Articles about LibreOffice

Serving as a handy reminder that Microsoft Office is certainly not the only office suite out there, LibreOffice 7.2 has landed. There are a sizable number of changes in this latest version of the free, open-source office software including support for Apple M1 chips.

While there are lots of under-the-hood changes that are concerned with optimization, stability and improving compatibility with Microsoft Office, there are also plenty of things which are rather more obvious. This includes a new LibreOffice Dark theme, and a new batch of templates.

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Is LibreOffice better than Microsoft Office? No, and it's not even close. Say what you want about Microsoft, but Office is in a league of its own -- the best productivity software on the market.

Why would anyone not use Microsoft Office? Well, for one, it costs money -- potentially hundreds of dollars. Secondly, it is not available on all operating systems. Linux users, for instance, simply can't use Microsoft Office (except the web version). Not to mention, Microsoft Office is closed-source software, and some folks only want to use open source options.

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LibreOffice has long offered itself up as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and today a major new version has been released. LibreOffice 7.0 sees a number of key changes and improvements, not least of which is greatly improved compatibility with Microsoft's suite.

Performance improvements come courtesy of Vulkan GPU-based acceleration which lands in LibreOffice following a switch from Cairo code to Google's Skia Library. For fans of aesthetic change, there is a new look in the Sukapura icon theme -- which is the default theme for macOS users. But these are just a few of the changes in this major update.

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If you are a Linux nerd or Windows user without much money, you probably use LibreOffice. That free software is actually quite good, although Microsoft's Office is far superior. Regardless of how you feel about the Windows-maker, its office suite of software is second to none. If you use Windows or Mac and can afford it, I always recommend using "real" Word and Excel over knockoffs, such as the aforementioned LibreOffice's Writer or Calc. Sadly, other than the web version, Microsoft Office is not available for Linux. With that said, as a Linux user, I appreciate LibreOffice's existence and use it regularly.

But what if LibreOffice wasn't free? Would people still use it if it cost money? Some folks became very worried about that exactly, as the release candidate of LibreOffice 7.0 labeled itself as "Personal Edition." To some, it was a sign that a paid version of LibreOffice was on the horizon. Well, guess what? They weren't totally wrong. In the future, you might find yourself paying money to use LibreOffice software. According to a new blog post from The Document Foundation Board aimed at quelling fears, however, there is no need to panic.

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The Document Foundation has released the first public beta of its upcoming LibreOffice 7.0 office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux. Users are encouraged to download and test the software -- which installs alongside any existing production release -- ahead its final release, expected to be in August.

The new release doesn’t boast any major new features, but does update ODF support to 1.3, plus unveils improvements both major and minor to the suite’s major components -- in particular Writer.

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The Document Foundation has unveiled LibreOffice 6.4 64-bit and LibreOffice 6.4 32-bit, its popular open-source office suite for Windows, Mac and Linux.

LibreOffice 6.4 is a major point release -- the last in the 6.x product line -- and comes with the promise of improved performance along with several new universal features and the usual mix of minor changes and improvements to individual applications within the suite.

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