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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] 18 points 1 week ago (7 children)

If you're a nerd, also check out Typst and LaTeX. Being able to format your documents with pure code is awesome, and you can also define functions for different things, import libraries to generate graphs, and write comments that don't show up in the document.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

LaTeX is great for documents, mediocre for slides, questionable for spreadsheets, useless for mail and calendar.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago

For me it was about freedom, and not being locked into the Microsoft sphere.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Good. Finally. It's about time.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

I’ve gradually been switching over. The UI is somewhat confusing in my experience- but the MSO UX+UI is consistently getting much, much worse as time passes

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

I love Libre so much

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Based

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

I have to say I'm one of them. Cancelled my office subscription and an trying to avoid making the same mistake again. It was convenient though.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (11 children)

I’ve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

LaTeX is your friend

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I used OnlyOffice thinking 'Hey, this is a really similar alternative to MSO!' Then bugs with slide previews and their ordering happened in the middle of presentations and even worse, memory usage ground my laptop to a halt (electron apps open up with close to 1GB of memory, such as obsidian).

Libre office still hasn't crashed and the slide previews are accurate. The interface has always been a bit...unrefined even with the new tabbed layout but I can live with that.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Hahahahaha nice

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