Likely a repeat of a hundred other questions on this, but here it is anyway....
I use OpenOffice.
I was wondering if anyone knew a reason I might want to try LibreOffice.
Better?
Worse?
Same?
Doesn't matter?
Likely a repeat of a hundred other questions on this, but here it is anyway....
I use OpenOffice.
I was wondering if anyone knew a reason I might want to try LibreOffice.
Better?
Worse?
Same?
Doesn't matter?
LibreOffice is much better maintained and miles ahead of OpenOffice. Years ago almost all programmers of OO left because of a conflict and started LO. Since then LO has gone a long way where OO was left behind. Today I dare to say LO is often a better choice than MS Word.
This is what the LibreOffice site has to say on the subject, you would never guess from that page that OO's current minor release is 4.1.14 and is 11 days old. I have not seen any references to LO on the OpenOffice site, they simply say how wonderful they are.
There are a couple of OpenOffice v LibreOffice comparisons out there - both dating from 2021 - here is one of them.
For all I know there may be more but I just found the two.
Me? I have been using LibreOffice for years. I had some minor problems with 7.4.3 and did a fallback to 7.3.6, I'll do some testing on another machine before updating again. This is under Linux.
OO's current minor release is 4.1.14 and is 11 days old
I knew it was still maintained but at a very slow pace. OpenOffice is not bad software, it works fine and is stable as far as I know. It's just that LibreOffice is way ahead.
For those who like the MS Word ribbon (bleh!), you can use that in LibreOffice (not in OpenOffice).
Here's how you make LibreOffice look and feel like MS Word: https://www.howtogeek.com/788591/how-to-make-libreoffice-look-like-microsoft-office/ although the standard LibreOffice UI is very good.
Open Office was great for me... until it wasn't. It kept crashing while I was going through corrections. I'd get 90 percent through the corrections, and then the program would freeze. It reached the point I would save after two or three corrections, so I didn't have to start over again.
I had others advise me to make the change. I'm stubborn. But when the wife's cat no longer liked my PC, I decided to go with LibreOffice. I'm pissed at myself for not doing so much earlier. I think of the time I wasted recorrecting paragraphs that I could have been using searching for MILF porn.
Ugh. Now I'm depressed... if only there were something I could search for to make me feel better...
Better. More upgrading. Effectively able to replace MS-Office, while still being able to export documents so those poor bastards that have to use MS-Office can use them.
I started out using OO when I was writing, then switched to LO after some discussion. Haven't looked back.
I agree with the comment about OO errors while editing as well. It MAY have been fixed, but it actually takes effort for me to get LO to freeze up - and since I have auto-saving of my work every ten minutes turned on, sort of don't care.
The best recommendation I can make is that the last time I bought a PC, which was 2014 or 15, the local dealer I bought it from installed Libre. Since they build a lot more computers than I do I'm going to assume that they know something I don't.
Of course, I use Scrivener for my writing so it's kind of a moot point, but Scrivener is both non-free and a not for everyone.
I didn't even realize Open Office was still out there. I thought Libre Office was the same project under a new name.
That makes me wonder if the perception of which is better is just about which is more known now. Is there really any objective qualitative difference?
Is there really any objective qualitative difference
You will have to compare yourself for the 'objective' part. OpenOffice lost almost all their developers after a conflict. Those developers started LibreOffice and did a lot work on it, and still do, making it a complete and modern word processor. The Apache project more or less 'had to' continue OpenOffice and it has done so but without the huge backup in development that LibreOffice has. That difference shows.
This dates back to the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems. Sun had several not-for-profit activities such as Java and OpenOffice, after the takeover Larry Ellison started looking at monetising these as well. I can't remember the exact details of the split (they are easy enough to find if you look) but OpenOffice was under an Open Source Licence and - as Keet says - the developers pretty much deserted en masse and LibreOffice was born.
Once it was clear that LibreOffice was going to make it, Oracle passed the remnants of OpenOffice on to the Apache Foundation and they have been keeping the flame alive ever since.
Oh, I never knew Open Office was corporate owned. I had always assumed it was one of those community run open source things.
Curious as to how it's run now under Apache, and whether or not Libre Office is a true open source thing or an owned project.
and whether or not Libre Office is a true open source thing or an owned project.
It's open source: https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/licenses.
The Apache Foundation is - afaik - all about Open Source and is non-profit. They use a slightly different licence but that only matters to real insiders.
In the beginning there was Star Office, one of several competitors to MS Office. It never had enough customers to be really viable and at some point Sun Microsystems bought the company. After a while Sun placed the source in the public domain, calling it OpenOffice.