OpenOffice vs LibreOffice

[theFOoL]

Hi guys,

So I was using OpenOffice since 2005 but then switched to LibreOffice in 2016

Came Across this LINK

Ha I guess Libre Wins

 

[DRDNA]

Nice free alternatives the both of them.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Ha I guess Libre Wins

It's more a personal preference thing - as the author suggests.

 

[Space Lynx]

I prefer LibreOffice just because its based out of France i believe, lot of good philosophy when it comes to open source in France.

 

[Kursah]

LibreOffice is the best choice here, iirc development slowed or even stopped on OpenOffice while LibreOffice has been steadily updated for the years I've used it. Libre was/is based off of OpenOffice and makes some adjustments, tweaks a d additions. Overall I find it to be the better of the free MS Office alternatives.

 

[johnspack]

Yes, LibreOffice works perfectly. Very fast, and produces the same documents as MS perfectly. I don't miss office, or windows.....

 

[bug]

LibreOffice is the best choice here, iirc development slowed or even stopped on OpenOffice while LibreOffice has been steadily updated for the years I've used it. Libre was/is based off of OpenOffice and makes some adjustments, tweaks a d additions. Overall I find it to be the better of the free MS Office alternatives.

Oracle held onto OpenOffice while virtually every developer switched sides and went on to work on LibreOffice (note that Oracle did not announce any further plans about OpenOffice during this period, other that their refusal to let the new community use the name "OpenOffice"). Only when it became painfully clear they'll never be able to monetize it, they offloaded it to Apache*.

For years, I haven't have to choose between OpenOffice or LibreOffice (horrible name, btw), but rather I had to come up with reasons to fire up LibreOffice when Google Docs works so well.

*Oracle also offloaded Netbeans to Apache and after many years we now have a new Java release with no support from Netbeans (Java9 features are supported, but there's no Netbeans release that runs on top of Java9). That's just to show well these transitions work.

 

[notb]

Very fast, and produces the same documents as MS perfectly.

Oh... it so doesn't.

I won't vote for LibreOffice being the best free alternative right now, but it's clearly ahead of OpenOffice.
I actually though OO isn't developed any more.

 

[johnspack]

Well fast compared to MS office. Everything under linux is a s**t ton faster, using far less ram.

 

[DRDNA]

Well fast compared to MS office. Everything under linux is a s**t ton faster, using far less ram.

Gaming too?

 

[GoldenX]

Gaming too?

If you have a Nvidia, and the game runs a native OpenGL or Vulkan engine, at the very least it's the same performance. It's better thanks to no antivirus or telemetry on the background eating resources.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

I've been using Apache OpenOffice for a few years and I really enjoy it. I mostly use it to write fanfiction. I like how I can zoom the document in and out so it's easier for me to see.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Oracle held onto OpenOffice while virtually every developer switched sides and went on to work on LibreOffice (note that Oracle did not announce any further plans about OpenOffice during this period, other that their refusal to let the new community use the name "OpenOffice"). Only when it became painfully clear they'll never be able to monetize it, they offloaded it to Apache*.

For years, I haven't have to choose between OpenOffice or LibreOffice (horrible name, btw), but rather I had to come up with reasons to fire up LibreOffice when Google Docs works so well.

*Oracle also offloaded Netbeans to Apache and after many years we now have a new Java release with no support from Netbeans (Java9 features are supported, but there's no Netbeans release that runs on top of Java9). That's just to show well these transitions work.

This. Oracle bought OpenOffice, all the developers jumped ship creating LibreOffice. Now Apache has OpenOffice but little in the way of development. OpenOffice might as well be dead.

"Libre" is French for "free." *cough*Free from Oracle.*cough*

 

[notb]

Well fast compared to MS office. Everything under linux is a s**t ton faster, using far less ram.

But it's a different program, so it's hard to compare. As soon as you get to really large files with long recalc time, it usually becomes Microsoft-specific (or LibreOffice-specific... if that even makes sense).

Also, LibreOffice used to be depressively slow just few years back, so I don't see why it would changed so quickly (especially when MS Office got so much better).
I'll try to do some tests tomorrow.

 

[lexluthermiester]

LibreOffice is the best choice here, iirc development slowed or even stopped on OpenOffice

That was due to the transition of the ownership of OpenOffice. When Oracle bought part of the Sun Micro System's assets, OpenOffice was included and Oracle stated that they might close the source for future versions. The community was having none of that, and took the base code that was still open and branched it into LibreOffice. Then Oracle handed off OpenOffice to Apache and they opened it back up and have advanced and improved it.

Overall I find it to be the better of the free MS Office alternatives.

Totally agree. I haven't used Microsoft Office in over a decade since first discovering OpenOffice. Switched over to Libre during the Oracle diabolical, but have been using and recommending OpenOffice for use on older systems as it seems to run with a lighter resource foot-print.

 

[StrayKAT]

This. Oracle bought OpenOffice, all the developers jumped ship creating LibreOffice. Now Apache has OpenOffice but little in the way of development. OpenOffice might as well be dead.

"Libre" is French for "free." *cough*Free from Oracle.*cough*

Good to know. I haven't jumped into OSS world in awhile (I only remember OpenOffice), but thinking of migrating more stuff to third parties. I'm tied to MS ecosystem pretty closely, and would like to get away. And away from Google as much as I can too.

Sounds like Oracle has been a detriment more than anything. I knew they already killed off Solaris.

 

[notb]

I'm tied to MS ecosystem pretty closely, and would like to get away. And away from Google as much as I can too.

Out of pure curiosity: why?
I'm actually in the process of trying to "tie myself" to MS ecosystem (above Windows and MS Office). I got rid of Linux as host even in home servers some time ago (still keeping VMs). I migrated as much as I could to Visual Studio. I moved from Google Drive to OneDrive. I'm still primarily on gmail, but thinking about IMAPing it to live.com .

I hoped for a Windows smartphone, but that won't be happening anytime soon...

 

[StrayKAT]

Out of pure curiosity: why?
I'm actually in the process of trying to "tie myself" to MS ecosystem (above Windows and MS Office). I got rid of Linux as host even in home servers some time ago (still keeping VMs). I migrated as much as I could to Visual Studio. I moved from Google Drive to OneDrive. I'm still primarily on gmail, but thinking about IMAPing it to live.com .

I hoped for a Windows smartphone, but that won't be happening anytime soon...

Well, not completely. I still like some of their services. It's just that I've finally adopted a smartphone (Android/Samsung), and after the demise of Windows phone, I kind of glean into the future that I shouldn't be so tied to Microsoft. One day, I expect a digital world that only has them as a player among many. It's already getting that way.

That said, it looks like they have some great apps on Android. I even tested out their Android launcher, but took it off. I don't need to go that far.

edit: Oh yeah, it's a shame Windows phone is gone. I'm not a big fan of smartphones in general, but if I had a choice, I really appreciate it's design. I think the iOS/Android icon design sucks and is clumsy for a phone. Not sure why people love either so much. Something like Windows tiles or some form of panels are the way to go. Star Trek had it right all those years ago with their datapads. lol

 

[bug]

Good to know. I haven't jumped into OSS world in awhile (I only remember OpenOffice), but thinking of migrating more stuff to third parties. I'm tied to MS ecosystem pretty closely, and would like to get away. And away from Google as much as I can too.

Sounds like Oracle has been a detriment more than anything. I knew they already killed off Solaris.

Oracle's only business was to kill off MySQL. With the added hope of making Google pay for Java.
Everything else they got from buying Sun was just stuff they never actually meant to to work on.

 

[StrayKAT]

Oracle's only business was to kill off MySQL. With the added hope of making Google pay for Java.
Everything else they got from buying Sun was just stuff they never actually meant to to work on.

I honestly don't understand what good Oracle does for anyone... or why Larry Ellison is so famous he gets cameos in an Iron Man movie. For as long as I've used computers, Oracle isn't all that important to most users.. not Windows home users, not the OSS community, not mobile, etc.. They live in this space in the backbone of the net. And any other attempt at reaching out to other uses in the tech world is hostile.

 

[bug]

I honestly don't understand what good Oracle does for anyone... or why Larry Ellison is so famous he gets cameos in an Iron Man movie. For as long as I've used computers, Oracle isn't all that important to most users.. not Windows home users, not the OSS community, not mobile, etc.. They live in this space in the backbone of the net. And any other attempt at reaching out to other uses in the tech world is hostile.

They're big in the corporate space where data integrity/reliability is important and they're good at making money. The latter is especially useful in conducting a business
So yes, even if you as an end-user don't really care about Oracle, they're still handling probably your most important data (your bank almost certainly uses Oracle, though banks also have a thing for another dinosaur: Sybase).

 

[StrayKAT]

They're big in the corporate space where data integrity/reliability is important and they're good at making money. The latter is especially useful in conducting a business
So yes, even if you as an end-user don't really care about Oracle, they're still handling probably your most important data (your bank almost certainly uses Oracle, though banks also have a thing for another dinosaur: Sybase).

Well, I know an MMO game I once played used Oracle (forgot which.. but it sucked lol). But still, for such an important company (and I'm not denying they are important), they still seem irrelevant. It's weird. Every other well known tech company has a personal level of interactivity and tries to effect people's lives.

I'll never forget this one old documentary... "Triumph of the Nerds" or something. Made around the dotcom days. It got to the Larry Ellison segment and visited his home. I've never seen a bigger and more pretentious blowhard than that guy. Especially at the time when they were narrating how he was set to conquer the world. I think this was around the same time people were hyping up Java and Net Computing (glorified terminals sounds like). This has yet to truly catch on.. but it keeps popping up in one form or another.

 

[bug]

Well, I know an MMO game I once played used Oracle (forgot which.. but it sucked lol). But still, for such an important company (and I'm not denying they are important), they still seem irrelevant. It's weird. Every other well known tech company has a personal level of interactivity and tries to effect people's lives.

I'll never forget this one old documentary... "Triumph of the Nerds" or something. Made around the dotcom days. It got to the Larry Ellison segment and visited his home. I've never seen a bigger and more pretentious blowhard than that guy. Especially at the time when they were narrating how he was set to conquer the world. I think this was around the same time people were hyping up Java and Net Computing (glorified terminals sounds like). This has yet to truly catch on.. but it keeps popping up in one form or another.

Eh, you seem to be under the impression every successful company is about end users. If you think Oracle doesn't fit that mold, try googling "hidden champions"

 

[StrayKAT]

Eh, you seem to be under the impression every successful company is about end users. If you think Oracle doesn't fit that mold, try googling "hidden champions"

It's the mixture of self-importance and yet not really relevant to end users I take issue with. I guess?

That and these small opportunities of actually getting involved ended up failing too. They could have fostered some good will with OpenOffice or Solaris or whatever. But they don't. Not even IBM is this bad.

 

[Peter1986C]

"Libre" is French for "free." *cough*Free from Oracle.*cough*

Also the fact it is free (as in libre, but not necessarily gratis) software.