Complaints like "We don't like it" just split proponents and opponents of the software into opposing factions and aren't productive.
The front page should not have a page number.
Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom-center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above.
The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS.
If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office.
The grammar and spell-checking capabilities are not very good in LO.
I've also had many doc -> PDF conversion problems in LO. There are many other smallish issues.
LO is about as much of a replacement for MS Suite as Gimp is a viable replacement for Photoshop for productivity and real-world work. I use the FOSS stuff at home, but my overall productivity is way lower at home as well. I've ran into many things I simply cannot do. It really is a cost-to-productivity ratio here. MS Suite really isn't that expensive if you compare the speed and accuracy you can accomplish common tasks.
Please place a header on each page. On the even pages, the header should be on the left, on the odd pages, the header should be on the right. On the bottom-center of each page, place the page number, except for the front page, as specified above.
The above is probably a bit much, but it is, as far as I know, absolutely impossible to do in Libre Office, or it is not, it is extremely difficult to do, but this sort of formatting is absolutely trivial in MS.
If the above sounds to complex, then try creating a working TOC in Libre Office.
... on the other hand, those are all trivial thing to do in LaTex. Maybe the problem is people using Libre Office for things which Libre Office is not designed to do?
Why isn't Libre Office designed to create a report which can be printed and bound? Seems like a basic word processing task.
The first group is the Libre Office -- and Office 2013 -- audience, and they generally don't need to do anything sophisticated with headers, footers, and page numbers. The second group uses LaTex or Adobe InDesign or similarly more "sophisticated" software, which of course provides all the requires functionality.
In any case, I have virtually no Libre Office experience, and I was able to generate dizzystar's test case in about 2 minutes. My apologies for leading us down this dead-end discussion. (The only confusing part was that you have to manually turn on headers & footers before you can click on them to edit.)
When it comes down to it, LO is probably not missing many features, but they haven't received the UI research/testing effort to make them accessible. The general look & feel is also 'old fashioned'.
Chances are, they wouldn't even try it. And nobody had what it takes to tell 'em "Well, give it a try, it should suit your needs just fine. But feel free to set up your own tools if you don't like it."
I'd love to contribute!
It is a god damned miracle Microsoft Office even works at all. The design is a monolithic do everything fully integrated suite. The combinatorial explosion of interacting features that MSOffice has going on is enough to make a mathematician blush (and the testing staff cry). A super large scale SDLC type one size fits all solution, not based on a generic powerful concept, but a gigantic feature blob that deals with problems as they come.
It's a god damned miracle, and LibreOffice is what happens when you don't get a miracle. It's a feature blob, it's buggy (last time on my system it used 100% CPU, and every time I adjusted a field in a dialog box it didn't redraw the background), it has surprising behavior (play with tables some time, now try sizing them). Hey, I'm no fan of Microsoft Office, either.
I'd say I like LaTeX, but that's a generic powerful concept with absolutely no concessions made for John Q Hacker. Let alone John Q Pedestrian.
Personally, I don't know where to turn.