI which ruined it for any productive workflow where you want to use styles and reviewing tools.
Been using LibreOffice Write ever since, which helpfully has pretty much the 2003 UI. The only thing I think it could use is that nifty Jetbrains "search anywhere" feature.
Given that most of our civilization is run using these tools, it boggles the mind how they are still so limited.
Why is there a limit of nine levels of headings in Word? Why does it feel less usable on my i9 with 32GB of RAM once you hit 200+ pages? Why is the "collaborative mode" still way, way, way behind Google Docs functionality circa 2012? I feel like the core functionality has stagnated since Office 2003.
Yet are the donations also on the rise? I bet they aren't.
Fortunately they are, but TDF's budget is still rather small when considering the scale of the project. TDF is looking to expand its dev team. There's a lot of activity going on with volunteers and interns, but we need more senior devs to tackle the trickier renovations.
Glad to be proven wrong then.
Probably too late to this thread for anyone to read this, but the real reason for this bump is Microsoft removing WordPad from the latest versions of Windows 11.
That would do it. If Windows got rid of their basic document editor, and enough affected muggles got into desperate enough situations to discover Libreoffice, they will tip each other off through social networks quickly.
Strategies taking advantage of the ignorance of users (or voters) are faltering in the age of user-generated content. You can't sell an operating system without a document editor without running the risk of people finding the free one that is nearly as good (or in the case of Wordpad, is far better.)
MS won't like what happens in offices 10 years from now if they let students use Libreoffice for their schoolwork instead of Wordpad (eventually replaced with Word.) They'd better be working hard to get "student" copies of Office into kids' hands, even if they have to pay them to take it.
> MS won't like what happens in offices 10 years from now if they let students use Libreoffice for their schoolwork instead of Wordpad (eventually replaced with Word.) They'd better be working hard to get "student" copies of Office into kids' hands, even if they have to pay them to take it.
They have completely lost this battle. Google Docs was the standard thru nearly my entire K12 and university education.
Can you explain why you think so? it's not self-evident.
WordPad was a quick and easy way to view/edit simple Word documents. When you double-clicked a .docx, WordPad would let you read it (albeit with some formatting issues).
Now when you click a .docx on a fresh Windows install, you get a generic “what app would you like to open this with?” pop-up.*
This leads the user to google free ways to view Word documents, leading to LibreOffice.
* Site note: I’m very surprised Microsoft doesn’t use this as an opportunity to sell you Office.
Working on my taxes now with LO Calc. My resume is in Writer, easily exported to PDF. Been using it since it was called StarOffice. Go LibreOffice and FLOSS!
Can you guys recommend an android app which can do simple edits (mostly data entry) on spreadsheet .ODS files stored locally on the device. Right now I use Collabora but UX is not the best and it feels very slow and unresponsive at times. MS Excel requires conversion to xlsx before you can edit and Google Sheets requires to upload to google drive so neither is an option. Any alternatives?
Only office works quite well: https://www.onlyoffice.com/office-for-android.aspx
I've been looking into what it would take to "theme" LibreOffice into something more Gnome-ish, less jarring to new users, for some reason there's been many project with that in mind and they all seem abandoned and / or in limbo
Subscription is fine on Office for me. I just pay for the O365 family edition (without copilot) and everyone gets it for about £6.70 a month. However I don't want the signed in cloud version so I just use the moral justification of cracking it with Ohook and disabling all the cloud shit. I'm paying for it so I don't give a crap.
LibreOffice I want to like but I've tripped over many weird bugs and things which have been floating around in their Bugzilla since the dawn of time.
If I have an academic interest, I'll just use TeXlive and LaTeX Workship inside VScode.
I use libreoffice call to open stuff on my Linux box, but the default formula behavior turns me off.
If I type “=“ into D2 then left arrow to C2 then type “*” I would expect when I next press up arrow it to bring me to D1. But in Calc it brings me to C1. In other words it doesn’t reset to the starting cell after each operation.
I guess I can change it somehow, but that’s been enough of an annoyance that I haven’t switched wholly for on google sheets, though I’d like to.
I just use Office 2007 for my personal stuff. It still works, even on Windows 11! Other than slightly better non-contiguous region operations and QoL improvements to pivot tables in Excel, on 365 that I use at work, I don't really miss anything. It also lags a lot less.
I've been trying different office apps that work with MS office!!!
I understand this is a shifting requirement but I just don't work in an environment where I can force everyone to switch.
Currently I find OnlyOffice to be much better than LibreOffice.
Does HN know of any others?
Note that OnlyOffice is a Russian clone of MS Office. Its Russian branding P7 is still sold to Russian government and military. They didn't stop business with Russian government and opened offices in Latvia and Singapore to continue West presence. The clients are not fully open source either. You cannot independently build it. It is quite shady.
There is WPS from China with similar issues.
So your options are limited. LibreOffice sucks ass with any serious document. On Windows GUI bugs are annoying as hell. KDE's Calligra is slowly rotting.
I made the exact search as you did and decided to get a perpetual MS Office license. No other way around unfortunately.
Yeah I really don't understand the LibreOffice hype.
I've never found it to work, and the UX looks like it was designed at IBM in 1985.
I use livreoffice writer for my legal work on a full time basis. Gets the job done.
Have to send PDFs so it works.
I do not have to do collaborative editing like tracking but I suppose that works too.
Calc is.. slowly improving but it works.
Google docs doesn’t work?
It works fine for most use cases, but Google Docs and Sheets features pale in comparison full desktop base apps.
google docs and sheets have 99% of the features that an average home user would want to use for a word processor and a spreadsheet.
The things that docs don't have are things like templated designs, and other typesetting features that a professional document creator would want to use. It also isn't completely compatible with office document formats (some formatting and alignments are wrong). I would imagine similar with spreadsheets.
Until you get to multiplayer document editing.
Having multiple people working literally at the same time is an interesting way to work, though not something I want to repeat/rely on often.
Uhm. You probably haven't seen the crazy Google sheets that exist out there.
They are really stretching what you should be doing with a spreadsheet and they are fully collaborative/multi-user. At some point it got really old to wait fifteen minutes for the sheets to recalculate.
Not if you don't have internet access.
It has the worst commenting and track history I've seen. My company went to Google docs about 5 years ago and I have steadily walked the work product of engineers go downhill because of it.
For what reasons? I've used both and never seen such a thing. In fact I'd argue the simplicity and collaboration features of Google Docs gives it an edge.
One issue is information density of the UI, the other is that text edits are embedded as comments.
I think it is great for planning a birthday party. Less so for critical engineering documentation when lives are on the line. My experience is that sloppy imprecise tools lead to sloppy imprecise work.
It's far better than Office 365's though in my experience.
I confess that I've been using a pirated version of office for years and years. When I can no longer use that then I will upgrade to libre office.
Microsoft deactivates pirated versions of Office and tells you to buy a copy.
massgrave.dev has worked well for me
LibreOffice is also not spying on users.
Microsoft Office was ok when I last used it 25 years ago. I think it came preinstalled. But LibreOffice is the real thing and that its going to become the standard is good news.
is there a way to plug say Grok or Chatgpt API into LibreOffice writer or sheets? such that it can have write access to the documents?
There is an extensive Python extensions module that could do it.
https://dev.blog.documentfoundation.org/2023/11/25/libreoffi...
You could try https://github.com/balisujohn/localwriter
I don't think I could ever go back to storing my docs locally and not being able to access them from all my devices at all times anywhere in the world, easily.
I think you can, I believe in you.
You can mount your cloud drive, and open those files with LibreOffice or OnlyOffice, I certainly do so with Google Drive
It's not the same. I keep the document open on multiple machines (home and work for example) and they update. Then I pull out my phone and add a note to the same document all while it's still open on other machines.
IIRC OnlyOffice can do that Google Docs style collaboration, but it does take extra effort to setup