Berlin, 19 December 2024 – LibreOffice 24.8.4, the fourth minor release of the LibreOffice 24.8 family of the free open source, volunteer-supported office suite for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), MacOS (Apple and Intel) and Linux, is available at www.libreoffice.org/download. The release includes over 55 bug and regression fixes over LibreOffice 24.8.3 [1] to improve […]
Honest question. In the era of collaborative document editing on browser-based platforms, who is using this software and what are they using it for? I work with documents for my job and it’s been literally decades since I used a local standalone word processor.
I don’t use the Word replacement but I do use Calc (excel replacement). I very often want to run calculations or chart a bit of data and use Calc for that. Yeah I could use Google sheets, but every time I want to use it I have to go get my phone out to MFA. Far easier to just type “calc”.
I do not use any other features of LibreOffice.
At work I use the standalone power point and excel. I am not collaborating 99% of the time, and Microsoft Office has mechanisms for collaborating & sharing if I do. Using the browser always feels second class with some options moved or hard to find. Of course YMMV.
Probably not because it would need to be an off-the-peg solution with support included for my bosses to even begin to consider it. But I have heard of Collabora and I know it’s decent.
More in the running would be a cloud solution from the amazing Framasoft, including Framapad
None of this is to disparage LibreOffice, which apparently offers value to many people and that’s great.
Onlyoffice by default comes as standalone local application suite and is not based on LibreOffice.
It looks more modern/intuitive, but is less powerfull and feature rich than LibreOffice.
I need local font support far, far more often than I need collaborative editing. Plus, call me old, but I don’t like storing everything on a server in Virginia for Google to read.
Idunno, that might be approaching “one day of patchy electricity can change how you view computers vs mechanical typewriters”. Here people would likely use their mobile internet, especially if the company is paying their phone bill.
I’d say it depends on what you do and how much collaboration with other people is involved. I have always used standalone clients, and I’m not a fan anything web browser based (or cloud in general). I started using LibreCalc instead of Excel for my job a few months ago. Now that I got used to it, I love it. It loads faster, has regex out of the box. Excel has already become quite enshittified, in my opinion.
What you both said are true. It’s convenient to load a site and perform tasks to a degree what native clients can, and it’s also weird how since more than a decade ago we can’t agree on anything and now we are trying to do everything in a web client.
Yeah, mirroring the other comment here -it’s standalone app everytime for me. I’m a bit of a power user, so maybe it’s the extra functionality that just can’t be handled in a browser which already has 20 other tabs open, but live colab is … well, just not used that often.
Sure, we’ll be tweaking cells in a spreadsheet now & again, but my technical documents are done by one person, then reviewed (comments, track changes, etc) by others for the audit trail.
And I’m just not going to purchase a Microsoft product again.
But I will contribute to Open Source… ODF has done great things.
Honest question. In the era of collaborative document editing on browser-based platforms, who is using this software and what are they using it for? I work with documents for my job and it’s been literally decades since I used a local standalone word processor.
I don’t use the Word replacement but I do use Calc (excel replacement). I very often want to run calculations or chart a bit of data and use Calc for that. Yeah I could use Google sheets, but every time I want to use it I have to go get my phone out to MFA. Far easier to just type “calc”.
I do not use any other features of LibreOffice.
At work I use the standalone power point and excel. I am not collaborating 99% of the time, and Microsoft Office has mechanisms for collaborating & sharing if I do. Using the browser always feels second class with some options moved or hard to find. Of course YMMV.
I’m using it the same way I’d be using office.
The collaborative document editing doesn’t apply to me.
https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/ This is for you
Probably not because it would need to be an off-the-peg solution with support included for my bosses to even begin to consider it. But I have heard of Collabora and I know it’s decent.
More in the running would be a cloud solution from the amazing Framasoft, including Framapad
None of this is to disparage LibreOffice, which apparently offers value to many people and that’s great.
deleted by creator
Onlyoffice by default comes as standalone local application suite and is not based on LibreOffice. It looks more modern/intuitive, but is less powerfull and feature rich than LibreOffice.
I need local font support far, far more often than I need collaborative editing. Plus, call me old, but I don’t like storing everything on a server in Virginia for Google to read.
You’re not old.
You just haven’t sold out.
One single work day of patchy internet can change how you look at this.
Idunno, that might be approaching “one day of patchy electricity can change how you view computers vs mechanical typewriters”. Here people would likely use their mobile internet, especially if the company is paying their phone bill.
Most computers have sufficuent battery back up to cover “patchy electricity”.
I’d say it depends on what you do and how much collaboration with other people is involved. I have always used standalone clients, and I’m not a fan anything web browser based (or cloud in general). I started using LibreCalc instead of Excel for my job a few months ago. Now that I got used to it, I love it. It loads faster, has regex out of the box. Excel has already become quite enshittified, in my opinion.
Interesting insight, thanks.
What you both said are true. It’s convenient to load a site and perform tasks to a degree what native clients can, and it’s also weird how since more than a decade ago we can’t agree on anything and now we are trying to do everything in a web client.
Yeah, mirroring the other comment here -it’s standalone app everytime for me. I’m a bit of a power user, so maybe it’s the extra functionality that just can’t be handled in a browser which already has 20 other tabs open, but live colab is … well, just not used that often.
Sure, we’ll be tweaking cells in a spreadsheet now & again, but my technical documents are done by one person, then reviewed (comments, track changes, etc) by others for the audit trail.
And I’m just not going to purchase a Microsoft product again.
But I will contribute to Open Source… ODF has done great things.
That does make sense. Thanks.
I almost never use it, but if LibreOffice can come in handy a few times a year, why not at least keep it installed?
A lot of stuff is indeed browser based, so I probably spend more time in Firefox than in my code editor and terminal.
But LibreOffice is welcome to live on 0.1% of my disk space!