OpenOffice vs LibreOffice - any preferences?

52midnight

Some may remember the kerfuffle a while back when the OOo project was taken over by commercial interests, resulting in the mass defection of project staff and setting up of the LibreOffice fork. The Evil Swindler responsible eventually gave it away, but we're now left with a duplicate project.

Does Gentoo specifically, or anyone reading this, have any preferences or policies to differentiate the two?

Cyker · Veteran Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 1746

LibreOffice will usually be better; They can steal code from OpenOffice but, due to the differences in licensing, OpenOffice can't steal code from LibreOffice.

That said I am currently using OpenOffice because LibreOffice triggers a ridiculous and terrifyingly large dependency cascade on my system.

OpenOffice OTOH just emerged with no stupid dependencies, so it won by default.

52midnight · Posted: Tue Jul 07, 2015 11:06 pm Post subject:

Very interesting, and many thanks for the dependencies warning. I notice that OO is now Apache OO, that being both the licence and the support site, I suppose. Given OO's disadvantage, it might make them try a bit harder, so the balance may change.

miket

52midnight · Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 3:06 am Post subject:

> I started with the code way back when it was StarOffice on OS/2.

Now THAT brings back memories. Thought StarOffice was great back when.

BTW, there are binary packages for both OOo and libreOffice to save compiling them for anyone interested.

Roman_Gruber · Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 6:41 am Post subject:

for some reason i used libreoffice and I sticked to that.
It seemed that openoffice turned evil or like redhat with their systemd in comparision.

just checked woohoo, gentoo still has openoffice as binary in tree.

I just want an open source software which can create pdf from my text files and spreadsheets.
I do not care much for the underlying piece, but it should be something which lasts longer.

Microsoft had the issues that intentions never were right from office 97 to newer. Regardless using microsoft or other software.

Libreoffice / openoffice / staroffice never failed me in this regard. And yes i used staroffice 5.0 in the old days. Basically all the same junk just renamed and different owners.

I even certified microsoft office user. Libreoffice lacks some mayor functions but who cares. I hardly need those but I saw the differences after I passed my certification a few years back.

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

After the dust settled it seems most people migrated to LibreOffice, so it seems to be a good place to go if you want the bugs taken care of quickly.
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asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

52midnight · Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 11:21 pm Post subject:

> It seemed that openoffice turned evil

It was taken over for a time by one of the American billionaires, barely escaped with its life, and has since been living in fear, or so I'm told.

> development of OpenOffice has pretty much ceased.

Hmm, well that's interesting.

> I just want an open source software which can create pdf from my text files and spreadsheets.

Check out pandoc.org. The design philosophy looks sound, it's commandline and highly modular. It needs TeX to make PDFs, one reason for my (now confirmed) approach of using OOo/LO for editing and export into PDF.

nofortier · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2015 Posts: 1

I've also heard that OS development has stopped. LibreOffice does everything I need.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice Team

bandreabis · Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:45 pm Post subject:

Latest Libreoffice update is August 2014, Openoffice's update is October 2014.
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jonathan183 · Guru Joined: 13 Dec 2011 Posts: 318

I switched to Libreoffice quite a while ago ... having options is nice

tbh I had not thought about OpenOffice again until I looked at this thread.
As the PC I got has a bit more grunt I switched to compiling Libreoffice, compiling Openoffice does not look to be an option using the portage tree at the moment.

bandreabis · Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 5:45 am Post subject:

Libreoffice ebuild is today at 5.0.1.2 version. It's a long long compiling.
But libreoffice-bin is at the 4.4.4.3 version.
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John R. Graham · Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:37 pm Post subject:

That's not the whole story. While it's true that libreoffice testing is ahead of libreoffice-bin, that's just because libreoffice-bin tracks stable libreoffice. Both stable libreoffice and (stable) libreoffice-bin are at 4.4.4.3.

- John
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Roman_Gruber · Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:40 pm Post subject:

there was recently an article about openoffice and they just should give up.

they lack developers and manpower in short, and have had hardly any updates in a year. i am sure you will find the correlated article on slashdot or wherever i have read it ...

bandreabis · Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2015 4:42 pm Post subject:

Substitute stable with still and I agree.
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WWWW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Nov 2014 Posts: 143

Main development switched to LibreOffice for a while now.

LibreOffice is backed and funded by important nation states, things like GPU acceleration in Calc, and many other innovations are developed in LibreOffice.

I would be surprise if Larry Ellison's OracleOffice isn't surviving only by name now and keeping up by rsync'n off LibreOffice repos.

On the comment above which has the most recent update, is could be normal that OracleOffice could have the most up to date changes since Larry Ellison might be waiting for LibreOffice release, then he waits a couple of months and does a sneaky rsync to claim his suite is more up to date. Classic tactic from marketing 101.

cheers!

MerlinYoda · Posted: Thu Sep 10, 2015 12:20 am Post subject:

I'm going to give Adobe OpenOffice a chance despite LibreOffice being the more active project in part because of my preference for more permissively licensed projects. However, if LibreOffice adds enough functionality and document compatibility such that the contrast between it and Adobe OpenOffice is stark enough, I'll switch to it.

Now, I had a nice long post about how the it'd be nice to have the AOO and LO communities play nice together so that they could collaborate on a common "base" while still being able to go their own directions as far as development. I also noted how and why it likely wasn't going to happen any time soon and how regrettable it was as the open source community would be better off to have both projects to be thriving and vibrant if only to have the option of two different development and release philosophies. Unfortunately, once I hit "submit" I got prompted for a login and, after logging in, saw my nice long post (that I'd spent some time on writing) had disappeared entirely. Unfortunately I had not copied my work to the clipboard like I so often do with long posts (as I have been burned like this in the past before on forums and comment sections) and I'm not about to spend my time retyping my post that took so long to type in the first place (especially considering some of it was more stream-of-consciousness and I can't really reproduce that) so those words of mine will have to remain relegated to /dev/null where they apparently got sent.

I really hope the AOO and the LO teams can get eventually together and resolve whatever petty differences are keeping them from collaborating, but unfortunately, for now, it seems like things have devolved into an "us vs. them" mentality to the point that they both figuratively cannot see beyond their own noses.

WWWW · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 30 Nov 2014 Posts: 143

MerlinYoda · Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2015 3:32 pm Post subject:

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

The reason they've diverged as far apart as they are now is because Apache's fork is under the stewardship of someone who makes OTW here look civil and polite in comparison.

No names mentioned, but if you want to see how hostile/deranged AOO is toward the majority of former OO.o devs, just go skimming through the comments section on anything LibreOffice-related on LWN more than a few months old.