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LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs | The free open-source Microsoft Office alternative is being downloaded by nearly 1 million users a week (www.computerworld.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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 :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Element 🤢

Telegram 🤢

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I know. But better than using products from fascists...