Does anyone actually use LibreOffice?
LibreOffice is preinstalled in Pop OS, and as someone who loves the idea of FOSS I want to use it, but inevitably I just use Google docs or Office Online. Is it really worth learning? Has anyone successfully incorporated it into your workflow?
I use collabora, which is essentially an online webUI implementation of libreoffice that can integrate with nextcloud, which I self-host.
All the benefits of an online office suite, all on my own hardware.
Yes. I've been using it since the old OpenOffice days. It works well, it's easy to learn, it's well supported, and it's free.
I use LibreOffice! Calc, Draw, and Writer are very user friendly once you get used to where the tools are. Impress is a pretty good replacement for Powerpoint: the stock graphics leave a lot to be desired--but that's a simple fix with a good stock image service. About the only thing LO doesn't do is notes, but I'd check out Xournal++ if you were looking for a way to replace OneNote. Plus, LibreOffice doesn't push OneDrive down your throat. It's been a win-win for me.
Another thing to consider if you really like typesetting is to learn LaTeX: it's a slightly steep learning curve(especially for advanced topics), but it'll do things that your typical WYSIWYG word-processing suite couldn't dream of doing. Plus there are a lot of templates available that you can adapt for your purposes.
I exclusively use the libre office suite and its apps since many years, but it's defo not user friendly lol. The UX is confusing, outdated and ugly af. But at least it's open-source, free and useful.
Used LIbreOffice throughout college. I use it when I need to, though I don't use any office productivity apps beyond a spreadsheet these days. When I DO need something like that, I Just use the LibreOffice integrated into Nextcloud.
Well, I have a license for MS Office from work that I have never actually installed, because Libre Office is just much simpler to deal with. I'm sure at some point I will need it, but since WFH started there has been no such time.
Honestly, I have no idea how people can stand MS Word. It's a complete piece of shit that barely works. If you want it for a text editor, you will have a much better experience with any other suite. But Excel is good, and Power Point does that thing it does quite well (if that's a good thing, it's up to opinion). Those are harder to replace.
I prefer OnlyOffice over LibreOffice cause it seems to have better support for MS formats.
Yep, LibreOffice misses up with the format sometimes so I wouldn't use it on documents that I'm gonna send to someone
I use LibreOffice to fill out important documents and taxes. I don't trust google, or myself for that matter, to hold that kind of data securely in the cloud without encryption.
I used to use it for all my office needs, then Google docs got really good!
I think owncloud/nextcloud use libreoffice code for their collaborative office suites behind the scenes.
They do, the actual document server is named collabora, and the editor suite is based on libreoffice.
I used OpenOffice and then LibreOffice all the way through college. However in the past couple years I moved to a combination of Office 365 and VSCode because I used the OneDrive cloud storage which comes at a pretty solid discount.
I don’t enjoy using Google docs - but I seem to be an exception to the rule there. Most people seem to see no reason to have anything else.
same here! The whole Google suite is just so unbearably slow at the school i go to, but we're all forced to use it.
I like Google slides, but I'm not a fan of the others.
I have been using it forever. I love it, and usually install it for friends and family members. Drive is fine, but they are indexing and reading your data, and I prefer to own my software.
For me, yes, and not just for personal or academic use. I've created and editted countless business documents with it. I've gotten at least four jobs with the resume I wrote with it.
I use nothing else, unless my employer forces me to use MS office, offline. No online documents here, you never know when they sell your data...
The answer is all the time. They sell your data all the time.
Nothing to learn it's a doddle to use, My 76 year old mother was quite happily using it occasionally on linux box up until she broke her neck two weeks ago - really (4 vertebrae).
Oh man. Hope she survived and can still have a few good years.
I use on Windows, bc It has regex, a huge thing for me.
I juggle between whatever office suite is installed at the time. I’ve found that they’re all pretty much the same. If you know one, the rest are virtually the same.
The tool for slides is nicer than PowerPoint 365 and Google slides. It allows you to set the spacing on text, for example.
If you need collaborative editing then Google's office suite is unmatched. Otherwise LibreOffice is perfectly fine as an alternative to keep your personal data off the cloud.
I used OpenOffice, and later LibreOffice, for all of my assignments in grade school and college. If you know how to use one office suite then you essentially already know how to use them all. There are some guides that can help you find certain features in the menus.
Compatibility-wise, if you intend to share documents across systems that may also require editing the documents, avoid saving documents in the Microsoft OOXML formats; use the Open Document Formats instead. You may also want to embed the fonts used in the document in case the person who opens the document doesn't have the same fonts. As a good portion of document layout issues are caused by missing fonts being replaced by substitutes that have different character heights and widths.
Finalized read-only versions of your document should be exported as PDFs. LibreOffice does have the option of generating a hybrid PDF that contains the original ODF source embedded in it, which can be convenient if you'd like to bundle the read-only PDF with an editable ODF source.
Although I would recommend Scribus over LibreOffice Draw because it's much easier to snap elements to a precise grid for perfect precision with a printer.
I've almost never needed "collaborative" editing. What's your workflow typically like?
Every month, marketing shares a draft of the blog article for review, and we add notes to the document in realtime.
Not having constant internet access, LibreOffice is a valuable tool to me. I kind of dread the day when the development of fundamental desktop applications assumes a constant internet connection.
Been using it (or OpenOffice) since I was in high school. So probably since shortly after OpenOffice first released in 2002. Then in college I would have switched over to LibreOffice once it forked off in like 2010 or 2011, whichever it was.
I have it deployed at work for my 55 users instead of getting Microsoft Office licenses for all of them. They are not sophisticated users and it suits their needs. I probably field a few more questions for it than MS Office but they would call about that too since they think I am Google.
I personally think that Calc does a better job handling various CSV files than Excel.
I use it. It's rare, because I tend to use emacs+org-mode for private documents, or one of various other formats for interchange, but when I need to work with Microsoft Word or Excel documents, I use it.
Also, abiword theoretically is a lighter-weight editor for RTF documents, but in past years, I've found it to be pretty unstable, so I tend to use LibreOffice to view RTF documents.
I use it, I also hate it with a passion. I also hate Microsoft Office, its a little better but not worth installing and registering.
Nowadays if I need to write something I use either plain text, Markdown or LaTeX depending on what I'm doing. For presentations I use LaTeX, Draw.io or Google Slides. For spreadsheets I haven't found anything decent yet so I end up using Calc.
Anyways, the Google alternatives are decent to be honest, I just prefer to avoid Google, otherwise I would use Docs, Slides and whatever their spreadsheet app is called.
Yeah this is what happened to me. I use LibreOffice in the event that I need to work with Office documents, but if I'm writing something myself, I'm pretty much exclusively in Markdown. It's just faster for my uses, and the files are nice and portable.
Lol I’m kind of the same. I LOATHE Office and I hate having to use LibreOffice. I have nothing against LibreOffice per say. I just feel every time I open an office suite for work which I do a lot, that it’s the least efficient way of doing things. Though obviously your average use wouldn’t get by with anything else.
I do appreciate Libre Calc. I like that it’s a true spreadsheet without trying to tack on a billion features like tables etc. I use it for csv files often.
I use it even in the once a month time I have to touch Windows, chief.
I used LibreOffice exclusively in college — it was a lifesaver for my broke ass, since most of my money went to beer and hobbies (DnD, home severs, guitars, more drinking…)
It got the job done, but I wasn’t doing a whole lot of writing fwiw. Once I got over the whole “save it using the correct format or your professors will fail you” hump, it was everything I needed and more.
Don’t do any writing that isn’t markdown now, and I write that in Vscode or Obsidian these days.
Those D&D books make Office look cheap, especially if you end up a forever DM!
Same here, taking a few classes again now and have been using it again. Still enjoy it!
I do. I'm never going to pay for Microsoft Office. No need. Libre does fine.
If you find yourself not able to commit to LibreOffice you can always try OnlyOffice. For people that are used to the Microsoft products, those are quite easy and samey feeling replacement's.
I use OnlyOffice. Mainly for the far superior MS office compatibility. Occasionally I'll use LibreOffice for the extra features not available in OnlyOffice.
There was a time where I'd boot up Libre office for tasks that Google docs wouldn't cover. But it's been so long I don't remember what it was.
Now I just use Docs for all my personal work.
Yes, on my personal computer. The UI isn't the best but so far I have been able to handle just about anything I throw at it competently. I definitely prefer Microsoft office which is on my work issued PC. Not a fan of Google docs unless im collaborating on something with friends.
I used it years ago, but have moved to the cloud for all my document editing needs.
Much of my work us collaborative document creation. I'd love to use LibreOffice but try as I might, I can't work out how to connect it to corporate SharePoint sites etc.
Working with MS Word on anything but trivial documents is miserable. So many bugs and weirdnesses. How is it even possible for Word to let its documents become sour using its own file format!
I say "sour" because the documents are still accessible, so not fully corrupted... but over time, weirdnesses creep in such as tables losing their positioning data, cross-references breaking for no reason etc.
Yes, I do. It's fine, not a great UI but it gets the job done. I don't work in a ton of Office documents, but for something like basic spreadsheets it meets my needs.
I use it and it works just fine for my needs. I wouldn't say I'm a heavy user though but it does everything I need it to do and it does it well.
I use libreoffice, draw, and calc.
I lost all my work to Melissa in 1999 and never used MS office again.
I used it years ago when I had a writing hobby. Whenever I go back to it, I'll probably use it again. Learning it wasn't hard for me because I'm old and it wasn't very different from the word processors I'd grown up with.
I do a lot of work in LibreOffice Calc these days - I use it to outline text documents as well as make computations that I can revise. It doesn't need to have tons of features to do what I want it to do, but if you dig into it, it can do some pretty powerful stuff.
Draw is also just fine for making meme text.
Yes, I've used it for years both privately and on business machines.
I sure do. On everything.
I use it occasionally. Usually for reports or essays for college and working on CV/ Resumes for me and my family.
Sometimes also for other random stuff like writing speeches etc.
It has everything I need and I am used to it at this stage. Plus I like that it is open source and free.
I use it for pretty much everything that I would use Microsoft Word for. Essays, signs, résumés, legal documents... lots of uses.
If I had to choose only one program it would be OnlyOffice. I like LibreOffice Writer okay but Calc can’t handle my .csv files as they are too big while OnlyOffice does fine with even my largest of datasets.
I do, on Windows (boo-womp). It really does the job well, but I need some more time to get used to it.
I use it for everything that doesn't explicitly need to be shared or anything that is going to be printed. I needed to print a document as a booklet and LibreOffice had that feature and Drive didn't.
I also keep a baseline suite of apps installed on every machine and that includes LibreOffice.
I use it mainly for personal use, and mainly when people send me Excel worksheets. I've also used Calc to manipulate data for CSV merges, too. I've worked in small newspaper office that'll have Macs but don't want to buy Office; unlike Pages it interacts with the outside world nicely.
I've been a user so long that I had a StarOffice license in college so I didn't have to reboot to Windows to work on term papers.
@kurosawaa yep. Handy for machines I don’t need a full ms office license on
I use it, still use it today. Honestly I think it's fine, I mainly have gripes about these:
Otherwise it's alright!
I tried to use LibreOffice but couldn't stand the UI coming from Windows and macOS. Honestly as much as it sucks, the either ugly design of the applications or them not being straight up available just had me move back to macOS and Windows.
I do. I’ve used it for many years - back to when it was OpenOffice and I even dabbled with StarOffice before that. It’s not as good as MS Office but it does the job. I also use Office 365 and G Suite occasionally. It’s definitely a good thing that we have LibreOffice.
Here here
Yes, I've been using it (and Collabora) for years! For the most part, I don't trust Google Docs at all, and while MS Office is the business standard... my use case doesn't require the fluff MS Office adds.
I do use MS at work because I have to, and I used it for collab in grad school... but other than that? Libre all the way.
I used it until I had to do a mail merge... it took me 2 hours before I finally gave up and did it in MS Word in 5 minutes. I'd love a libre replacement for MS Word, but not one that has just as janky an interface and doesn't actually do what I need it to do.
I use it several times a week, mostly for spreadsheets. At work I'm forced to use microsoft office365 but off the clock I do a lot of sidegig data management (open source and game related) using libreoffice.
Some of said data is being ordered before being pit in a large unweildy database - its easier to do the edits in libra than in the actual database, at least till the team cleans up that mess of a database.
I used OpenOffice then switched to LibreOffice in recent years. I also use Word and occasionally BBEdit but mostly stick with OpenOffice for as I only need simple text editing, basic tables etc Edit: to add that I also use Google Docs and Google Keep when I want something quick and dirty that's going to later be available anywhere I might possibly need to access it
I personally used it for writing my thesis and for creating presentations. It fit my needs perfectly as there are also extensions supporting it like LangaugeTool or Zotero. For personal usage, it is perfect. In my former start-up, we used Nextcloud with Collabora (now just called Nextcloud Office) and that worked out perfectly fine as well.
I agree that it can be tricky if you have to collaborate with others that use MS Office, unfortunately. For that I use Office Online or worst case whip up my MacBook and run the normal MS Office suite. But I didn't have to use it for quite long time now.
I use Calc all the time for work. A lot of our clients send in xlsx files and I can open them and get the information out of them easily. Sometimes I need to build or modify CSV files. It's a powerhouse for that.
I stylized my (for print) resume with Writer. Unless I'm working collaboratively I use writer for any documents to be printed. Any docs that aren't destined for the press are just markdown.
LibreOffice is very appreciated and I'm glad it's a standard on most distros.
Like everything else it depends on what you're trying to do.
Bugs and operational issues aside a document written in Libra office is not going to be pixel compatible with the word doc. In many cases, The formatting can be pretty far off.
But the same goes for Google docs although they make a pretty solid attempt to make them close they're still not pixel perfect.
If your output is a printer or a PDF I don't really think it matters what you use they're all serviceable within reason.
If you're working with someone on grants or trying to find a job and need to give them an editable document for some reason It's probably best to use Microsoft word.
For basic word processing and excel like items I’ve used it and recommend it for others. Especially when I’m on my Linux desktop. I’ve used it for some small businesses as well so they could open and send files for work.
I don't need any office program very often but LibreOffice is my go-to if I have a choice. I prefer flatpacks for the quickest updates.
Sure, used it at a job this past year, writer and calc.
After spending a couple of days to secure a PC to be able to do my job I was not going to spend another week getting them to find me an office license.
Had no issues with sharing documents with colleagues (except excel not parsing a regex from calc) or with the public. Way more issues with people not actually understanding how to use word and excel and do proper formatting. Calc also had a gui method to multi-criteria filtering that the various versions of excel around the office did not.
I also used Impress to edit some PDFs for another older gig. Bit clunky and you must have the fonts used in the original. Just remember a pdf may be a hassle to edit but it is editable and not proof of anything (on it's own).
I've tried to use it on my personal MacBook before, but the MacOS UI seems clunkier than what I've seen on Windows. Also, I have run into a few compatibility/layout problems with Word Docs and Excel Files. Lastly, the icon is basically just a white rectangle which I find offputting for some reason.
I avoid MS Office like the plague. Absolutely hate it. Libre Office isn't perfect, but at least it's not MS Office.
I also like Libre's Excel program much better than Microsoft's. It doesn't crash constantly, for starters.
i just started using it. admittedly, a rarely do, but it's great
Tbh, I use a proprietary office with native Linux support. But I plan to switch back to a Foss option soon.
Does anyone actually use Google docs?
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/mind-projection-fallacy
Now that that's out of the way...
yes, all the time. It's the best for linux 8) Wish theming was better though tbh
My main gripe with LibreOffice is just the UI, but that is partially because I don't use it often (negative reinforcing loop). Late 90's and Early 2000's me would be right at home. However, what I use on a daily basis is Only Office that I have in a docker hosted alongside my NextCloud docker. Only Office integrates well with NextCloud.
it dies what it's supposed to do.
Sounds like a real killer app
I use it even on windows. I don't think it is good, one of annoyance is to open a document and discover a photo is out of place (even in odf). but there is just no alternative.
Fortunately, for most of my serious writing, I use latex.
I find Only office to be quite good. For what it does.
I've been using it for years for all personal office suite uses.
Along with GIMP for photo editing
Same, I've used a lot of office suites over the years so they're all the same to me. LO is free so I use it at home and store my files on Cryptomator+Dropbox.
Excited for Gimp 3.0, the dev snapshots are working well now but I'll need the Resynthesizer plugin.