Sunday, May 26, 2:33 am

LibreOffice VS Openoffice

Written by anuradha.shukla on February 9, 2011. Posted in Software

When a group of German coders at OpenOffice (belonging to database major, Oracle) finally forked away on Sept28th 2010 there was much for everybody to talk about while Oracle OpenOffice maintained dignified silence. The tussle between a David and Goliath has always been fascinating to watch and the breaking away and regeneration of the minnow LibreOffice against the giant OpenOffice has all the makings of a great epic! images

Both LibreOffice and OpenOffice released their 3.3 versions in the last week of January 2011 and thus began the bout between LibreOffice Vs OpenOffice

Round I of LibreOffice Vs OpenOffice

First round went to LibreOffice as it marched away from the price hungry OpenOffice to create new beginnings for a price insensitive yet forceful, powerful and abundantly feature-rich free office suite. Thus was born the Document Foundation. Today the foundation is the official name under whose aegis the new generations of free open office suites will emerge.

Round II of LibreOffice Vs OpenOffice

There are already millions of webpages being written on the same skeleton and structure that LibreOffice follows, it is but a legacy of its OpenOffice past. The core features, capabilities almost remain the same as OpenOffice but there are substantial changes that are exciting and there are high expectations on such features.

Noticeable improvements common to both include the tabbed print dialog. Earlier versions of printing used the Sub windows and the pull-down lists.

Features on which LibreOffice has an Advantage

Distinctive features on LibreOffice -The thesaurus is simplified with advanced features. LibreOffice has refined the Calc spreadsheet with several tweaks that make it more comfortable and easier to use. Narrow fonts for the Liberation fonts while Times and Helvetica have become embedded fonts for PDF files by both developed. Additionally the local data has increased to twenty and dictionary supports more than dozen languages now.

The import filters in the LibreOffice are a great feature to reckon and was pending due from OpenOffice for years. Hence, it is easier to import Word Pro file as well as the WordPerfect files. A highly controversial feature is the import feature from Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 as well as saving into them. Saving in the MS Office 2007 or 2010 is sacrilegious to the open source brigade and but is definitely useful to the non-technical user.

LibreOffice offers grater compatible features for Excel. Hence, it is easy to opt for the new Formula dialog and choose from the default syntax for formulas or the OpenOffice default or choose from the double excel-compatible alternatives. You could also choose the separators for elements in the formula.

LibreOffice the face of the future of Open Office suite

LibreOffice is definitely the future of Office Suites. OpenOffice or any price dependent product will have restricted growth. As each new generation of office suites comes into use, the demand is for open office suites. And LibreOffice is positioned rightly to lead that generational growth. The sneak preview into its capabilities of LibreOffice in the 3.3 is proof of its future. The documentation foundation community is the place for all LibreOffice users to be and contribute with healthy terabytes of feedback to build the future of Open Office Suites.

For questions please refer to our Q/A forum at : http://ask.unixmen.com

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50 Comment(s)

Ben

[quote]A highly controversial feature is the import feature from Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 as well as saving into them. Saving in the MS Office 2007 or 2010 is sacrilegious to the open source brigade and but is definitely useful to the non-technical user.[/quote]

Rubbish. We live in a world where 90% of sheep demand files in .doc or .docx format and refuse to deliver in any other format.

Exporting to pdf is preferable for finished documents in my opinion – as it guarantees the recipient will open the same document (unlike Word – which varies from machine to machine. I would prefer to see more of this in future – or even ‘export as png/jpg’ as an option to provide a printable version of the document.

Why paint techies as stupid people who like to make life harder to live up to their ideals? IMO it makes life simpler. I generally carry a USB with a portable OO instalation and installer, but many times I have to SEND documents in a prescribed format.
pedro

LibreOffice is the future? Maybe in a short time span. I do not thing that any independent developer group could produce a competitive office suite in a long term perspective. Definitely not in a world where reading and writing poorly documented doc(x) or xls(x) is a must. Definitely not in a world where one company rules billion dollar market with its product and all other office suites are compared to that product.
The only thing that I would consider a relevant EXCUSE for forking OpenOffice is a rather slow pace of development in the recent years. Other than that LibreOffice is only loss of time and wasting of potential.
alfonz

Why is "highly controversial" to open/save files to Office 2007/2010 and not "highly controversial" to open/save to WordPerfect and World Pro files?

There was some debate if OOXML file should be supported, but I can’t understand such a questions at all.

You see like with music players. Is it controversial that music players support MP3 files to play? Why don’t they just support open-standard formats like OGG. The same reason is because MP3 is there and music player that does not support it will no-one use. Exactly the same is with OOXML format, if this format is not supported by LibreOffice then a lot of users will not use this program.

Sure I am for open-standards and I always save files to ODF format for my internal use, but when I am sharing files with business partners I save in MS-Office format because I need compatibility with my business partners.

So, please stop writing about "highly controversial".

But if this OOXML if a problem then I think LibreOffice should add OOXML support with extension and the one that does not want to have such an extension just uninstalls it. Or make this extension optional to download. This is not a big deal.
alfonz

"The tussle between a David and Goliath…

OpenOffice is developed by Oracle, LibreOffice is developed by Google, RedHat, Novel, Canonical etc see more: http://www.documentfoundation.org/supporters/

Don’t understand why LibreOffice is David and OpenOffice is Goliath…

LibreOffice have already proven to be much better product then OpenOffice. See comparation:
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/new-features-and-fixes/
http://www.pronaturatours.org Mark

Libreoffice is definitely not a waste of time. OpenOffice developers will probably move to LibreOffice as there time is more appreciated.
Therefore depending on it’s popularity LibreOffice will have more success than OpenOffice.
Jp

I truly rely on the features of OpenOffice for many years. Sun really did a great job at first but ultimately failed at being an ongoing presence. I switch mainly from Microsoft because they no longer inovated but changed the interface that is very awkward to use from the old standard thus they went from standard to no standard overnight. Like PDF formats I want my documents to open with a format that will be around for years to come. I just wished Oracle could let the openoffice community move to the Document Foundation. LibreOffice will do just fine in Fedora 14. Most of the top programmers that where with OpenOffice are now with the Document Foundation.
- Bob Benson
  
  ". . . Microsoft . . . no longer inovated but changed the interface that is very awkward to use." You hit the nail on the head. Microsoft’s new UI ("User Infuriator" not "User Interface") is an absolute confusing mess. It is visually cluttered, busy and inelegant to the point of generating migraines. I’m so glad there is Open Office and LibreOffice available to preserve my sanity.
a_tauri

Let’s say the LibreOffice design (icons mainly) is far from perfect now.
http://enteryoursiteURL... Tim

[quote]First round went to LibreOffice as it marched away from the price hungry OpenOffice[/quote]

Not quite sure what you mean about OpenOffice.org being "price hungry"?

OpenOffice.org is free to download and use … as is LibreOffice.
Dan

Oracle has announced they are giving up on OpenOffice.org…Oh, sorry I should say that Oracle has announced they are handing over OpenOffice.org to be a completely community driven project. If they had done that when they first acquired OpenOffice.org people would have applauded them. Now it is just seen as an Oracle failure.

Only time will tell if OpenOffice.org can keep developers now or if they will mostly move to LibreOffice were people seem to be appreciated more.
- hendour
  
  huraaah. the name libreoffice is a good way to go. anything with "open" like openoffice was already contaminated.
http://www.fime.me Jules

Thanks for this entry
John

More academic studies between several leading office suits are needed. We all know how the mainstream read-only user follows scientific results instead of habits and corporate endorsements. Habit is ‘teh evil’
http://enteryoursiteURL... kmashr

Writing articles in English demands a decent command over the language. The English in this article is terrible and that too one about a word processor.
Sample "to reckon and was pending due from OpenOffice for years"
And that sure ain’t the result of trying to translate from Hindi.
Sved

I still cannot deploy Lib-O on my server and have my users use it via their browsers…
I think that might be a significant feature (I know it competes with Google Docs), but not everyone is a Google fan and I cannot deploy Google docs in my LAN.
http://enteryoursiteURL... kratos

Ubuntu 11.04 uses LibreOffice as it’s default office suite. I didnt even know LibreOffice even existed. Heh!
http://enteryoursiteURL... Thomas

Libre Office = WIN
Rick

LibreOffice offers [color=red]grater[/color] compatible features for Excel
Satish Kumar

I am using OpenSuse and it has LibreOffice installed. Previously it had OpenOffice. At first I was skeptical about using LibreOffice. However, as I used it, I realised that it is faster and easier to use. I am not an expert or have indepth knowledge of linux or open source software. But my experience with OpenSuse and LibreOffice has been good. OpenOffice used to take a lot of time to load and was really slow on my PC (old pentium computer with 512 mb RAM). LibreOffice performs well with limited capabilities of my PC.
POXI

I wish to the fuck that they would stop you from embedding your own fonts in your own documents.

You can down load 50,000 free fonts – but any that you use, won’t save in the documents you make.

Take the document or drawing from home to work, school, one PC to another, to a different OS, or to a friends PC and ALL your work and formatting goes with it.
- Tim
  
  Surely that’s inherent in any word processor?
  
  Even if you were not able to select fonts within the word processor, the document would still display differently across systems with different font selections installed …
  
  If you want to ensure that everyone sees your document with the fonts that you define, you always have the option of creating a PDF version.
spellcheck

grater
Biased Review

This seems a bit biased, its all just mainly Libreoffice, why is there no vice versa argument. This is more of an advertisement for LibreOffice than a real comparison. I use libre office, its laggy and its presentations never work correctly when I try to open them with PowerPoint later on at a different computer. My version is the most up to date and theres nothing I messed with.
Andrew P.

[quote=Ben][quote]A highly controversial feature is the import feature from Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010 as well as saving into them. Saving in the MS Office 2007 or 2010 is sacrilegious to the open source brigade and but is definitely useful to the non-technical user.[/quote]

Rubbish. We live in a world where 90% of sheep demand files in .doc or .docx format and refuse to deliver in any other format.[/quote]

The situation is much simpler than that: Microsoft Windows is installed by default with file name extensions hidden, and the vast majority of non-technical users have [i]no idea[/i] whether they’re dealing with .doc, .docx, .xls, .jpeg, .gif or whatever type of file. Asking such a user to send you a word processing file in .doc format from their MS Office 2007 suite will leave them baffled in most cases.
LameExcuses

Regardless of Oracle’s intent, it is now time for "Liberty" office to follow suit and merge with Apache. Having another set of developers or in this case LibreOffice tell us they have our best interests at heart rings hollow. Let there only be one open office suite, this is just the same thing as the myriad of "nixes" that exist, just further complicating the IT mess. If you really want to be so noble then develop your own code or merge your changes and gift them to Apache where maybe you can join the team or be the team. Tired of all these ego’s that just copy and steal someone elses designs and vision. LibreOffice either get your own vision, work with Apache or get out of the way. BTW, if Apache takes this full steam, well as they say sayonara LibreOffice and good riddance.
Lewis Brinin

so you saying we should jump ship and switch over to libreoffice?? After openoffice lost my resume I am tempted. One day it was fine the next my resume was all ############### fortunately I had backups on cd and flashdrives but its still annoying
Burrito

I think this post is mistitled… it should be "LibreOffice > OpenOffice". The current title implies an impartial or balanced comparison, but this post is too biased to be a comparison. This is rather a promotion. Please stop screwing with internet search results.
http://enteryoursiteURL... Adrian

though i’ve been a supporter of the open source ideology and of the world-wide community of contributors, paid products are ultimately the future. this is practically proven not only in terms of quality and stability, but also in regards to usability, which nowadays really makes the difference: user experience is foremost the biggest reason for staying with a product instead of another.

i’ve used OpenOffice for 2 years some while ago, in conjunction with Office2003. some documents were edited by multiple users from different stations, some using OpenOffice, some using Office2003 – and this use-case used to work, the document never got corrupted.

but Office evolved – I was blown away how simple you can work with Office 2007 or 2010 and finally found a reason why its worth paying instead of using the free version. apart from the ease-of-use, performance: how about plotting 1 million lines of spreadsheat? (Office2003 couldn’t handle more than 32 thousands, but the newer version improved) still can’t do that with free software.

for any types of advanced office work, THE FUTURE IS NOT FREE SOFTWARE. its not about will, its not about not being a good idea, it practically doesn’t work. the open source community did its role by making the big software makers to create better products, professional solutions are never really free – it requires either "techies / specialists" and a lot of time invested or professional products.
http://htto://www.hesido.com Emrah BASKAYA

Spreadsheet of Open Office is an absolute joke. I’m glad to see Libre Office fixes on that.

Why it is a joke? Last time I checked, and I checked a few months ago, when you added, copied, pasted, moved cells / rows / coloumns, the references in stationary cells didn’t update, so all your results broke. Year after year, this wasn’t fixed. This makes it completely unusable, unless you can plan ahead so well that you never need to move information around, because even a single added coloumn will break everything. I don’t know how others put up with this nonsense, but this was never a high priority fix when we complained in forums.

I’m glad Libre fixes it.
darma

OO is advance enough for daily work, I don’t have reason to use Libre. Why don’t help OO more better ? To many option will make the poeple tired to make a coice and kick Linux to his machine and back to Win$….
- http://schpydurx.livejournal.com ProfessorTom
  
  Or move to OS X where things just work.
  - Burrito
    
    Or just don’t pay a fortune for a computer+OS (iMac costs 999 GBP), stick with a computer of a brand you choose, or you built yourself (mine cost 350 GBP), for as cheaply as you like, and use Linux (0 GBP).
    
    And deal with the problems, because it makes you better with computers.
  - Burrito
    
    I mean, I admit that Mac OSX is the best operating system, but the hardware that it seemingly MUST run on is overpriced. You pay for the style, and not what’s inside, when it comes to the hardware.
    Some people prefer performance way over style.
    - Cosimo
      
      How things look is the sorry mentality of most folks. Performance is the true standard. Opening as slow as a TRS 80 didn’t make LibreO a friend of mine. Really bad QC on this one.
diepes

LibreOffice 3.5 is available!
Awesomewesley

libreoffice SUCKS! the close,minimize, maxmumize dosent work!
- Therin
  
  Works for me. ZorinOS 5, AMD 4200+, nVidia Geforce 8600 GT, 2g DDR 366 ram.
- s2022
  
  It works perfectly fine!’
  Maybe you aren’t using it right!
  - anon
    
    Not every system is the same. The fact that it works on your system does not entail that it will work on every system. Most likely a bug.
    - Zombie Killer
      
      In this case, the feature he’s yapping about has nothing to do with libreoffice. He’s complaining about a broken WINDOW MANAGER.
s2022

It works for me too
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_HDD35XN5F6M5XPHTGRO2ADBUWQ Leslie S

What about features for which OpenOffice has an advantage? Certainly OO did not stand still while LO was being worked on.
daniel

LibreOffice seems to work with .WPS files. OO doesn’t. :(
bGreenInnes

Interesting but I gave up on OO/ Linux for any serious spreadsheeting. Either it’s perfectly compatible or its useless for me. Too many old files to contend with. Maybe it was just the free version but I’m just going to keep my MS OS going. What I plan is to use a light distro like Puppy for browsing and keep Windows in reserve for offline work like taxes. That will keep the Windows (ME and XP) from getting degraded.
- Zombie Killer
  
  Huh? Learn to write your spreadsheets and it will work just wonderfully.
Hickson Hacie

I dont want to be too impolite but that first paragraph is full of crap.

It might sound good in a Hollywood scenario (or one of those US produced revolutions) but it was not random bunch of coders against the big bad group at Oracle.
There were a LOT of companies and a lot of egos involved. Many opportunists a la the Novell crew and especially a lot of corporations that wanted away from a heavy handed Oracle which couldnt relinquish enough their reigns for anyone else to feel confortable.
Like the OOXML and that the whole ODF saga, you need to see the whole picture, teh battles fought beyond the cliches ‘small vs big’.

The switch made sense since open governance of free and open source projects is something we all strive for in our communities. Dont get me wrong.. I KNOW how companies game the system in their favours on various boards and commitees, taht the influential people at the top are the ones that can shift a project in ways that are desired. But the Oracle was wasnt working out. For developers but also for the corporate players who couldnt trust Oracle THAT much.

It makes for good fiction the david v goliath but tahts the kind of simplistic views that we get from our daily news. Its easier to deal in black and whites than all the shades of truth and the manipulation that comes with it. This good and this bad is just laziness.

That said, the only people that I know that havent switched yet to LO are people who are on an XKUBuntu LTS and are waiting for 12.04 to hit.
I just tweeted my identi.ca workgroup to get an idea of who is using what and most have switched and out of those, no one has bothered ever looking back at OO once they switched.

This OO>LO wasnt as much a technical switch but an organizational switch which allowed much more technical changes and advances to be made in the true FLOSS spirit instead of waiting what the handlers and the corporate masters wanted and expected (if they even cared) from LO.

My overall impression was that LO development is going very well.

I was even looking into a few developers who are actors about creating a Libre Office plugin so you can create movie-play-TV scripts in the format they are used to. Its doable by hand but takes a lot of time and whether its a youtube video, high school play or TV show, there is a certain formatting and outlay that is constant.
Henning Primdahl

Libreoffice do not support network files – so it becomes useless. OpenOffice or abiword in linux, however, support it brilliantly – out of the box
- Zombie Killer
  
  There is nothing magical about a network file. A file is a file, the word processor can’t tell the difference.
Guest

So… let me get this strait:
LO broke off of OO because they did not like Oracle…
It seems this article is completely ignorant of any good from OO or any bad from LO.

Just a quick message:
LOL – Libre Office Loses
- Zombie Killer
  
  OO has stagnated since everybody worth anything who was involved with it went out with the fork. Libreoffice *IS* what openoffice used to be. What is now called openoffice is just a dead/dying fork of what was once called openoffice, but is now called libreoffice.

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