Bleg: OpenOffice to LibreOffice

Will Truman 6 Comments

Has anyone out there made the switch? If so, how good is the document reading? I know that they are both ODF-based, but so is IBM Lotus Symphony and going back and forth between that and OOo was a pain in the posterior and seldom worked right.

I assume that since the forking is recent, they probably will be close to interchangeable (just making sure). But as time progresses, they may be less so. As such, which of the two is likely to be around ten years from now?

I switched from MS Office formats to ODF in part because I didn’t want to be beholden to Microsoft, and OpenOffice seemed so safe, but now I seem to be in a different area of uncertainty.

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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6 Comments

  1. I am a person who uses LibreOffice (LO) almost everyday. I used to use OpenOffice (OO) & still like it a lot.

    Try out the extensions available with LO/OO. It makes LO even more useful. Here are some very good extensions for LO / OOo:

    http://www.languagetool.org/
    – helps detect some grammar mistakes
    -Requires Java 6.0 or later.
    For Ubuntu (Linux) users I recommend they download libreoffice-java-common from the Ubuntu Software Center.

    http://code.google.com/p/ooo2gd/downloads/detail?name=ooo2gd_3.0.0.oxt&can=2&q=
    that lets you quickly & easily upload to Google Docs

    I also recommend “The complete Writer Guide”:
    http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/cgi_img_auth.php/b/ba/0200WG3-WriterGuide.pdf

    and http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation

    • I’m guessing by the fact that you use LO and used to use OO that you would recommend the former over the latter? Or did your Linux distro change and you just went with it?

      I’ve been using OOo for years now. I’m debating on jumping ship to LO. Should I?

  2. Hi Will,

    Its both, I had tried LO on one computer before (Ubuntu & Windows – dual booted) . Now it comes standard with most Linux Distros. I was on the mailing list of OO and am on the mailing list of LO. In my opinion LO is more responsive & the changes & improvements in LO are moving at break-neck speed.

    Here is an interesting article of the things to come that you may like:
    http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/241177/as_libreoffice_turns_one_a_peek_ahead_at_whats_to_come.html

    • Thanks a lot, Paul. Also for the links to the plugins on your first comment. I think I will be going with LibreOffice.

      Off the top of your head, are there any plugins that allow for tabs? That was my absolute favorite feature of IBM Lotus Symphony?

      • They (developers) definitely must be working on it.

        Here is an interesting mock-up of tabs in LO, I happened to come across:
        http://usrnametaken.deviantart.com/gallery/28215513#/d37byef

        I’m eagerly waiting for the tabs feature, more so because Ubuntu has knocked off the bottom panel in its User interface with Unity. Now it takes more clicks to navigate 🙁
        However, the tabs feature can help because they make files so much more accessible. Wasn’t tabs the brainwave of Firefox?

  3. If you want your software to be updated with the latest features, I see no reason not to switch from OO to LO.
    Most of the developers that were working with OO are now working with LO.

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