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.
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 :))
I’ve using using it with Obsidian (there’s a short guide you can find online), so while I’m writing an essay in Obsidian I can just hit a key shortcut and it lists every paper I’ve saved to Zotero. Then when I click one, it adds the citation. So useful
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.
Zotero has plugins for LibreOffice and other word processors: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_integration
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 :))
I’ve using using it with Obsidian (there’s a short guide you can find online), so while I’m writing an essay in Obsidian I can just hit a key shortcut and it lists every paper I’ve saved to Zotero. Then when I click one, it adds the citation!
Zotero is the tool you want. It works perfectly.
Oh, that’s fantastic! Thank you, I will give it a try!
I’ve gradually been switching over. The UI is somewhat confusing in my experience- but the MSO UX+UI is consistently getting much, much worse as time passes
Pandas killed VBA for me that was about the only reason I had to use an ms office suite
I’m afraid to find out how many people are still downloading OpenOffice, thinking it’s the same software they heard about back in 2010.
Is it not the same software they heard about in 2010?
Oracle bought (and quickly killed) it. It’s not under active development, and anything that claims otherwise is likely malicious. LibreOffice is a lot of the original OpenOffice devs who got fed up with the way things were going, and jumped ship.
It was discontinued in 2011. Anything that is out there today is outdated at best, and malicious at worst.
… so it is precisely the software they heard about in 2010
It literally is.
What happened to Openoffice?
Oracle happened to it
All the devs went to LibreOffice after that
Oracle bought and ratfucked it.
I still use it sometimes.
Why would you do that to yourself???
I like the austere layout
I would recommend switching to LibreOffice, it is definitely more performant and modern.
They were bought and made for profit.
Libreoffice doesn’t have read aloud feature which makes it useless to me. Neither did openoffice. Windows stil only program with it. And I use it for editing purposes.
Oracle happened. https://www.pcworld.com/article/423300/why-you-should-ditch-openoffice-and-use-the-free-libreoffice-suite.html
Seriously, fuck Oracle with a rusty rebar. They already ruined mysql.
mysql -> MariaDB
OpenOffice -> LibreOffice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice
It seems it’s still legit, but of course Libre Office is the better choice.
Took them long enough.
Now how long will it take them to try Linux?
Time to start selling thigh-high programming socks then.
So here’s a single data point for you, in a good couple months (for money reasons) I was gonna switch over to Bazzite or another distro if it came preinstalled
So with a sample size of 1 we know 100% of people you’ve found are switching to linux
It’s finally (your) Year of the Linux Desktop!
Soon ™
for money reasons
Should we tell them Linux is free? 😀
Well there’s the small matter of the new computer
But oh NOW you tell me I don’t need to wire $600 to a random person
You can dual boot on pretty much whatever you have, though I recommend buying a separate drive for Linux for minimum headaches.
But yeah, I get it. Linux will be there when you’re ready.
Please don’t suggest newcomers to dual boot. It’s very technical and requires a lot of knowledge and effort to troubleshoot when windows eventually fights back with new shenanigans. It provides a skewed impression of what using Linux is like.
Just suggest to try the distros as a live USB. It gets them 90% of the way into an install, and it’s perfectly safe and reversible.
Give Linux a whole, separate drive and then there’s no concern about Windows doing anything.
This is perfectly viable and preferable, but for most newcomers just installing a new OS is a foreign concept in and of itself.
Yeah is that completely safe? I’m really tempted to try out Mint and I have an old M2 from my previous machine I could format and use for it. The PC is my work/editing station though so can’t afford any risk. I can’t really make the switch since I’m still dependent on LR+PS (Adobe…) but most of my other software should work, and I’ve just always wanted to get into Linux but not sure if it’ll actually benefit me and my work or if it’s just gonna cause me even more hassle than windows currently does.
I’m familiar with messing around in the BIOS, changing boot priority and formatting stuff and whatnot.
Linux needs to sound a lot less intimidating for people who don’t really do tech besides the very basics.
How about this: I’ll offer installation support and free tech support for three months to the first 20 people that ask. Free of charge. I only have three conditions:
- You pick from a handful of distros I’m willing to support - Debian, Fedora, openSUSE Leap
- You donate any amount of money to any FOSS project or contribute something to a FOSS project
- I reserve the right to not help get certain Windows software working, like anything Adobe
Caveat number 3 is the reason I’m still on windows, I take it that’s still not an option then.
people who don’t really do tech besides the very basics
i’ve been building my own PCs since the 90s and have basic hardware and network certs, and want to try linux, but it seems daunting to me
I’ve found Linux Mint to be easier to install and use than Windows. (I don’t have to enter the console and allow myself to setup an offline account because no network drivers were working in Linux. Windows 11 did that).
I’ve never had issues with graphics drivers, despite using Nvidia cards. The only issues with Linux have been because I broke something when I was messing around.
Get a USB drive, burn a Linux ISO to it, and try it out without installing it.
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.
While true, that unfortunately doesn’t change the reality that many potential new users will run into issues like this
But hey, the more Linux users there are, the more manufactures will be forced to fix their shit
networking is already a higher hurdle IMO
I’m practically tech illiterate, but managed to switch myself over to Linux after watching some guides a few years ago.
He’s the 1st one I used: https://youtu.be/4mySqL4bCSw
It isn’t, really. As @CosmicTurtle0 pointed out in their response, it’s mostly finding alternatives to your apps.
Apropos: fuck mozilla for enshittifying the last viable open source browser alternative :( It’s the one I have not found an alternative for yet.
Other than that: Thunderbird is WAY better than Outlook anyways. Gimp is arguably lacking some features that Photoshop people are used to, but works just fine (albeit takes some getting used to) for non graphic designers. LibreOffice is functioning better than Microsoft Office by a long shot in Writer and Calc - and up to par in Impress (presentations.) VLC should already be your media player of choice anyways. Element (Matrix) and Telegram desktop applications come with most distros nowadays. Desktop environment of choice is available, from very comfortable to very rudimentary and blazingly fast.
Steam works, many many games on steam work (but then again, maybe prefer gog / good old games, as it is not US based).
PDF readers: okular is probably your best bet, digital signatures work fine but the interface for signing a document could be improved a bit.
For my system, that’s kind of it - everything else is native Linux stuff anyways :)
Element 🤢
Telegram 🤢
I know. But better than using products from fascists…
The biggest issue people face when switching to Linux is finding Linux alternatives to their apps.
At this point it’s much easier than it was in the 90s
That said, games can still cause issues.
When I switched to Linux I found out that the Linux alternative to most of my apps was just running my windows apps through proton or wine and they work fine. There are only one or two programs that I couldn’t replace and I really don’t care about them so 🤷🏻♂️
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.
The hardest part is picking a username and seeing what the name of the app store is on the distro
please don’t call it app store, I just threw up a little in my mouth :(
Package Manager!
We have to be hip and shorten it, so like maybe instead of package manager it can be pacman or if maybe by distro so like the popos can have a pop shop
pacman is the name of an actual package manager iirc
Exactly. I’m really interested in running Linux but it would be more of something interesting to try when I have time rather than an actual OS change.
The biggest issue for me is I’m a photographer and I depend on Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. I know there are open source alternatives, but from what I’ve seen they are far behind adobe.
I guess dual boot could be a solution :)
Ooo I didn’t know about this I shall look into it.
Could you do it on Windows?
Haven’t done it myself yet! I’m planning to switch to Linux Mint later this year, and have a dual boot with Windows on the side, so I can switch at any time if needed.
I think it has a built-in dual boot feature:
I advise backing up your harddrive and stuff to prevent problems, or having one for Windows and the other one for Linux so you avoid problems. Credits here: https://opensource.com/article/18/5/dual-boot-linux#Ubuntu
I have no experience with this yet, always double verify! I think Mint uses GRUB
Arch linux also has a more in depth post on this
Thanks!
All the open source alternatives also work on windows. You could try them on your current OS and make the switch to Linux once you’re confident you’ve found a workflow that works for you.
Lightroom: Darktable Photoshop: Gimp (version 3 just released) or Krita Illustrator: Inkscape
One note though: The Windows versions tend to be a bit of an afterthought. Performance can therefore be not as good as the Linux version.
I think the biggest factor in that is getting tutorials and such out there that focus on the basics, written by people who mainly do things on Linux using the basics and GUI tools. So much of the Linux content out there is focused on power users and even the tutorials for new users tend to be written by those power users who may have been tech focused before switching and forget or just don’t know how basic they really have to get to not make people feel intimidated. Given the right distro/desktop environment, and there’s plenty of good ones to start with, people can use Linux almost just how they use Windows. They just need someone to show them how without pushing them to do everything in the terminal too fast or going immediately to scripting as a solution to problems.
Successful propaganda. As if those people were able to install (or configure) Windows if it didn’t come preinstalled and with autoupdates…
I have to wonder what the October end of life for Windows 10 will bring in that regard.
Computers are expensive. Some people will buy something new, others won’t be able. That crowd has 2 options of finding a new OS or using one that’s no longer supported.
I think you are wildly underestimating the people who will say fuck it and keep rolling with 10. For that matter, how about the people who don’t even realize it’s EOL? Sure, they’ll get warnings, which they’ll promptly ignore.
I have some people at a client’s still happily using 8.1 (but hey, at least they’re not using 7!).
And, to be frank, if they had to stay on Windows I’d prefer they stay on 8.1 anyway. What with 10 requiring the online accounts or adding start menu adds or removing the interfaces of the Control Panel and everything else.
Most people will just continue using an out of date operating system because they don’t understand the security risks. It happens every time MS ends support of an OS line.
Good. Finally. It’s about time.
Holy shit 1mill a week? That’s huge
Yeah I’m wondering for how many weeks.
And then how many millions of ms office users there are? (Or billions…)
I mean does it matter? Any open source program competing with THE established office suite that literally everyone learns getting that kind of adoption is insane. This is like an open source video game console competing with Sony.
Oh it’s great news either way. I’d just be curious about the numbers.
And maybe those are only the ones that download it directly. But every Linux user downloads it from other repos.
I love Libre so much
I really like LibreOffice but I still need Excel. It’s a good 20 years ahead of the OSS software. It works find if your doing light work though
That’s the problem: if you want greater adoption, you must cover the needs of accountants, because Excel knows perfectly well that they are the fixed source of income for companies.
Makes me wonder, what exactly are you missing on LibreOffice Sheet?
Easiest thing I can think of off the top of my head is dealing with pivot tables. UI is terrible in OpenOffice also integrations with PowerBI does not exist along with XLookup not existing last I checked
OpenOffice?? That thing is dead. I thought we’re talking about LibreOffice.
For me biggest missing I’ve found is web/external queries. Excel has a system to log in to an API, retrieve that data and format it before it lands on your sheet.
Libre functionality here is lacking/non existent.
My workaround was to write a python query, add it as a cron job, write that data to a csv then call that csv from my sheet with a timed refresh. Not something the average user can or wants to do.
Everything else I’ve found achievable.
It doesn’t surprise me, Microsoft is enshitifying everything they have.
Is this better than Apache open office?
In my opinion, yes. I use it almost daily at work and I have it on my PC just in case.
Open Office is not maintained anymore
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
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 usage ground my laptop to a halt (electron apps open up with close to 1GB of memory, such as obsidian).
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.
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.
OpenOffice 3 had the best office suite UI I can imagine.
Dunno where all this “MS is good” comes from.
Don’t like today’s LO UI.
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
No matter who you ask, it still seems like everyone fucking hates it. I never heard a single good word about teams and still its one of the most widely used conference softwares.
It’s absolutely terrible. I’m looking at it now and just glancing at the screen I can come up with problems. All your recent chance are down the left hand side in chronological order with absolutely no way for you to organize or label them, It frequently just doesn’t work and you have to use the online version which has a different UI for zero reason at all, that is no configurable options for muting. It’s either on or off. Even WhatsApp has options to mute for 30 minutes.
That’s just the surface stuff. There’s a bunch of little annoying UI issues as well that only become really apparent when you use it for a while. So they definitely didn’t QA any of it.
It started going downhill when they got rid of word art.
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.
Been using openoffice for 15+ years, what made you switch to libreoffice?
For the past like decade the only “updates” OpenOffice has been getting are questionable code comment changes from one dude. These changes literally do nothing, and people have suggested that the only reason he does it is to make OpenOffice seem like it’s still being developed, even though it was abandoned long ago.
Why? IDK, but I think it’s just some stubborn asshole with an axe to grind with the LibreOffice project. OpenOffice still has stronger name recognition than LibreOffice, so a lot of people still use it.
Lol is it really just like
// I did something, trust me
And he pushes it out lmao?
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.
OpenOffice’s old branding from Sun times was so nice though. Felt like modernity and magic in the sense of Star Wars prequels, Stargate SG-1, that warm kind of thing.
Oracle.
Pretty much what everyone said, especially better import/export of microsoft document formats - but one of the things they didn’t mention is that LibreOffice can be easily downloaded and installed from repositories. If I do a fresh linux install it’s just a command line or some other software package installer away. Super easy. I find LibreOffice runs smoother. Only downside is that sometimes it takes a while to load.
And if you’re using a full featured turnkey kind of distro like Mint, LibreOffice is pre-installed and ready to update via the repo.
Libreoffice was created as a fork of OpenOffice because the development of OO became stale due to Oracle. If you’re still on OpenOffice, try LibreOffice - it’s kind of the same, but better
For me it was docx. Oo couldn’t get the formatting right but libre could. This was back when docx was new and i was in school ao the teachers didn’t take off for strange lines or bad formatting.
