LibreOffice

Maybe, I think that the Document Foundation had made a decision & an action plan & have just decided to stick with it.

 

Yeah, well ... you could always give the Monkey a spin ...

It's Alive!

 

That seems to be that:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Document-Foundation-restates-LibreOffice-goals-1229731.html

(Re. SM, a couple of browsers (and pints) is my limit.)

 

Interesting, I think it is the wisest policy for the Document Foundation though. SeaMonkey portable has always been a great favourite of mine. Portable beer is also a favourite.

 

I wonder how many users there are on LibreOffice in comparison to OpenOffice.

 

I actually have both on my desktop, although LibO is the default. A word processor & a 'Powerpoint' type program (Impress) are important for me, plus I have been using Open Office for so long now I actually prefer it to MS Office.

 

I'd expect that the current numbers of Open Office users would dwarf Libre.

 

LO will grow very fast as Linux distros are switching.

 

Please post reviews. Is LibreOffice better than OpenOffice/OxygenOffice?

[OxygenOffice = OpenOffice with ~200 MB of additional templates, fonts, clipart, etc.]

 

It includes some more features, like those in Go-oo and others. Also more likely to remain free and in development (at least in my opinion). Not sure about OxygenOffice.

 

All I know about Oxygen Office is from this Sourceforge page (the Windows 32 bit version can be found on the 'other versions' link).

 

It's available on majorgeeks.com. They have a proper description: http://majorgeeks.com/OxygenOffice_Professional_d5340.html

Note: The last version of OxygenOffice I know of is v3.2.1 (installer size = 355 MB) as opposed to OpenOffice v3.3.0 (installer size = 150 MB), so I don't know how active the OxygenOffice project still is... (majorgeeks dates it at sept-2009, but sourceforge says the last update was apr-2011).

 

@pajenn, OK thanks for the link.

 

As far as the various flavors go, I've picked one and will stay with it. It does what I want.

Also, they haven't figured out how to provide incremental updates such as provided by some browsers (Fx and Chrome, that I know of). The size discourages me, and may be others with limited broadband, from updating minor revisions.

Then, there may be fonts added willy-nilly to your Fonts folder and which may not be removed upon uninstall.

 

The suggestion that LibO have its own forum is going nowhere fast. The suggestion that TDF pages at least mention forums that could provide support is being met with a some "terms and conditions".

 

IMHO user friendly support is important.
Also thinking longer term there needs to be support that businesses can depend on (even if it costs) if they want to be a valid alternative to MS Office.

Cheers, Nick

 

What do you think that the problem actually is? Maybe they're planning to 'get around to it'.

 

I think there's a strong lobby that prefers mailing lists.

 

Oh, OK thanks.

 

It seems that Oracle has donated the OpenOffice.org code to the Apache Software Foundation.

From a reading of TDF's take on the announcement, it appears that TDF is not entirely happy.
Source: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/announce/

Edit: a look at the complexities (if not potential politics)

One more edit from the source above (post by robert_weir time-stamped 2 Jun 05:10):

Outsiders looking in would be entitled to be confused if not worse ...

 

Wow, interesting development. At least OpenOffice shouldn't become dead.

 

This is fabulous news as we selected OpenOffice as our default office productivity software for KNOS, and were fortunate enough to have gotten advance code prior to the public release of 3.3 which was integrated into our OS. At the time of the controversy and Oracle's power play, we looked long and hard at Libre and weren't impressed with it at the time. Had this not been the outcome, we were willing to license through Oracle with great reluctance to keep OO as we have it working very nicely with KNOS.

We'll be watching this anxiously as we work on the next KNOS release later this year. I agree that having the Apache Foundation watching over OO is about the best outcome we could all hope for.

 

There is sooo much politics ....
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/06/apache-openoffice.html

 

IBM has expressed approval of Oracle's move. Let's see what comes of this whole business.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/01/oracle_openoffice_apache/

 

LibreOffice just released 3.4