# OpenOffice vs LibreOffice



## theFOoL (Jan 8, 2018)

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


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## DRDNA (Jan 8, 2018)

Nice free alternatives the both of them.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 8, 2018)

rk3066 said:


> Ha I guess Libre Wins


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


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## Space Lynx (Jan 8, 2018)

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


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## Kursah (Jan 8, 2018)

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.


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## johnspack (Jan 8, 2018)

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


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## bug (Jan 8, 2018)

Kursah said:


> 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.


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## notb (Jan 8, 2018)

johnspack said:


> 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.


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## johnspack (Jan 9, 2018)

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


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## DRDNA (Jan 9, 2018)

johnspack said:


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


Gaming too?


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## GoldenX (Jan 9, 2018)

DRDNA said:


> 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.


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## Gmr_Chick (Jan 9, 2018)

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.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jan 9, 2018)

bug said:


> 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*


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## notb (Jan 9, 2018)

johnspack said:


> 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.


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## lexluthermiester (Jan 9, 2018)

Kursah said:


> 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.


Kursah said:


> 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.


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## StrayKAT (Jan 11, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> 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.


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## notb (Jan 11, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> 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...


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## StrayKAT (Jan 11, 2018)

notb said:


> 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


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## bug (Jan 11, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> 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.


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## StrayKAT (Jan 11, 2018)

bug said:


> 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.


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## bug (Jan 11, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> 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).


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## StrayKAT (Jan 11, 2018)

bug said:


> 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.


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## bug (Jan 11, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> 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"


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## StrayKAT (Jan 11, 2018)

bug said:


> 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.


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## Peter1986C (Jan 11, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


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


Also the fact it is free (as in _libre_, but not necessarily _gratis)_ software.


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## bug (Jan 11, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> 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.


I have (briefly) worked some GSM providers and the motto of that world is "if you can't bill it, kill it". Sums up nicely Oracle's business model as well.


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## RejZoR (Jan 11, 2018)

Basically, LibreOffice appeared when OpenOffice was announced to be maintained less frequently. Never looked back since then. LibreOffice is superb alternative to MS Office.


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## John Naylor (Jan 11, 2018)

Libre office was recommended by IBM when it dropped the Lotus Suite and was one of the only suites that let you import SmartSutre files ... was disappointed when an upgrade removed that option.  Still...its basically an improved GUI over the plain jane OO


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## dirtyferret (Jan 11, 2018)

Years ago I used open office because I didn't want to buy MS office again for a new build.  I had to send a document to a client which open office claimed would work with all version of office and the client could not open the doc.  I don't know what version of office they had but I just switched back to office and have not looked back.  Currently using office 365 but Ive used practically all versions of MS office and I must say it is a much better product then the competition.  We do use google docs at work sometimes and I find their spreadsheets frustrating compared to what I can do with excel.  

A few years back we ordered some business Lenovo PCs and they all came with libre office.  It was ok but people began to get frustrated a bit and we switched them all to MS office.


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## silentbogo (Jan 11, 2018)

LibreOffice all the way. OpenOffice went a bit off track ever since they joined the Apache foundation.
Plus LibreOffice is more of a look-alike of my favorite MSOffice 2007 and can be easily set up to act like it too, but with all the new bells and whistles (including PDF editing)


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## notb (Jan 11, 2018)

dirtyferret said:


> Years ago I used open office because I didn't want to buy MS office again for a new build.  I had to send a document to a client which open office claimed would work with all version of office and the client could not open the doc.  I don't know what version of office they had but I just switched back to office and have not looked back.  Currently using office 365 but Ive used practically all versions of MS office and I must say it is a much better product then the competition.  We do use google docs at work sometimes and I find their spreadsheets frustrating compared to what I can do with excel.
> 
> A few years back we ordered some business Lenovo PCs and they all came with libre office.  It was ok but people began to get frustrated a bit and we switched them all to MS office.


This is something many people fail to understand. LibreOffice is OK feature-wise (often better than MS), but it's just not nice to use.
Maybe one has to actually use this software a lot (I mean: a large part of time spent at work) to notice how well MS Office is designed.
After all it's primarily made for work - not for home use. And it really delivers.

Plus, currently the documents actually look pretty - something that was a big issue for me during studies and even at work few years ago.
For example plots in Excel used to be awful, but now are publication ready. Libre is years behind, which I find weird, since it's written partly in Python, so they could just use matplotlib...



bug said:


> 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).


I think the word "dinosaur" is slightly inappropriate in case of Oracle. I don't know anyone who wouldn't miss Oracle DB after moving to another database. And I know quite a lot of people who would turn down a job offer (even a very interesting/well-paid one) just because it would force them to use a different RDBMS. It's true for both admins and analysts. 

As for Sybase, I have no experience with any of their product. I don't think they're as popular in Europe as they might be in US. That said, they're now owned by SAP, which is pretty ubiquitous in most industries (mostly in finance).

I've just checked the largest job offer site in Poland (pracuj.pl, 38181 offers at the moment). Keywords:
"MS Office": 7644
Excel: 3237
SQL: 1993
Java: 1190
Oracle: 606
MySQL: 281
PostgreSQL: 157
Sybase: 11 

BTW ( ! ):
C#: 609
C++: 523


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## lexluthermiester (Jan 11, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> One day, I expect a digital world that only has them as a player among many. It's already getting that way.


It's pretty much that way now. Android is the most run OS on the planet and that number is only growing. Microsoft has been displaced as the dominant OS of the world. 

Now before anyone says it, Yes I know they still have dominance in the desktop/laptop sectors, but as mobile devices are now powerful enough to be used as a primary and exclusive computing device, people are doing so. A lot of people.



dirtyferret said:


> Years ago I used open office because I didn't want to buy MS office again for a new build. I had to send a document to a client which open office claimed would work with all version of office and the client could not open the doc. I don't know what version of office they had but I just switched back to office and have not looked back.


Had a similar problem and it was because of the format used to save the document. Those problems have been worked out. I literally have had a document compatibility in at least 7 years.


dirtyferret said:


> A few years back we ordered some business Lenovo PCs and they all came with libre office. It was ok but people began to get frustrated a bit and we switched them all to MS office.


I give people the heads up that there is a learning curve, but not much of one and it's worth the effort. Few have complained after that. Even fewer go back to MSO. Once people break out of their MSO molds and get to know LibreOffice, they love it.


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## bug (Jan 11, 2018)

@notb I meant "dinosaur" in the sense of cumbersome. Whereas most alternatives have at least an order of magnitude smaller footprint.


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## notb (Jan 11, 2018)

bug said:


> @notb I meant "dinosaur" in the sense of cumbersome. Whereas most alternatives have at least an order of magnitude smaller footprint.


Well, you might be right, but Oracle DB brings a lot of features and is such a pleasure to use. I mean, seriously, this DB is the star of the industry right now.
With the amount of data such engines are designed for, the footprint doesn't really matter - nor does the cost most of the time, which is pretty astronomical (but SQL Server is really close). Oracle Database is clearly not recommended for home DB stuff or even small businesses (just go MySQL). There is, however, a free small-footprint version: XE (express edition). It offers a lot of features, keeps up to 11GB of data and uses up to 1GB of RAM. It can be used commercially.
Especially the 11GB is important, since SQL Server Express, which has the same purpose and very similar limitations, can hold just 10GB.


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## StrayKAT (Jan 11, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> It's pretty much that way now. Android is the most run OS on the planet and that number is only growing. Microsoft has been displaced as the dominant OS of the world.
> 
> Now before anyone says it, Yes I know they still have dominance in the desktop/laptop sectors, but as mobile devices are now powerful enough to be used as a primary and exclusive computing device, people are doing so. A lot of people.
> 
> ...



True enough. Microsoft's best hope now is holding a tight grip on gaming imo. At least for average/home users. It's what keeps me a Windows user at least. 

But as I mentioned earlier, I'm still using their apps on android. With Google Now being outdated, I may as well give the MS launcher a shot again too. I don't like the Samsung one. I don't like any of them, in fact. Even this Microsoft one sucks compared to Windows phone.


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## bug (Jan 11, 2018)

notb said:


> Well, you might be right, but Oracle DB brings a lot of features and is such a pleasure to use. I mean, seriously, this DB is the star of the industry right now.
> With the amount of data such engines are designed for, the footprint doesn't really matter - nor does the cost most of the time, which is pretty astronomical (but SQL Server is really close). Oracle Database is clearly not recommended for home DB stuff or even small businesses (just go MySQL). There is, however, a free small-footprint version: XE (express edition). It offers a lot of features, keeps up to 11GB of data and uses up to 1GB of RAM. It can be used commercially.
> Especially the 11GB is important, since SQL Server Express, which has the same purpose and very similar limitations, can hold just 10GB.


I don't know, I could tell some real horror stories about OracleDB, triggers and their embedding of a full JVM in the DB server...


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## SamirD (Jan 12, 2018)

When I had to strip out all of our computers because my parents kept downloading viruses/malware/etc, I started from scratch and didn't have MS licenses for office so I have both openoffice and libreoffice portable installed on our very legacy systems (p4 2.8 2gb ram).

Openoffice is much faster on the older hardware like this, although it doesn't have support for xlsx, docx, and the xml based MS file formats.  So this is where Libreoffice kicks in.  But both still lack quite a bit in terms of having the same functionality in excel and advanced word features like marking up a document, at least on the older version we run.

Still, for what they are, they both very capable for 90% of 'normal course' business stuff.  I calculate sales tax returns, keep inventory counts, and do some forecasting in the excel equivalent, and we've written all sorts of legal documents in the word equivalent.  Not that any of these tasks couldn't have been done by lotus 123 or wordperfect for dos, but that they can be done with MS office compability is the key.


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