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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 5 days 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] 34 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (6 children)

Been using openoffice for 15+ years, what made you switch to libreoffice?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

Oracle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Fair, open office still hates .docx lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

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

Lol is it really just like

// I did something, trust me

And he pushes it out lmao?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Pretty much: https://github.com/apache/openoffice/commits/trunk/