2mo ago

LibreOffice is pretty damn good

Today I did my first advanced spreadsheet on LibreOffice after switching to Linux, and it handled itself pretty well. I had to search for some features on the web at first, but after I got it down, I felt comfortable using it. Also, LibreOffice's default menu layout is not pretty, but I can find all of the functions with just a click, unlike MS Office's ribbon menu where I had to click around to find what I was looking for. Sorry for bad English.

102 comments

I do a lot of work with CSV files and LibreCalc is so much better for them. You can actually tell it how to delimit the file and to put quotations around each field.
Some programs actually advise against using excel if you're going to work on a CSV to upload into the program, which is funny considering it's meant to be the industry standard.
P. S. For anyone that would like to use LibreOffice at work, download portableapps and get it from there. It's so portable it can get around IT administration requirements
- On behalf of cyber and IT, just ask IT to install the thing, please. They can't really say no to a free app and bypassing restrictions ends badly for everyone. I had a user do that with video editing software... seriously, what could go wrong? Ransomware. Literally ransomware. Lucky for antivirus it stopped it but yeah, please work with IT.
  
  They can't really say no to a free app
  What? At my workplace there's a bunch of stuff we aren't allowed to install that's free with the reasoning being security concerns.
  
  They can't really say no to a free app
  A co-worker was told (verbatim) by the head of IT that " we don't use open source". So yeah...
  
  They can and most of the time they do complain about free apps
  
  They can't really say no to a free app
  "No enterprise support" is actually scary for them. I did security, 'way back, but in Unix, and maybe that's why we were more cool with OSS back then. Windows people love the black-box binaries and fear a lack of pricy support.
  
  I had a user do that with video editing software... seriously, what could go wrong? Ransomware. Literally ransomware.
  What app was that? I'm guessing the software was not FOSS.
- I agree with LibreCalc and CSV, in some internationalclasses we always had issues with excel saving CSV in actually different formats depending on the machine locale. LibreCalc never had this problem.
offtopic but your english is great :)
I bring this up often because its so amusing to me.
Last year I did a lot of interviews with developers of popular Steam Deck and Linux programs. All went really well, and were quite fun to do.
One 'dev' (I use that term so loosely because I found out GPT is heavily used for their work) freaked out though when they saw my document I sent initially was an .odt file.
Knowing I am a pen-tester, they freaked out and told the public at large I was trying to hack them with a weird file type.
.odt
It still makes me laugh. Anyway, I swear by LibreOffice, I use it daily and love it so much!
- if a specific format isn't requested or required, and the formatted text document is not expected to be edited by the recipient--only read, possibly by computer, or printed, i would default to using a pdf.
  
  That's funny! If someone was trying to infect my PC via e-mail, I would expect them to be sending pdf files.
  
  Most of these were not on-the-spot interviews. They were very informal questions and answers.
  So Writer felt appropriate to me - the questions were there, they can copy to paste elsewhere, or enter their own answers in the document.
Ribbon bar shit, personally I hate the MS ribbon bar. So for me the LO interface is way better. Just depends on what you like and what you learned and know well.
- A lot of what Linux lacks is UI design, and at least 50+% of that is just because of what we got used to using other products.
  
  Absolutely true. We mimicked bad design out there for compatibility, but then it became comfy and now cannot be changed.
  Having said that, the ribbon must die. Let's not hold MSOffice (post-97) up as the ideal for anything at all, okay?
- Depends on the Desktop/Theme your using really.
- Define lack of design. You mean theming? because Linux has way more customizable theming options than the proprietary alternatives, to fit all kinds of subjective tastes.
  You mean usability? it's the one system that you can rice up to do absolutely whatever you want to do to fit your workflow, you can configure any key to automate literally anything a desktop can do.
  The catch is that you actually do have to get your hands dirty if you want to mold the system to your liking.. as opposed to being your own tastes the ones molding to adapt to whichever the designer of the OS decided should be the new tacky fashion or workflow.
  
  I think he mispelled Windows.
  Windows 11 is literally a part copy of KDE. Even the webpage got copied till they removed the evidence. It is KDE from Linux that got copied because the Windows User Interface was shit af.
  But they still lack a lot for my taste. KDE seems to be the winner for me
It’s very good but M$ make every attempt to avoid making it interoperable with Word
- M$ loves locking users into their totally bulls*it ecosystem with deliberately broken "standards." LibreOffice, on the other hand, actually respects open formats like ODF and doesn't treat interoperability as a threat. Word still can't properly open documents it didn't create, unless you pay the vendor tax and pray the formatting survives....
  
  I think they deliberately mess with the formatting text in exported to "word doc" format files from LibreOffice too.
Indeed, LibreOffice Calc is a near-daily fixture in my operational workflow. The insistence on proprietary, data-harvesting alternatives like Google Docs is… unnecessary. For Debian-based systems, the installation process is straightforward: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa & sudo apt install libreoffice, referencing the official documentation at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Install/Linux
- (Is debian considered a "debian-based" distro?)
  Debian users, ignore the above. Debian explicity warns against using ubuntu ppa
  The correct way to get libreoffice in debian is just to apt install libreofffice... It's already in the main debian repos
  https://wiki.debian.org/LibreOffice
You can visually theme it so it looks differently
Almost anytime i want to do something a bit more interesting in Excel i have to look for a solution on the web too. And i am considered one of the better Excel users in my working environment.
My first experience with it was that dark theme was bugged and the interface wasn’t intuitive
Yes. Its the obvious choice for desktop.
But if you want web, have you tried CryptoPad.
- Collabora used to offer Libre Office online, now it’s their Libre Office fork
  Rollapp lets you use LibreOffice online but I don’t think there is collaboration
Yeah; it's pretty great. It lacks the excel functions, but if you know some python that is a total non-issue.
I am so close to loving libreoffice but trackpad gesture scrolling is broken and it's kind of not optional on a laptop. With a mouse, I am a big fan.
- This works out of the box on KDE (should work on GNOME too), what desktop environment do you use?
  
  Cinnamon, Mint 22. It works, but badly. Two finger scroll does nothing for a second, then jumps to the destination. You don't see anything in between, which is not how that interaction is meant to go (I start the gesture, realise I overshot the top of page two, then adjust back up, read the top, then keep on scrolling - all without releasing the gesture).
  This thread describes it well: https://www.reddit.com/r/libreoffice/comments/enf3p4/touchpad_scroll_speed/
  edit: i started digging into this again. I think it's just sensitivity being way too high within LO. If I go one mm at a time it works as expected. But of course I want to browse docs as comfortably as I browse pages on firefox.
- Gesture scrolling? You mean like making clockwise or anticlockwise circles to scroll up or down? I'd have thought that kind of functionality would be handled by the touchpad driver, not individual programs.
  
  nah just two finger scroll. like going down from page 1 to page 2 with a touchpad
- I've found that a lot of apps with touch gestures need Touchégg to work correctly, could be worth a shot to give it an install. I use a converted macbook, and for any gestures to work with the apple trackpad at all I have to have touchegg, my partner has it on her converted pixelbook go to make the trackpad not feel awful there too.
  https://github.com/JoseExposito/touchegg
  
  i'm on mint cinnamon 22 and have touchegg installed. They have this in built Gestures applet but it doesn't seem to govern the two finger scroll. Touche (separate app) seems similar - its all about 3 and 4 finger gestures. Seems like the two finger scroll is special somehow.
- Works on Ubuntu
Yes
I do wish it had a self hosted docker though. I could see Proton mail and thunder mail adopting it that way, which would be neat.
- Is a self hosted docker different from this?
  https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-libreoffice
#775#298 060352 @ColdWater
Yeah, but it'd be better if calc gridlines didn't have that unchangeable fade effect
However, in direct comparison with SoftMaker Office (which, admittedly, is not free software), LibreOffice is inconsistent, sluggish, unstable and less compatible with Microsoft formats.
- Wrong info, the Microsoft format is less compatible with everything else.
  
  Formats aren't compatible. Parsers are.
- For me MS Office aren't compatible with LibreOffice is because MS fault not LibreOffice
  
  I'm all for LibreOffice and Open Source, but I do not agree on this point. Microsoft created the format and application and LibreOffice is a third party that tries to be conform.
  
  How is it Microsoft's fault that the LibreOffice team fails to properly support its formats? Others can do it.
- Except for MS format compatiblity, not my experience, Not sure where MS format compatibility stands now, but that has histically been the biggest issue.
  Keep on mind that MS supplied LibreOffice translator is not great either so they have issues too. MS really does not plan on being compatible even between versions of their own software.
  
  There are still a few issues left to fix in my experience.
- Huh, I've never heard of SoftMaker Office before, good to know it exists. I might check it out.
  To add to some of the other comments, I have heard that the issue for LibreOffice is that Microsoft's own parser isn't compliant with the OOXML standard that they created. Yet the most important thing is compatibility with Microsoft Office, so you can't simply build a parser according to the open standard and expect it to work with Microsoft Office. Instead, you need a parser to work the same way as Microsoft's, which is proprietary. However, admittedly I have never read the OOXML standard or checked MS Office documents for compliance myself.
  Therefore, if what I have heard is correct, I would assume that SoftMaker Office has either struck a deal with Microsoft before to improve compatibility, or has simply been better at reverse engineering. Alternatively, what I have heard could be wrong.
I recommend giving OnlyOffice a try too. Way better UX/UI than Libre. Compatible with MS Office. No cost.
- And coming fresh from a Russian Company with huge russian Government and Army Contracts
  
  it's not like OnlyOffice is controlled by Putin or something lol
  
  Hm, TIL. I thought they were from the Baltics. For what it’s worth, as far as I can tell the desktop apps never tried to “phone home” from my machine.
- Look better doesn't mean it's functionally better.
Honest question: who would use a non-collaborative standalone spreadsheet in 2025? I don't get it.
- I don't need to share everything, everytime. Do you ?
  
  Context is important:
  "in August 2023, OnlyOffice announced a restructuring, placing Ascensio System SIA under the ownership of a British company, which is in turn owned by a Singapore-based holding company"
  Its also open source and can be audited still.
  I might uninstall because of this though as didnt even know.
  
  My single personal spreadsheet is (uh) a CSV that I edit with vim. I don't want to have to fire up a monstrous GUI app just to view a table. But sure, count me as eccentric in this way.
  Most of the spreadsheets I deal with are for work. For what I consider obvious reasons, they've been cloud-hosted for literally decades now.
- Honest answer: People who would create spreadsheets for themselves.
- Not you obviously
- Not sure why you got downvoted, it is a fair question. Real time multiuser editing is a powerful feature. That said it is really only needed a small fraction of the time for specific types of collaboration. Also, it can cause problems as well. Libreoffice Calc meets most of my home spreadsheet needs: calculating mortgage rates and future value of investments and such.
- You can absolutely collaborate with Collabora Office
  
  Yes, true.
- Me, i hate "collaborative" internet connected spying stuff
  While libreoffice seems to me like a gazillion features held together by duct tape, it does what I need it to do
- Me. The work I'm using them for doesn't need collaboration or sharing. But it's important to also have collaborative ones up my sleeve.
  I'm using formula calculations and visual graphs, so a CLI-managed CSV just won't work for me.
- There's only a small set of spreadsheets in my work life that need multiuser access, most of those are admin shit.
  There are more in my home life, planning holidays, household tracking.
  Buy most things at home and work have no need to be shared during update
- Privacy.

102 comments