With Microsoft Dumping MS Office, Consider LibreOffice for Your PC Office Suite | Hacker News Reader

With Microsoft Dumping MS Office, Consider LibreOffice for Your PC Office Suite

zdnet.com

32 pointsCrankyBear20 comments

Maybe it's just me, but there is nothing I hate more than LibreOffice. I use it because it seems to be the best option for things like spreadsheets on Linux, but I would rather use 10 year old Microsoft Office than LibreOffice. It works with my GTK theme, which is nice, but it is just so unintuitive to me compared to Microsoft word/excel.

It took me forever to learn how to do basic things like insert a XY chart in calc, just because the UI was confusing to me, and even after using it for a while I still keep forgetting which of the half dozen similarly styled icons I need to use to change the axis title of a chart, for example. Or the fact that to print off a spreadsheet in landscape, you don't do it through the print menu, you actually have to change the page formatting options.

I'm on version 6.0, so maybe this is fixed now, or maybe I'm just not very good at that kind of stuff, but it all seems pretty hard to use to me.

You are not alone. I haven't used LibreOffice in a few months but my last experience left me very frustrated. Unintuitive UI, glitchy/missing icons, etc. I figured it was just because I was more adjusted to MS Office having used it at work/school, perhaps not.

>but there is nothing I hate more than LibreOffice

I can use LibreOffice with little to no problem. Gimp, on the other hand...

This is my gripe with LibreOffice, Gimp, Audacity, etc. They all seem to not care about UI. You should check out 6.3 of LibreOffice though, I hear they are improving the UI with every release these days. I personally just use LaTeX or markdown for everything.

I've gotten Gimp working pretty nicely by using some theme packs or something that make it look and function more like photoshop. Agree on the rest though. I use LaTeX, markdown, or google docs depending on intended audience.

no you are not alone, OpenOffice/LibreOffice has always been just plain and simple a terrible piece of software. The license alone can not make up for it. From the icon set, to any of the most basic UX/UI, the experience is just horrible. I could sit here talk for hours on end about how horribly broken it is, that it can't even render fonts correctly (kerning anyone?) to how it can't format anything correctly (and people complain about Word oh boy try libreoffice and will you will know what pain looks like!). Even if I would take 10 times as long doing the same exact document in LateX I would still prefer that (or some closed alternative like gdocs ofc.) over this dumpster fire.

I've been looking to replace Google Docs with a self-hosted option, and my choices are essentially LibreOffice and ONLYOFFICE, which both offer in-browser versions. ONLYOFFICE is much more limited, but it's much more user friendly, so I'm definitely leaning that direction. I like the LO project a lot more, but they really need a UX expert to help me make it more approachable.

I'll play with the new LO before making the final decision, but I certainly agree that it has been a pain for some time.

Check out the new tabbed menu[1]. Seems to emulate the MS Office menu pretty closely and is a big improvement over the old UI.

[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/6.3/en#GUI

> For example, Office 2010 support life comes to an end on Oct. 13, 2020. There will be no extended support unit, ala Windows 7, for it. When it's done, it's done.

I don't see a problem with this, it came out in 2010. They have send out free updates for it for 10 years. That is above and beyond in my book.

I think its bullshit. Many businesses will continue to run this software for a long ass time and they shouldn't be forced to upgrade. Many universities have equipment on window 98 or older, and many companies have computers still running office 2003 for various reasons.

If support is ending, how is that forcing upgrades?

You aren’t forced to upgrade, you just won’t get support from Microsoft. The support lifecycle for every Microsoft product is here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hub/4095338/microsoft-li...

If you need to run software for longer than it is supported then you need to either need to negotiate a longer support contract, or be willing to live without support. I don’t think there is anything unreasonable about that.

See, I think that is the wrong way of thinking about it. It gives the software manufacturer an asymmetrical advantage over the customer that I don't believe is fair.

If the demand for the product is still there, the software manufacturer should be forced to support it with at least basic security upgrades. We are just asking to build an entire infrastructure on a shaky foundation because of some ridiculous dogmatic ideology to technological progress. Progress is great, but maintaining is what makes the world go around, just check out the salary of an experienced COBOL programmer.

I thought Office 365 gave you the desktop apps as well as the online versions. That doesn't sound like Microsoft dumping Office, rather pushing its customers into a subscription.

The FA's title is scaremongering. Microsoft definitely still wants you to pay them for office software. They just don't want to support shrink-wrap-style software so much.

It's essentially the same for me honestly. I hate subscription software and only put up with subscription content sometimes (i.e. Netflix, newspaper). I'm okay with buying software every few years, I'm not a fan of buying software every month.

My wife has Office, so I'm going to self-host LibreOffice Online or ONLYOFFICE (whichever she prefers) instead of buying a subscription to Office 365. I hate paying a subscription for software, so I'll just make occasional donations to LO or something instead (unfortunately the pricing for both services seem to be aimed at corporations, not home users).

At this point "office" software really should just fossilize on a useful working feature set; security support being some kind of small maintenance fee or turned over to the public universities if the software is given to the public domain.

LibreOffice is indeed getting us closer to such a world; but at least where I work the office drones still need "the office" software to make sure they can open documents from other organizations... it's maddening.

Onlyoffice has a desktop editor. I host my own though.

What a title!

What a low quality, agenda-pushing article. Fear-mongering at best.

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