LibreOffice is the GOAT of office softwares
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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I’ve had many bugs with it (like dark theme that seems completely broken)
I use KDE and just reverse all the colors with a configured Custom shortcut.
Me too, so I just switch to light mode and deal with my eyes burning
And I have to change my OS settings because modifying the theme in libreoffice's settings doesn’t work (Linux) 😵
Without a doubt. Very good MS Office compatibility now, alongside a user interface that gets me to what I need and is heavily customisable, and very well done integration with Zotero (the best thing ever for citations) through an extension comes together to being by far my most preferred office suite even when I have to use Windows. In addition, Draw has saved me at least a few times when I've had to deal with some PDFs that other software finds difficult to work with.
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For sure, definitely one of the best and one of the most remarkable FOSS out there
OnlyOffice looks so much better and simpler.
Its slower
How did you test it’s apparent ‘slowness’? I use it and have no issue.
Run it on ancient hardware. If it chokes on computers from the '90s, it's slow.
tbf the standard should be mid to late 2000s at this point cmon.
If you can't provide a better reason than a meme you are already out of the running with life.
OK buddy
What do you people do with a word processor?
How is OnlyOffice's offline performance and support for Graphite smart font technology? I use Graphite fonts and no support for those is a deal-breaker.
No idea. The reason I recommend it it is the far sleeker interface and beginner friendliness. Besides the better looking UI it does not really add anything.
Isn't only office limited to Microsoft office formats though?
I think you can also export open document style.
It's never mentioned on their website. I'll have to install it some day to check it out.
Also, libre office has randomly crashed for me on multiple distros now, while doing really mundane things like... resizing a window or trying to save the document as PDF.
I will second only office. It's more stable for me.
OnlyOffice crashed for me repeatedly on Debian, LibreOffice did not.
But otherwise yes, I prefer OnlyOffice as well for a much friendlier interface.
LibreOffice just commonly puts mundane parameters God knows where.
It's disgusting how many businesses have been herded into wasting money on products they can be using for free, then convincing customers they "need more money."
LibreOffice is pretty far from Microsoft Office. Even Google's suite is more polished. Like it or not, funding behind a project helps build a stronger product.
Probably better to think of spending their money on an open ecosystem, instead of just using something for "free". If software products have sufficient funding they can better improve the products and can continue to exist - without some form of monetisation most wouldn't still be around.
I believe it's a chicken and an egg problem.
If free software projects had more users, those users would improve the software further with donations, patches, and bug reports.
I think both can be true. I just mean if we're talking about a company paying for Microsoft Office vs LibreOffice.
Wow, do I have some stories for you.
But in short, there's a lot of FOSS software that people use every day without knowing about it.
And it gets no funding, because why it should.
Companies making 9+ figures have issues sending even a $1000 to an open project that they depend heavily on.
But Microsoft/Oracle/VMWare/Google licenses? That money just shoots out like from a cannon.
Even if those products are not 100% needed and can be replaced.
I'm fully in support of LibreOffice and the fact that it can do a lot for free. However it is far from an enterprise product.
I'm still waiting for anybody to make a true competitor to Excel. There's some decrnt spreadsheet software but there's really no comparison to the functionality of Excel. Even Google sheets is a distant second.
My point is, when there are power users involved LibreOffice just won't cut it.
Libreoffice is not 100% Microsoft word though dawg
Best Office software 🥰
I like how their release announcements always kind of read like press releases. Even when it's just the third maintenance release for some normal release train.
I like LibreOffice but it needs to allow import/export of hotkey sets or keyboard shortcut sets.
i have tried self-hosting libreoffice with nextcloud and it sucks. can anyone help?
Onlyoffice seems a little bit better.
selfhosting libreoffice? what do you mean?
Nextcloud can embed Collabora Code (essentially Libreoffice) so you can open all your documents in Nextcloud in the browser and edit them together with multiple people.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/code/
Works pretty well.
that sounds interesting, I should try it sometime
Same question
What about it sucks?
I self-host Collabora Code in Nextcloud and think it's excellent.
it's really slow? even on a tailscale connection. Does HTTP/3 would make it better?
It's really snappy for me behind a Traefik reverse proxy (with HTTP/3) but I got it running on a beefy machine so I'm not sure how heavy it is.
For those who think Libreoffice is the best FOSS software out there, you should try switching to dark mode and tell me how you feel
What point are you trying to make?
That there's better FOSS software (just generally)?
That there's better FOSS document editing software?
That you don't like Libreoffice dark mode?
It looks pretty good to me
Not sure where he is going with that. My only gripe with dark mode is that the equation editor font is also black so it is impossible to see what you are writing. I am sure a fix is around the corner
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