Why is LibreOffice still so bad? | Hacker News Reader

Why is LibreOffice still so bad?

9 pointsMavropaliasG20 comments

It is interesting how LibreOffice has grown, yet no matter how much attention it gets (even professional contributions such as from Collabora) it remains buggy, jittery, and with an ugly and non-intuitive UI.

Many bugs are over 10 years old, and it doesn't seem to have any substantial progress in terms of stability, ease of use, or usability. LO development feels more of a 'let's experiment with adding this new feature', rather than a serious product development.

I wish there was a new open-source office suite in development, especially when languages like Rush are now available.

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First up, to get a product like LibreOffice for nothing is amazing.

The real issue I suspect is - who needs to create "documents" any more? I use Calc without any issues to do spreadsheet stuff, but have never needed to share one with anyone else. Writer, not for years. People often work on things they want to use, so getting commitment might be getting more difficult.

My question is, assuming you are not a business, what do you use LibreOffice for?

> who needs to create "documents" any more?

Um, lots of people? MS-Office is still heavily used.

The bigger issue is who needs to create "documents" AND prefers open source software BUT not command line utilities.

> My question is, assuming you are not a business, what do you use LibreOffice for?

As a student, I write school papers regularly. I also use LibreOffice to write my Resume/CV when I apply for a job.

Your comments are pretty subjective and you make a lot of assumptions.

I can't say it's the most elegant software I've used but I don't have these problems you're referring to. Microsoft Office has a certain amount of polish but has its own bugs, and I always felt that the UX was implemented in a kind of inconsistent way. I can't say I have a preference for one suite versus another.

I agree with you that I wish there were additional office suites, but that's only because I wish there was more competition in the space in general. I'm not sure any (either?) of the major offerings I really love.

That's the big problem. Developers need to pay their bills. Open source doesn't account for that so it's hard to get developers to work for the project. The project works on volunteers and donated code. We are lucky with what we have. It's amazing.

We need a way to finance open source development. We need enough money for thousands of programmers . Fix that then we'll get all the fixes the software needs.

The "jittery" I guess refers to layout getting reflowed in ugly ways. Like in that meme, you move a picture 1 pixel, the whole document get totally messed up.

The reason for that behavior is probably very deep flaws in the layout code, and no single person can hold that algorithm in head, so this is never going to be fixed unless somebody goes and thinks very deeply, and works on it for months or a year exclusively.

Personally, at least with relation to the UI, I find it far easier to use than current versions of Microsoft Office which have created a bizarre "ribbon" interface rather than use standard pull down menus. The LibreOffice UI may be "old", but that's a good thing rather than simply copy Microsoft's missteps.

And don't forget, LibreOffice has a tabbed view option that makes it look like MS Office. [0]

[0]: https://www.howtogeek.com/788591/how-to-make-libreoffice-loo...

I have used LO Writer every day for small and large documents from 6-7 years now - ever since Linux became my main OS - and I can't say it's felt buggy or jittery. The UI perhaps may be perceived as ugly by some compared to MS Office's UI. LO has some alternate UIs like ribbon bars but I didn't find them particularly compelling to switch.

LO Writer as a word processor feels good enough to me. LO Writer as an editor for Word docx files feels unpolished, but I don't work with docx anyway. I think this applies to all the LO software when working with corresponding Office files.

Just like me, perhaps the developers of LO feel it's good enough? Perhaps their default OS and environment provide a smooth experience? Perhaps they don't work with Office files much?

I, too, use LibreOffice heavily, and I was a little confused by the OP. It works great for me. I genuinely prefer it over MS Office and the like.

It is an open source project for an extremely complex piece of software. The fact that it can open/edit documents is baffling to me. I mean, Microsoft is basically the only one that figured out how to do it right. (as in, performance wise/software wise) They probably have hundreds, if not thousands of developers working on this thing, with a lot of them having tons of knowledge on really specific things. (things like rendering etc)

Recently, I edited some stuff through libreoffice like borders, alignment, paragraph endings etc. I had a really bad experience, got completely pissed off during the editing to the point of punching the display.

Right now, I use 'OnlyOffice' an open-source office mannagement. It works really great (better than libreoffice, in my opinion). It has no particular bugs which will hamper production.

I use it for some light personal finance calculations. My CV was written using Libre. I find that LibreOffice is good enough for my needs. People with different requirements might experience bugs but that's not so in my case.

I don't consider LibreOffice to be bad. Quite the opposite.

I use it daily and it works just fine.

Step up, pony up, or shut up.

Well no. I'm not a developer, but I do donate to open source projects I like and use. I have not donated to LO, and I do not intend to, as I am not satisfied either with it's current state, or with its trajectory. I don't see why discussing about a n open-source project and its progress is forbidden, and all we are allowed to do is either contribute or donate.

Your post is shitting on the project.

You have no idea the amount of effort, dedication or self-motivation required to produce software, therefore the discussion can never go past your personal beef with what it cannot do, versus what you feel it should be able to do.

You're bringing nothing to the table that is new or innovative to the discussion of quality in open source software, only a bash on a project that you feel should be better than it is, based on your non-existent experience of software development.

Discussing open source software isn't forbidden, but trashing the efforts of others when you're not offering to do something about it, with either effort or finance from yourself, I feel, is.

You want to see something better? Start writing it today, come back in six months and then report on how you found the experience, let's see how far you got. Perhaps you might be a little less critical of people's free, hell, even salaried, effort and time.

There's definitely something about walking a mile in another man's shoes for you to do here.

Dude calm down, he literally states that he isn't a developer and is asking _why_ it is 'still so bad'. You could explain to him why it is really hard to properly implement things in a piece of software as vast as LibreOffice. Attacking him for even asking the question isn't the way to go imo.

I'm not attacking him, merely setting some of his assumptions straight.

He's assumed that the _person_ or _people_ involved with implementing any of the hundreds of features in this software set out to deliberately do it wrong or to a poor standard.

He's assumed that writing software at any level is easy and happens without compromises. Spoiler: there are always compromises, and most of the time, they're between a rock and a hard place.

Rather than put effort into fixing or attempting to correct, even on an advisory level (filing a bug report perhaps?), he's bashing the software- but its _my_ responsibility to educate him that there's another way?

He's not bringing anything to the table that's new. He's not pushing the discussion forward on how we can make software better.

I wonder how the narrative changes if he posted that he fixed just one tiny bug, or improved the app's navigation- and was able to remark that it was painful and provided a kernel of an idea for how we can improve it? Or that it was easy and he's now working all of his spare time to improving the project further?

Maybe he should start writing the 'new open-source office suite' and let us know how we could have done x, y, z features differently with his new found vast experience in writing software. Or maybe spend a million dollars and see how much software development that buys- 5, 10, 20 developers for a single year, what would this new office suite be like?

You don't get to bash for free, without someone bashing you back.

For what it’s worth, I’m a developer who has worked on open source software and I agree with them, libre office is comically bad. It’s totally appropriate to talk about why, as long as you’re not expecting someone to go off and fix it all for you.

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