Thanks for the heads-up. But I wonder how many new security flaws have been added in the mean time in the rush to push out new versions?
I've been a big proponent of LibreOffice over Oracle, and now, Apache OpenOffice, mainly because continued development looks so much more promising. But now I'm wondering if I wouldn't be as well off with OpenOffice, even if it's rarely updated and undoubtedly has its own security flaws? It seems to do everything I want it to do, and I think it'd be great even if all they did was updates for security fixes. I think it might suit me to only have to download and install OpenOffice once every year or so, than to download and install LibreOffice every few weeks, hoping one bug will be fixed, only to find a new bug that more than takes away from any added feature. Of course, I know that once I go back to using OO, it will be declared finally dead once and for all, as rumors of its death have already been around awhile.
As OpenOffice is understaffed, there are serious concerns about fixing security problems. See last year's Ars Technica article OpenOffice, after years of neglect, could shut down, and last year's e-mail from Dennis Hamilton, vice president of Apache OpenOffice, What Would OpenOffice Retirement Involve?, that the Ars Technica article referred to.
Apache OpenOffice can't really compete with LibreOffice. People in need of a robust free office suite should install LO.
Well yeah, but some people, like me, get tired of the new bugs that are introduced with their scheduled frequent updates that aren't fixed for at least a few versions, by which time another bug is introduced. An office suite shouldn't have fonts rendered so poorly it gives you a headache to look at. So, at least for now, it appears that some who need a robust office suite may not be able to find a free one. Despite all the cries of it dying, or having had died, in what way is Open Office any less robust than LO? Reading recent comments and articles it seems that it is still being downloaded about as often as LO, despite not being updated in months, and some people are finding it more stable. Despite all the warnings, how many people have actually experienced damage due to the supposed security issues? Especially people on forums like these who are fairly knowledgeable and run fairly secure systems, and people like me who don't collaborate, and if I share documents it's usually in pdf form (which of course has its own issues). And I don't imagine that because they've fixed dozens of security flaws in each previous version of LO means that each new version is security flaw free. So, as I've said in the past, I think the future of LO looks a lot better, if you can live, or aren't affected by, each major new bug that's introduced in their rush to push out new versions before they can address the existing bugs. But to someone who doesn't keep up with all the issues of software development, why would they go for a suite that's about 100 MB larger to download, has ugly looking fonts or whatever other bugs may appear on their system, calls for frequent updates (and I know a lot of people have come to see frequent updates as a sign of quality, somehow), and doesn't seem to do anything more that a non-power-user would care much about? So I expect that people will continue to use OO until it dies altogether and no longer works on on future versions of their OS. And, if it works for them, who can blame them?
I wonder why LO couldn't make their "Still" version more of a "Stable" version? Then they wouldn't release the new "still" version until all the major bugs had been fixed, and then just do security fixes. But as it is, the "still" version is released on hard deadlines no matter what, like the "fresh" version, and its scheduled updates seems to be about as frequent. So the only real difference seems to be that the "still's" unfixed bugs may be different than the "fresh's" newly introduced bugs.
Does LibreOffice even follow its own rules? https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan If they're doing "pure bugfix" releases, then why are major new bugs being introduced in minor point releases while other recently introduced bugs remained unfixed? For instance from 5.3.1 to 5.3.2: The first sentence in the link above: Is "Free" being capitalized a typo? Do they mean "Time-based release trains have been shown to produce Free software with the best quality", or that "Time-based release trains have been shown to produce the best software that is quality free?"
LibreOffice 5.3.5 [Still] available for download https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/08/03/libreoffice-5-3-5-available-download/ ------------------------------
I was curious about the font problem, wanted to try the new version. But all I get in the web sites is a "502 - Bad gateway" screen.
I'd be interested in hearing your results if you do try it. I don't know what percentage of users systems are affected. It appears that most of the developers systems aren't affected, otherwise I think it would be a much higher priority.
Keep in mind LibreOffice is the work of volunteers and the foundation that runs the project has nowhere the resource and the people Microsoft does. And Microsoft keeps changing the interoperability standards between MSO and LO and for the latter its always a game of catchup - and the playing field is far from fair. That said, is the only cross platform office suite that runs on Windows, MacOSX and Linux.
I'll keep that in mind, however just the fact that it is a product of an altruistic organization doesn't make it usable, and the fact that the issue was dismissed so quickly as a feature, then finally repopened and admitted as a reletively low priority issue, then closed as "resolved fixed" while the issue is still there, doesn't instill a whole lot of confidence in me. And I'm not sure what all this has to do with Microsoft, I don't use the MS formats, and why would they be changing the open document formats based on what MS is doing? Also, Apache OpenOffice is a cross platform office suite that runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. But what I care about is whether or not it works adequately on the system I use it on.
They don't change the format. Microsoft does by having its own standard of what the format should be. I can understand Microsoft's approach - they don't want to make it easy for their competition.
Still, what does the font bug have to do with Microsoft? Rarely do I ever even read a DOC or DOCX document, and I never use the Microsoft format when editing documents, and LibreOffice is supposed to use Open Document standards which MS has no control over (at least that I'm aware of) and shouldn't change depending on what MS is doing; and I wouldn't consider font rendering, for instance, to depend on either MS or Open Document formats.
If I'm not mistaken, the current thread refers to LibreOffice. Why you don't open another thread for OpenOffice?
I tried v. 5.4.0.3 stable. Font rendering in the documents was better with OpenGL disabled. I opened some Word (docx) documents which have pasted PNG images created with the Snipping Tool. They looked definitely better witn OpenGL disabled. The rendering of menus was not very good in either case. I didn´t see any flickering.
Thanks Robin! So it seems to be more than a few systems that are affected. I think that's pretty much what I'm seeing. It may not look too bad at first, but if you had to work with it all day I think you would either have to get used to it or get a headache. @anon, to hopefully clarify; in my response to NormanF, I mentioned Open Document Format (ODF), which is supposed to be the standard that LibreOffice natively uses, and is the format I use in LO; and my point was that it shouldn't be affected by whatever Microsoft does. I didn't refer to OpenOffice.
I think it was pretty clear that I was referrning to the post that seemed to provoke your response in which, as I pointed out, I did not refer to OO. Yes, I have referred to OO in response to other's posts and in contrast to LibreOffice. In what way does that disturb you or go against the forum TOS? I was not the first to have mentioned OO. When people claim that LO is the only program that can do such and such, I ask then to back it up and why it matters. Do you have a problem with bugs in LibreOffice, and their update philosophy, being discussed?
Hello, The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.4.1 “fresh” and LibreOffice 5.3.6 “still” Homepage Downloads LibreOffice 5.4: Release Notes LibreOffice 5.3: Release Notes
LibreOffice 5.4.2.2 “Fresh” https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/10/05/document-foundation-announces-libreoffice-5-4-2/
LibreOffice 5.3.7 [Still] available for download https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/11/02/libreoffice-5-3-7-available-download/
