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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I'm glad to see foss Software taking off. In the past, we had to be a tech enthusiast to Realize it with an option. Now it's pretty well known.
The large tech companies didn't get greedy and try to be so gross with privacy settings. People wouldn't make the move. They only have themselves to blame.
If you're into music, there's a great open source synthesizer.
My friend, FOSS has been readily available for more than a decade. Whether it's LibreOffice or the GIMP or VLC or whatever, these are very old pieces of software.
It's not taking off now. It already did. But now you personally are noticing.
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Zotero is the tool you want. It works perfectly.
Oh, that's fantastic! Thank you, I will give it a try!
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Yeah desktop apps era is back baby. Fuck you cloud.
Never even qualified for SOLDIER.
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You're keeping it entrenched.
Lack of quality replacement is keeping it entrenched. LibreOffice needs to step it up.
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Iâve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again
LaTeX is your friend
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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. Thatâs the highest download number since 2023.
âWe estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but itâs important to note that we respect usersâ privacy and donât track them, so we canât say for sure,â 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. âThey donât want subscriptions, and they donât want AI being âhelpfulâ by poking its nose into their work â it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,â 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. âWe 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,â Saunders said.
Dropped the Word suite and used openoffice, then switched to libreoffice. Definitely a slightly clunkier feel to it, but avoiding yet more subscription, cloud based, internet connection needed, account needed software is becoming more and more important.
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Lack of quality replacement is keeping it entrenched. LibreOffice needs to step it up.
Have you tried OnlyOffice?
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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. Thatâs the highest download number since 2023.
âWe estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but itâs important to note that we respect usersâ privacy and donât track them, so we canât say for sure,â 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. âThey donât want subscriptions, and they donât want AI being âhelpfulâ by poking its nose into their work â it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,â 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. âWe 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,â Saunders said.
It's not just the subscription they want to avoid. Office has been steadily enshitified to the point nobody I know likes using it anymore.
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I'm hoping to set one up later this year. I have an old laptop that has good enough specs to run it from my research - I just need to get everything off of it and swamp windows for Linux! Never did a Linux install so I'm excited.
I switched for the first time a few weeks ago!! I didn't realise until I booted my Windows partition earlier for work that I hadn't used it one single time since I did that because it was still open on the download page and forced a hundred updates on me
it's really fun and freeing, I've tried a few and settled on Pop!_OS because I love the simplicity, the pretty desktop environment and the window tiling -
Dropped the Word suite and used openoffice, then switched to libreoffice. Definitely a slightly clunkier feel to it, but avoiding yet more subscription, cloud based, internet connection needed, account needed software is becoming more and more important.
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Does anyone know how to get endnote or a similar citation manager to work in Libre Office?
I've been using Zotero since I converted a few weeks back. It has some really useful plugins, so I would recommend adding this one first- it's like a store where you can easily browse and add them :))
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If you ever figure it out I'd love to know, too. I relied entirely on Libre Office as an undergrad but missed this feature of MS Word. I currently use a combination of Scribbr and Purdue Owl but would prefer an offline and open source solution.
Copying my response from above for u!
I've been using Zotero since I converted a few weeks back. It has some really useful plugins, so I would recommend adding this one first- it's like a store where you can easily browse and add them :))
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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. Thatâs the highest download number since 2023.
âWe estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but itâs important to note that we respect usersâ privacy and donât track them, so we canât say for sure,â 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. âThey donât want subscriptions, and they donât want AI being âhelpfulâ by poking its nose into their work â it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,â 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. âWe 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,â Saunders said.
I ditched MS office for Libre long time ago, all I need it for is to open and view the occasional document anyways. For creating or editing documents I like Googles office suite better though
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It's not just the subscription they want to avoid. Office has been steadily enshitified to the point nobody I know likes using it anymore.
Teams has decided it won't recognise like 50% of word docs anymore. So you can no longer edit them within teams and have to download them. If you simply read and scroll down it, the scroll glitches so bad for no reason. Ugh
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Dude. The Expanse was dope! Watch it. You won't regret it. I've heard the books were better, but I lack the time to go through them right now : /
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Iâve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again
and word is better at formatting?
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I've been using LibreOffice for years and it is fantastic -- although I have always had problems importing PowerPoints. Xcel and Word documents are fine, but PowerPoint is always a mess.
PowerPoints suffer from lack of smart objects, and in the case of using Linux, font conversion. But it's just that we've got to persevere with it.
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Open office isn't getting much in the way of updates these days and is considered dormant and maintained by the Apache foundation. Libre-office is the office suite maintained by the document foundation and is where the bulk of developers moved over to.
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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. Thatâs the highest download number since 2023.
âWe estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but itâs important to note that we respect usersâ privacy and donât track them, so we canât say for sure,â 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. âThey donât want subscriptions, and they donât want AI being âhelpfulâ by poking its nose into their work â it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,â 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. âWe 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,â Saunders said.
Is this better than Apache open office?
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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. Thatâs the highest download number since 2023.
âWe estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but itâs important to note that we respect usersâ privacy and donât track them, so we canât say for sure,â 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. âThey donât want subscriptions, and they donât want AI being âhelpfulâ by poking its nose into their work â it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,â 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. âWe 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,â Saunders said.
I used OnlyOffice thinking 'Hey, this is a really similar alternative to MSO!' Then bugs with slide previews and their ordering happened in the middle of presentations and even worse, memory leaks ground my laptop to a halt.
Libre office still hasn't crashed and the slide previews are accurate. The interface has always been a bit...unrefined even with the new tabbed layout but I can live with that.
