Open Office VS Libre Office

[rayfieldclement]

I know they may be the same but I had to wait an HOUR for LibreOffice to download. What is the difference?

 

[thescreensavers]

Here you go

 

[rayfieldclement]

OH I have looked on google BEFORE i posted this by about a week and a half. I thought you guys might know more.

 

[lxskllr]

LibreOffice has more bug fixes, is faster, and lighter. It also has dedicated developers that want to take it into the future. OpenOffice is just treading water. You should use torrents whenever possible. They're usually faster, and it's the responsible way to download.

 

[BrightCandle]

Sun asserted control over Open Office and most of the developers jumped ship and moved to the fork with LibreOffice. There is no point doing anything with OO anymore, just get libre office as its the one that has a future.

 

[mikeymikec]

LibreOffice has more bug fixes, is faster, and lighter. It also has dedicated developers that want to take it into the future. OpenOffice is just treading water. You should use torrents whenever possible. They're usually faster, and it's the responsible way to download.

I wish I could say that this is my experience with LibreOffice. I'm stuck on LO 3.3 because none of my templates show in 3.4 or 3.5 as they did in any previous version of OO/LO. Simple things like a template with a bordered table in, and the border just disappeared when loading the already saved file in a later version of LO.

Also, the MS Works filter in LO is laughably bad. I haven't seen a single Works document yet that opens correctly in LO. Most of the time they're just blank, sometimes they come out with all the text with the strikethrough formatting applied. I would regard it in about alpha-stage readiness.

Also, column sorting is bizarrely broken in 3.4/3.5 from what I've seen. I have a spreadsheet that I use regularly and I regularly sort it by different columns. In later versions the sort UI says "sort by" then lists the first value in a column rather than the column letter, so I get a choice to sort by column '1' in some cases.

I ought to file a few bug reports but I'm stunned that someone hasn't beaten me to it yet and also I don't fancy the pain of upgrading/downgrading when I have better things to do because for me the table border and column sorting bugs are show-stoppers.

 

[lxskllr]

I wish I could say that this is my experience with LibreOffice. I'm stuck on LO 3.3 because none of my templates show in 3.4 or 3.5 as they did in any previous version of OO/LO. Simple things like a template with a bordered table in, and the border just disappeared when loading the already saved file in a later version of LO.

Maybe try playing around with the portable version. You may be able to figure out the problem without doing a full install/reinstall

http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable

I haven't run into issues, but I'm not a heavy office user. You should definitely file bug reports if you're sure something's broken.

 

[mikeymikec]

Maybe try playing around with the portable version. You may be able to figure out the problem without doing a full install/reinstall

http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable

I haven't run into issues, but I'm not a heavy office user. You should definitely file bug reports if you're sure something's broken.

Thanks for that, I tried the portable version and it looks like they've fixed the two show-stoppers for me. I can't test the MSWorks problem because the documents belonged to customers. I've done the 3.3 -> 3.4 -> 3.5 upgrade they suggest on my setup and it seems to work.

Normally I do bug reports for the apps I use such as Firefox/Thunderbird/LibreOffice, but because these were show-stoppers I had to revert to the previous version in order to continue my work.

I'm hardly a heavy office user by most peoples' definitions and my needs are pretty basic, but those were some pretty bad bugs. While I did the 3.3 -> 3.4 -> 3.5 I upgrade I tested it at the 3.4 stage (freshly downloaded most recent release of 3.4) and it still had the problem then, then disappeared after installing 3.5.

 

[gmaster456]

I prefer Open Office to Libre Office. There are subtle differences I do not like. And Open Office has worked better for me. That being said I still primarily use Office 2010.

 

[mikeymikec]

gmaster456, I'm curious, what sort of differences?

I use LibreOffice primarily even though I have a legal copy of Office 2007. I just intensely dislike the latter

 

[mikeymikec]

Does anyone have any ideas why my Calc formatting toolbar has done this? I tried resetting it, adding things to it, no difference.


Can anyone access this link btw? I had to re-do my router configuration and while everything seems to check out, this doesn't (posting an image on the forum... tried it on Facebook too, same thing happened).

 

[thescreensavers]

^ Same img URLs btw

 

[mikeymikec]

Stupid Internet.

 

[Obsoleet]

I used OO in years past, I've moved to LO due to it being the new, main open source Office alternative. Less licensing issues with LO and you'll see more updates. I have Office 2007 but gave the license to my parents to use with Avery label printing software. I prefer LO & the ODT standard.

 

[lxskllr]

Does anyone have any ideas why my Calc formatting toolbar has done this? I tried resetting it, adding things to it, no difference.


Can anyone access this link btw? I had to re-do my router configuration and while everything seems to check out, this doesn't (posting an image on the forum... tried it on Facebook too, same thing happened).


http://lorien.legolas.com/libreoffice_wtf.png

At the risk of sounding stupid; What's wrong with your toolbar? It looks very similar to mine...

 

[mikeymikec]

Why is there a little fast-forward sign on the second toolbar down, which is usually meant to indicate "you've got more buttons on this toolbar, but you don't have enough room on the screen to show them"?

 

[lxskllr]

What happens when you click that? I have something similar with those two dark vertical bars at the end of my toolbars. Clicking them gives me toolbar action controls.

 

[mikeymikec]

What happens when you click that? I have something similar with those two dark vertical bars at the end of my toolbars. Clicking them gives me toolbar action controls.

Nothing. I got rid of the fast-forward sign by removing all the buttons then re-addig them but I've still got about 2cm blank space on that toolbar.

 

[lxskllr]

It's gone now? I don't know why it would do that. Maybe a bug with the theming on the Windows client. I've never seen that on mine, but I don't always pay the closest attention. If I don't need it, I don't always notice it :^D

 

[mikeymikec]

The 2cm gap is still there.

 

[Clay Aichin]

Does anyone have any ideas why my Calc formatting toolbar has done this? I tried resetting it, adding things to it, no difference

I'd like to help you but I just started using Libre Office last week, after years of using MS Office.

Has anyone had any luck seeing formatted double lines when formatting borders in a Calc spreadsheet? There was a bug report back in February that mentioned this. It stated that if only you magnify the screen or print, then you can see the formatted double lines. Sure enough, after magnifying the spreadsheet I saw them. I wasted about 15 minutes re-formatting again and again until I found the bug report on the web.

Btw, has anyone tried Lotus Symphony, and if so, how close is the spreadsheet program in there to Lotus 123? That program once went for about $500 and it's now free. I graduated to Lotus 123 way back in the late 1980's after using a very early spreadsheet called C-Calc. I've always missed the forward slash key (/) method of going through the Lotus menus.

 

[osnola]

....
Also, the MS Works filter in LO is laughably bad. I haven't seen a single Works document yet that opens correctly in LO. Most of the time they're just blank, sometimes they come out with all the text with the strikethrough formatting applied. I would regard it in about alpha-stage readiness.

Hello,
this kind of bugs existed in LO 3.4, but normally, there were fixed in LO 3.5. After clearly, the filter is far from perfect but you must no longer obtain a blank document...

Note: if you have very old Microsoft Works files ( done with Microsoft Works v4.5 or a previous version ), an improved version of this filter will appear in LO 3.6, ...

osnola

 

[lxskllr]

Btw, has anyone tried Lotus Symphony, and if so, how close is the spreadsheet program in there to Lotus 123? That program once went for about $500 and it's now free. I graduated to Lotus 123 way back in the late 1980's after using a very early spreadsheet called C-Calc. I've always missed the forward slash key (/) method of going through the Lotus menus.

That's been discontinued. Its replacement is Apache OpenOffice. You can use it, but what you get is what you get. It won't be updated anymore. I've never tried it.

 

[rayfieldclement]

I also found another called KingSoft Office Suite

download it below

http://www.kingsoftstore.com/

 

[Exavier]

I've used open office for a few years now without any problems. Especially as far as being compatible with documents goes. Heard of Libre Office but never tried it but now it has caught my interest. Guess I’ll have to try it out and do a comparison of the two.