LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs | The free open-source Microsoft Office alternative is being downloaded by nearly 1 million users a week
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Interest in LibreOffice, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, is on the rise, with weekly downloads of its software package close to 1 million a week. That’s the highest download number since 2023.
“We estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but it’s important to note that we respect users’ privacy and don’t track them, so we can’t say for sure,” said Mike Saunders, an open-source advocate and a deputy to the board of directors at The Document Foundation.
LibreOffice users typically want a straightforward interface, Saunders said. “They don’t want subscriptions, and they don’t want AI being ‘helpful’ by poking its nose into their work — it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,” he said.
There are genuine use cases for generative AI tools, but many users prefer to opt-in to it and choose when and where to enable it. “We have zero plans to put AI into LibreOffice. But we understand the value of some AI tools and are encouraging developers to create … extensions that use AI in a responsible way,” Saunders said.
Microsoft Office is adding in AI? Spreadsheets can take a lot of work to create, I can just imaging an AI tool going in the messing one little thing up, and it being near impossible to find the error. Or not even know your calculations aren't being done the way you want.
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WhatsApp is cryptographically secure but yea, still collects your contacts
A backdoor isn't a flaw?
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Exactly. I'm really interested in running Linux but it would be more of something interesting to try when I have time rather than an actual OS change.
The biggest issue for me is I'm a photographer and I depend on Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. I know there are open source alternatives, but from what I've seen they are far behind adobe.
All the open source alternatives also work on windows. You could try them on your current OS and make the switch to Linux once you're confident you've found a workflow that works for you.
Lightroom: Darktable
Photoshop: Gimp (version 3 just released) or Krita
Illustrator: InkscapeOne note though: The Windows versions tend to be a bit of an afterthought. Performance can therefore be not as good as the Linux version.
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Ooo I didn't know about this I shall look into it.
Could you do it on Windows?
Haven't done it myself yet! I'm planning to switch to Linux Mint later this year, and have a dual boot with Windows on the side, so I can switch at any time if needed.
I think it has a built-in dual boot feature:
I advise backing up your harddrive and stuff to prevent problems, or having one for Windows and the other one for Linux so you avoid problems. Credits here: https://opensource.com/article/18/5/dual-boot-linux#Ubuntu
I have no experience with this yet, always double verify! I think Mint uses GRUB
Arch linux also has a more in depth post on this
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LibreOffice too for that matter. Kick 'em a few bucks if you can spare it.
Thanks for the reminder! Donated 5 euros (I'm unemployed so can't spare more right now)
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I’ve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again
I've used LibreOffice for years, and formatting is a constant struggle. I end up looking online to figure out how to make a small, simple change, and it turns out the only way to do it is by messing with styles, which is way more than I want. The focus on styles is LO's biggest drawback, IMO.
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You won’t regret it.
I did. It was mostly ... confusing. The scenes were uninnovative, boring, and ?too-american.
The books are way better if you care to try.
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Oh nice! I felt like website did a bad job at explaining what it is and how it works
Like, it doesn’t say if it uses one of their servers or if the two devices should be up at the same time. If so, that’s really unfortunate
it doesn’t say if it uses one of their servers
It does not.
if the two devices should be up at the same time
You can't sync 2 devices when they have no way to connect to each other, so no.
I would recommend getting a server. And by "server" I mean literally any computer with Syncthing installed and left on. Could even be an old phone or something (with sufficient storage). That way there's always 1 device to sync to.
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Microsoft Office is adding in AI? Spreadsheets can take a lot of work to create, I can just imaging an AI tool going in the messing one little thing up, and it being near impossible to find the error. Or not even know your calculations aren't being done the way you want.
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Interest in LibreOffice, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, is on the rise, with weekly downloads of its software package close to 1 million a week. That’s the highest download number since 2023.
“We estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but it’s important to note that we respect users’ privacy and don’t track them, so we can’t say for sure,” said Mike Saunders, an open-source advocate and a deputy to the board of directors at The Document Foundation.
LibreOffice users typically want a straightforward interface, Saunders said. “They don’t want subscriptions, and they don’t want AI being ‘helpful’ by poking its nose into their work — it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,” he said.
There are genuine use cases for generative AI tools, but many users prefer to opt-in to it and choose when and where to enable it. “We have zero plans to put AI into LibreOffice. But we understand the value of some AI tools and are encouraging developers to create … extensions that use AI in a responsible way,” Saunders said.
Besides the jank, you can set up libreoffice inside a docker container and server it over https. There you now off cheap-ass MS365.
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Microsoft Office is adding in AI? Spreadsheets can take a lot of work to create, I can just imaging an AI tool going in the messing one little thing up, and it being near impossible to find the error. Or not even know your calculations aren't being done the way you want.
Excel is maybe the one place I can see AI being useful because lots of people can describe what they want a spreadsheet to do but not actually do it.
I just wouldn't trust it to do it right
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Besides the jank, you can set up libreoffice inside a docker container and server it over https. There you now off cheap-ass MS365.
There's also a network version of LO.
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If you're going to download it, try the torrent option! That way, you can give back to the community that gives you LibreOffice.
Had no idea there was a torrent for it on its own. I always get it with apt.
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Microsoft Office is adding in AI? Spreadsheets can take a lot of work to create, I can just imaging an AI tool going in the messing one little thing up, and it being near impossible to find the error. Or not even know your calculations aren't being done the way you want.
I can just imaging an AI tool going in the messing one little thing up, and it being near impossible to find the error.
It doesn't put formulas into the cells. It will write the formula for you, but you have to put it in yourself.
Also, there's versioning in Office, so your spreadsheet blowing up for whatever reason isn't a problem at all - just roll back to the previous version of the file.
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I’m not jazzed about AI in document editors and spreadsheet software because I’m dyslexic enough that I have trouble finding some big errors.
Copilot can design a table, and even fill out some data, but it won't input any formulas. It will write them for you and tell you where to put them, but you have to copy-paste them on your own.
Also, with versioning, even if it did and caused a problem, you could always just roll back to a previous version of the file. Not really an issue.
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Is it just me, or do new office features seem kinda pointless or unnecessary?
I feel like almost all the updates of the last two decades have been:
- Security updates in a code base that was traditionally quite vulnerable to malware.
- Technical updates in taking advantage of the advances in hardware, through updated APIs in the underlying OS. We pretty seamlessly moved from single core, 32-bit x86 CPU tasks to multicore x86-64 or ARM, with some tasks offloaded to GPUs or other specialized chips.
- Some improvement in collaboration and sharing, unfortunately with a thumb on the scale to favor other Microsoft products like SharePoint or OneDrive or Outlook/Exchange.
- Some useless nonsense, like generative AI.
Some of these are important (especially the first two), but the user experience shouldn't change much for them.
Some useless nonsense, like generative AI.
This is a very ignorant and prejudiced take.
AI in Excel is an amazing feature that will help TONNES of people do what they never could It can design tables and write (but not insert) advanced formulas for the user.
Sure, you could say "just be an Excel expert", but - for example - my daily work is nowhere near Excel. Learning its advanced features would be a 100% waste of time, just to be able to prep a fancy chart every couple of years. So, instead, I can just ask Copilot to do that fancy thing for me, instead of wasting hours online, trying to figure out XLOOKUP, or some such.
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I have used latex a lot with overleaf, but I’d like to try using an offline version. Do you have any tips?
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Excel is maybe the one place I can see AI being useful because lots of people can describe what they want a spreadsheet to do but not actually do it.
I just wouldn't trust it to do it right
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I can just imaging an AI tool going in the messing one little thing up, and it being near impossible to find the error.
It doesn't put formulas into the cells. It will write the formula for you, but you have to put it in yourself.
Also, there's versioning in Office, so your spreadsheet blowing up for whatever reason isn't a problem at all - just roll back to the previous version of the file.
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Why would you do that to yourself???
I like the austere layout
