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
-
The Expanse reference: Welcome to the poor, but honest plebs, next up join the rebellion
-
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.
Sure, to avoid costs...
They really don't see the connection with the trade war, buy european movement, boycott america movement, trump presidency in general... Really? Or just the editor told them not to mention it?
-
If you're a nerd, also check out Typst and LaTeX. Being able to format your documents with pure code is awesome, and you can also define functions for different things, import libraries to generate graphs, and write comments that don't show up in the document.
LaTeX is great for documents, mediocre for slides, questionable for spreadsheets, useless for mail and calendar.
-
Don't forget to seed the torrents to help the servers.
And donate if you can
Good idea. I'll add it to my seedbox.
-
The warning can be disabled from the settings
It's still enabled by default and acts as FUD for the average user who probably won't know to disable it and will get spooked by it.
That it can be opted out of doesn't change its propaganda value at all.
-
Sure, to avoid costs...
They really don't see the connection with the trade war, buy european movement, boycott america movement, trump presidency in general... Really? Or just the editor told them not to mention it?
None of those have much real impact outside internet noise compared to people seeing their bank accounts drain.
I've been leaving corpo shit behind for years as a personal boycott, but even I found it much easier to invest time and effort moving off paid services than free ones because of a perceived material benefit beyond smug self-satisfaction.
-
Many of them work the same. Fill down etc. Not sure about more obscure ones.
-
Yeah desktop apps era is back baby. Fuck you cloud.
Not so far. LibreOffice has a network version.
-
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
I think the "normal" usage is having an always on computer as a server and link all other devices to that one for updates.
-
I didn't even know this existed until a few days ago. Downloaded an AppImage to try it out and was able to make a decent pdf with minimal hassle.
I was really worried I'd need to use Foxit Phantom Pdf just to edit a pdf a couple of weeks ago, but libre office draw was very little hassle, with the exception of a bit of shifting of text.
-
Sure, to avoid costs...
They really don't see the connection with the trade war, buy european movement, boycott america movement, trump presidency in general... Really? Or just the editor told them not to mention it?
As someone who has recently cancelled my Microsoft subscription and switched to libre office I can vouch that it was not the subscription cost that made me switch.
-
It's still enabled by default and acts as FUD for the average user who probably won't know to disable it and will get spooked by it.
That it can be opted out of doesn't change its propaganda value at all.
I agree, I would never give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.
-
I replaced MS Office with libreoffice on my dad's PC and he didnt even noticed for months.
Libreoffice is just better.My only complaint is that tab is not an option to auto complete. It's infuriating as someone who works in Excel all day for work and then has some things to do at home in a spreadsheet and I type =vlook tab and then it switches to the next column. Let me autocomplete the formula to the next input! And they don't let you change it either. It's the most infuriating thing. It's why I refused to use LibreOffice for a while but the switch to Linux forced my hand. I like Libre Office more than Only Office.
-
Holy shit 1mill a week? That’s huge
And maybe those are only the ones that download it directly. But every Linux user downloads it from other repos.
-
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.
Haven't used ms products in a decade.
My Microsoft boycott was longer -
And then something doesn't work during installation or you have to postpone it, you have to abort the installation, run into the MMOK error that blocks you from installing ANY UEFI Linux...just happend to me. I REALLY like the idea of Linux but man, if such things still happen :/.
Blame UEFI problems to all the shit M$ makes. It's their fault.
-
If you've installed fresh Windows off a usb then process is the same for Linux, and you don't really need to mess with terminal by just using the Microsoft Store equivalent on the Linux distro you choose. I didn't find it too different from using Windows or MacOS. I was able to download all my usual programs like Steam and Firefox off the Linux appstore.
But if I had to install a program outside of the Linux store they usually came as a sh or deb file.
If it was deb I'd open terminal where the deb file was and type in
sudo dpkg -i filename.debAnd if sh I'd open terminal where the sh file was and type in
sh ./name_of_file.shThat's pretty much the only terminal commands I've needed to know to get started.
When it came to drivers I was lucky enough to have it be pretty much handle everything for me on my old laptop out the box. Main reason I had tried Linux was because Windows ran slow on it, and also an old scanner I had didn't have drivers that supported it anymore. But, on Linux the scanner just worked.
And in some desktops you can click on the deb file and it asks you if you want to install it.
-
I guess dual boot could be a solution
-
LaTeX is great for documents, mediocre for slides, questionable for spreadsheets, useless for mail and calendar.
Awesome, it does great at what it was designed to do. And it even does mediocre at things it was not designed to do. It even does incompetently things that aren't anywhere in its code? Amazing piece of tech.
-
You won’t regret it.
I did. It was mostly ... confusing. The scenes were uninnovative, boring, and ?too-american.
Yeah, I didn't like it either
