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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what version(s) are best to help out? Windows 64 bit?
Probably, yes. You would assume the influx of users was mostly windows users.
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Been using openoffice for 15+ years, what made you switch to libreoffice?
Pretty much what everyone said, especially better import/export of microsoft document formats - but one of the things they didn’t mention is that LibreOffice can be easily downloaded and installed from repositories. If I do a fresh linux install it’s just a command line or some other software package installer away. Super easy. I find LibreOffice runs smoother. Only downside is that sometimes it takes a while to load.
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Yeah I love LibreOffice’s customisability including sidebar etc, but OnlyOffice just performs a lot better and handles the most common formats better for me
Heck yeah, OnlyOffice gang
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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.
I’ve gradually been switching over. The UI is somewhat confusing in my experience- but the MSO UX+UI is consistently getting much, much worse as time passes
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Very few people will actually know how to do that.
Donating is easy, just follow the url on the homepage. /s
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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.
Is it just me, or do new office features seem kinda pointless or unnecessary?
I use libreoffice the same way I used microsoft office decades ago. Never really cared for 'advanced' or even 'intermediate' features because they are never necessary to what I'm doing.
I can't imagine that people who are more computer-illiterate than me getting significantly more involved in what should be simple and easy to use programs.
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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.
It's like this meme:
Alternative to Photoshop: Cracked Photoshop
Alternative to Office: cracked officeXD
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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.
I have a job that involves working with spreadsheets. I have Librecalc at home and both Libre and MSOffice at work. I have also had a college course about using Excel specifically. Both really can do mostly the same things but because MS does everything in a specific (backwards) way, people trained on MS who are not otherwise "computer people" can't cope with needing to unlearn and relearn. So the end result is paraprofessionals are locked in.
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You won’t regret it.
I did. It was mostly ... confusing. The scenes were uninnovative, boring, and ?too-american.
I didn't like the first series, and would've quit it at episode 3 or so but I ended up without internet access for a couple of days and the whole series downloaded... It got better.
But yeah, life's too short for TV shows that take time to be taken on faith. And if you did finish the first series and still not like it, more power to you.
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Will do! Do you have any specific communities you recommend for asking for help in Linux / self hosting type stuff?
Here are a couple I like:
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So cool! So you basically kept windows in one part of your machine and ran pop os on the rest? Really cool idea!
It's a bit easier if you have a separate drive that Linux can own.
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Please don't suggest newcomers to dual boot. It's very technical and requires a lot of knowledge and effort to troubleshoot when windows eventually fights back with new shenanigans. It provides a skewed impression of what using Linux is like.
Just suggest to try the distros as a live USB. It gets them 90% of the way into an install, and it's perfectly safe and reversible.
Give Linux a whole, separate drive and then there's no concern about Windows doing anything.
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Give Linux a whole, separate drive and then there's no concern about Windows doing anything.
This is perfectly viable and preferable, but for most newcomers just installing a new OS is a foreign concept in and of itself.
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Is it just me, or do new office features seem kinda pointless or unnecessary?
I use libreoffice the same way I used microsoft office decades ago. Never really cared for 'advanced' or even 'intermediate' features because they are never necessary to what I'm doing.
I can't imagine that people who are more computer-illiterate than me getting significantly more involved in what should be simple and easy to use programs.
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.
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This is perfectly viable and preferable, but for most newcomers just installing a new OS is a foreign concept in and of itself.
Fair. But blowing away all their stuff can really ruin their day. Learn to enter the boot menu to switch drives, and then they can always go back to Windows if something gets borked.
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The funny thing is you can still buy Office standalone but you have to actively go looking for it and Microsoft doesn't advertise it because 365 subscriptions make more money.
Microsoft actively doesn't want you buying standalone versions of software, but they still have to sell it because there's still a market for it.
What's annoying, too, is that a lot of the methods that have traditionally been used for discounts (education, nonprofit, employer-based discounts) are now only applicable to the subscriptions. So if you do want to get a standalone copy and would ordinarily qualify for a discount, you can't apply that discount to that license.
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Is it just me, or do new office features seem kinda pointless or unnecessary?
I use libreoffice the same way I used microsoft office decades ago. Never really cared for 'advanced' or even 'intermediate' features because they are never necessary to what I'm doing.
I can't imagine that people who are more computer-illiterate than me getting significantly more involved in what should be simple and easy to use programs.
Sometimes I think these little updates are just a ruse to upload our personal information without us knowing.
I stopped auto-updating a few years ago and only update when the software is not running correctly or something new is introduced. -
OnlyOffice is also good - my preferred for the basic Word/Excel type stuff I do.
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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.
Pandas killed VBA for me that was about the only reason I had to use an ms office suite
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I have a job that involves working with spreadsheets. I have Librecalc at home and both Libre and MSOffice at work. I have also had a college course about using Excel specifically. Both really can do mostly the same things but because MS does everything in a specific (backwards) way, people trained on MS who are not otherwise "computer people" can't cope with needing to unlearn and relearn. So the end result is paraprofessionals are locked in.
I really enjoyed spreadsheets before becoming a programmer (I still enjoy them, I just spend less time on them) and basically self taught over the years using Google Sheets.
There are several really useful functions on sheets that simply do not exist in Excel, and there are others that work almost the same but not quite. Having to use Excel drives me insane sometimes because of how clunky it feels.
By contrast, using LibreCalc feels kinda how you'd expect an open source Google Sheets to feel? It's slightly clunkier, but it gets the job done and generally feels better to use than Excel
