Intel Joins LibreOffice 176
New submitter dgharmon writes "The month of February is a month to remember for the LibreOffice project. They formally incorporated the foundation in Berlin, released 3.5 with major changes and now Intel is joining the foundation as a member. Intel will also make available the LibreOffice for Windows from SUSE in Intel AppUp center. Intel AppUp Center is an online repository designed for Intel processor-based devices."
windows only app up (Score:5, Informative)
Intel AppUp Center is an online repository designed for Intel processor-based devices.
Minor correction; its a windows only app store. Does not perform the miracle of running the same executable on mac osx, all linux distros, and windows. Just windows thats all.
libreoffice is available for all those platforms, just not available on the windows only appup
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Also, even Vista isn't officially supported.
http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-4664#Q_Why_is_Microsoft_Windows_Vista_not_supported_with_Intel_AppUpSM_center/ [intel.com]
Re:windows only app up (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't know anyone that runs that shit, my windows loving and windows certified engineer friends couldn't get off that crap to win 7 fast enough. I have banking clients that standardized on vista long-term as part of their strategic plan, and made the unprecedented step of taking the effort to recertify all the apps for win 7, the vista suckage was so very hard and deep
My then-new PC came with Vista and yes, the suckage was intense. But SP1 fixed all that, made it workable.
I still switched to Linux at that time, haven't gone back. Have played with Win7 in a VirtualBox and it feels just like Vista, maybe SP2.
So what is it that makes 7 superior to Vista? The joke at the time was 7 was just a new service pack on Vista, and that's very likely true considering how long it took for Vista to be prepared for general release.
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Re:windows only app up (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Linux community, you guys WANT to gain share...right? You WANT people to actually use Linux, to spread the wealth of FOSS software, to have more and more people have real choices...yes? Am I right?
As a Linux user speaking for nobody else, no, I don't really care.
As for EG, I've never used it, but I do study in a place where all machines dual-boot Windows and Linux, and despite the Linux distro booting much faster and actually having more applications (which users can't run on Windows, since it's pretty locked down), I've never seen anyone choose Linux unless by mistake, and even those proceeded to reboot the machine.
Use case (Score:2)
The use case for express gate isn't for people who want to sit down and work the whole day on mimcrosoft office.
The use case for express gate is :
- to quickly check emails / facebook / etc. (thanks to the ultra fast boot time and the built-in browser. You can turn-on, check what you want and more, and turn off, for the same time it takes to get windows out of hibernation)
- to use the laptop as a glorified media player (it's been available in BIOSes since the begining of CD-ROM. Now you just have a linux env
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You don't get it. At least half of the users go to those machines exactly for that use case: check webmail, facebook, maybe do a search. They still load Windows every time and they still reboot to Windows if they mistakenly choose Linux.
Windows is familiar, Linux isn't.
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Windows is familiar, Linux isn't.
Windows used to be familiar. The difference between the last decade or so of windows UIs is ... immense
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Possibly; they still have XP. But even if the UI isn't, the name is. That's probably more important.
Re:windows only app up (Score:4, Insightful)
It can be difficult to update (bios/firware update?)
It can't be used on different systems. (I want my laptop and desktop and netbook to at least be similar systems.)
It is "customized" by the oem. (yay, another sybian/andriod style compatibility/UI nightmare)
It can't be easily backed up by an end user.
It is yet another layer of crap to break.
It has a tiny list of available software that has to be installed via an "app store".
It's virtually impossible to for an end user to know exactly what it is running behind the UI.
Additionally, On the laptops I've seen it on, it doesn't actually access 90% of the hardware (Usb-wifi/3d graphics/printer/scanner ?), and if I remember correctly is actually a locked efi partition with hooks directly into the bios.
That's why I'm ignoring it personally.
Now, if they can get it to be a fully featured os frontend for linux without the hardware dependent crap, maybe it could gain traction as a window manager instead of being just another piece of crappy bloatware that I uninstall.
There are two simple reasons that expressgate appears to work so well.
1) it only uses the hardware that is part of the motherboard. (see apple for how this works)
2) It's limited to only 3 or 4 activities and a few simple games.
Anyone (and everyone) can build a locked down device that plays music, surfs the web, and can play a few games on very specific hardware. (look at every handheld console in the last 4 years along with the entire smartphone/tablet market).
The entire point of a generic PC operating system is flexibility.
The single common thread with almost every successful linux distribution is the idea that the USER SHOULD HAVE A CHOICE.
Almost every single linux user I know of lists "the freedom to change things to work the way I like" as a primary motivation for switching.
"I can continue to use my $(unusual hardware peripheral)" is also right up there in the top 10 reasons.
If you don't need the ability to adapt to new requirements or to add completely new software/hardware then why are you buying a PC?
Go get a tablet, an hdmi monitor, and a bluetooth keyboard, just like my grandmother.
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Hmm, a sybian android? Rule 34 of this, plz.
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Suppose you are an OEM. People buy your box because it runs winders. Offering Expressgate, et.al. increases the number of things that can go wrong, and also need to be supported. For what precisely? The 'precisely' bit is important, without an accurate gauge of what it will do for the OEM's bottom line, they won't touch it.
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Sure. I mean, not EVERYONE (replacing one monopoly with another is seldom a significant long-term improvement), but I definitely want *some* people to use it.
> Then why in the hell are you not getting behind ExpressGate/Splashtop?
Three reasons. 1. This is the first I've ever heard of either ExpressGate or Splashtop. 2. After bouncing around from distro to distro for a good while (including FreeBSD fo
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Keep thinking that Billy. You are #winning. You have Adonis DNA. Don't ever change.
and only had 1 piece of malware in a year.
Only one? A high achievement that. I congratulate you on your skill and good fortune. You must be especially prudent about clicking on unfamiliar links and opening emails from strangers.
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Clearly you are clueless... it was actually funny to read your trolling comment.. I actually laughed out loud at your uninformed rant.
I wonder how many years ago it was that you actually used Linux.
A few minor points... Linux is NOT Gnome shell... MP3 support is available from install, ie without searching for anything... standard webcams that use UVC (as in all current consumer grade webscams) work without the user needing to do anything other than plug it in... who installs Skype from a Windows CDROM? Se
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100% true according to grandma and Joe Six Pack. If you read my whole comment you would see where I mention WMs and hunting the internet for special repositories for mp3 codecs doesnt make sense in 2012.
Yes the average housewife will put in her logitech cd to install skype and then bash linux for not working. The average user does not know what a kernel is and thinks the gui is the os. When they see gdm crash due to an update they will curse linux. Windows updates wont break shit.
I stand by my point that li
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On linux, the installation is not always easy, but after that, you can forget about system and just use the applications.
System healing is a windows problem where the OS degrades with time. On Linux, performance do not degrade, it still work like the first day.
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Hi, bonch.
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I have no software problem: open office, eclipse and google chrome are the same as on windows, wine works perfectly for the couple of remaining applications where I am too lazy to learn the Linux equivalent.
I just wish everybody migrate to Linux so that I can buy new hardware without worrying about linux support.
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Intel AppUp center is an ...
A bloated front end for ftp://intel.com/pub/win [intel.com] .
Who's Paying the LibreOffice Devs? (Score:2)
Aren't most of the paid OpenOffice developers Oracle employees? I'm talking about the Star Office guys. Does LibreOffice have the same development manpower behind it?
Re:Who's Paying the LibreOffice Devs? (Score:5, Informative)
The Document Foundation has a really nice graphics explaining who does which work:
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2012/02/02/fosdem-preview/
Looks like other companies plus volunteers are adding much more to LibreOffice now than Oracle contributed to OpenOffice.
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SUN was the biggest contributor, but Oracle is doing jack all. Most of the community that were around in the Sun days are now on LibreOffice.
Re:Who's Paying the LibreOffice Devs? (Score:4, Informative)
Not anymore. You REALLY are behind the times. Oracle dropped OpenOffice.org and StarOffice in the middle of April 2011. They put the entire staff of the Hamburg Germany office (where 99% of the paid OOo developers worked) on paid leave until they sorted out the layoffs. The layoffs officially started around September 2011.
During that same period, Oracle worked with the Apache Foundation to turn over the stewardship of OOo to Apache.... this has... not gone so well... mainly because almost all of the developers, previously paid and otherwise left to go work on LibreOffice. OOo development has stalled and stagnated, while LibreOffice development is going on at a rate that is far above what it saw when Sun was controlling things.
As of now, there are zero paid OOo developers in the same sense as there were during the period when Sun Microsystems was around. There are a few people (like IBM employees) who are paid to work on OOo, but it's very minimal compared to how it was between 2000 and 2010.
Re:Who's Paying the LibreOffice Devs? (Score:4, Insightful)
LibreOffice! (Score:3, Interesting)
FTW!
(fuck Oracle)
Signal to Microsoft? (Score:2)
If I were a cynical guy I'd take this as Intel giving Microsoft's cash cow the FU salute after Microsoft said Windows 8 would run on Arm based tablets. Good thing I'm not a cynical person - oh, wait...
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If I were a cynical guy I'd take this as Intel giving Microsoft's cash cow the FU salute after Microsoft said Windows 8 would run on Arm based tablets. Good thing I'm not a cynical person - oh, wait...
Assuming that many people are petty and vindictive is not cynicism, it's realism, so long as you remain open to any exceptions you should encounter.
Having said that, if your suspicion is correct and Microsoft is on the receiving end of some corporate vindictiveness, well, it couldn't have happened to a better company. They may be tame these days as they slide towards irrelevancy, but they also have 25 years of bad karma to catch up with.
Re:Signal to Microsoft? (Score:4, Informative)
And yet, even after all this time, I still haven't seen anyone state a compelling reason as to why it's true. What did Microsoft do that was so "evil"? Please enlighten me.
You're just as capable of brushing up on Microsoft's history since the late 1980s as I am. The gist of it would take only a few minutes of your time. Your participation here leads me to assume you are literate, so I refuse to spoon-feed you. If you can't be bothered to inform yourself about a topic that's not remotely obscure, then recuse yourself from this discussion like a respectable person.
Meanwhile, Google is sniffing your wireless network as their cars drive by, making your address book public to promote Buzz, and changing their privacy policies to benefit their data-mining AFTER you have already signed up for various separate services. yet it's only Microsoft that is OMG SO EVIL THEY MUST DIE.
Oh I see, you're using the most childish "logic" available: Entity X did something REALLY BAD, so anything bad that Entity Y does is A-OK!
I didn't mention Google at all, neither positive nor negative, because Google was not being discussed. If you have a fixation on Google, it is yours. Look, if this is a religious conviction or article of faith for you, just say so. That's fine and you're entitled to it. Dressing it up like it's a rational argument is what makes you sound like a spoiled child.
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I see you still completely failed to cite anything evil.
No, I said I refused to spoon-feed you. Like I previously noted, you appear to be literate so I know you saw me say that.
In fact another poster did some of your homework for you. That was against my wishes, because laziness such as yours does not deserve to be coddled, but he did it and it is there for your perusal.
Congratulations on proving my point - you have no argument whatsoever.
So then, you do not dispute me when I say your "logic" is the most childish available? Good. You wouldn't stand a chance anyway. It would be like disputing me when I tell you that two plu
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In my country you used to be able to by Linux pre-installed on Eee. You can no longer do this (for some time), despite Linux being just as popular as Windows for purchasers. Microsoft bribed Asus here so that Linux was no longer an option. As for citation, Google is your friend, see how many hits you get when you use the phrase "Asus and Microsoft join forces against Linux". In one example v3 confirms the report with Asus.
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1941481/asus-microsoft-join-forces-linux [v3.co.uk]
Now you may
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Oh, and replying to your return rate article. Like a typical Windows fanboi you read something that re-inforces your bias and then stop reading. How about you read this article that is *relevant to the ASUS Eee* that we were talking about, http://ostatic.com/blog/asus-ceo-says-linux-netbook-returns-on-par-with-windows [ostatic.com]
This is from the ASUS CEO himself.
Now we have all embarrassed ourselves online in debates. One good way to avoid it is to read widely, including seeking out articles made with the opposite
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Microsoft looses money on XBox360 sold. Sony loses money on every PS3 sold. Gillette loses money on every razor handle made. They make the money up on other areas because they are smart enough to do so. ASUS should have been making money on selling Linux units because it didn't have to pay anyone for the license. However, Microsoft often tips the scales by (illegally) paying vendors for shipping Windows (as in this case). Then the consumer choice is removed. This is my point. This is what keeps the Windows
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Lol. That's a low hourly rate to get paid. I guess Windows monkeys are a dime-a-dozen. You'd get a factor of three more doing multi-platform stuff (like I do). But that's beside the point.
> I have XP machines that have been out in the field 8 years now, with ZERO driver failures, that's two service packs, around 3000 patches and ZERO driver failures.
Wow, who's in the perception distortion bubble? I call total BS on this one. That is such an outrageous claim - you really can't be making it and expect
They're not evil (Score:2)
Microsoft isn't evil. Google isn't evil.
They are companies and want to make money.
Apple is evil - as they are a religion.
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I'm sorry ; I define an entity as evil when it knowingly inflicts suffering on the innocent for it's own gain or pleasure. I am aware of examples where Microsoft, at least, has done this. I'm sure that the lack of examples in my memory for Google is more to do with their relative youth as a corporation than their actual purity.
But, you say, a corporation is not a person ... but corporations are very keen on being defined as a person for purposes that further their interests. It's just when that corporate pe
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Re:Signal to Microsoft? (Score:5, Informative)
Not much surprise there. Intel contribute a lot of development effort to Linux. Android is the marketing name of a customised version of Java on Linux. Should not be a surprise that Intel went down this road. You are right, this is a good thing and I also hope they are successful with it.
Android is not "a customized version of Java". Please avoid confusing people with this phrasing as Java is a trademark owned by Oracle and Oracle is trying to say that Android is Java when it's not so as to get billions of dollars out of Google and incidentally kill Android. The word "Java" by itself is taken to mean an operating environment similar to the Android operating environment, but they are separately sourced and not the same thing.
Android is an operating system that uses the Linux kernel. It uses a virtual machine system called Dalvik which is incompatible with Java virtual machines and bytecode applications. Android runs programs typically written in the Java Programming Language (the free language specification, not the copyrighted operating environment) but these programs are compiled to Java operating environment-incompatible Davik bytecode and linked to non-Java Android libraries. Android uses certain public Application Programming Interfaces in common with Java, for the convenience and familiarity of developers.
Android also runs native applications written in C, C++ and a number of other programming languages linked both against the Android libraries and other development libraries in the "Native Development Kit". Android has some similarities to Java, as Linux has some similarities to Unix - but Android is not, has never been, and will never be "Java" any more than Linux has ever been or ever will be "Unix".
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I've found that people who are not technical don't necessarily realize that Microsoft Office is a separate product from Microsoft Windows - they've never seen one without the other.
Actual press release (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the actual Document Foundation press release, without the adverts and typos:
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2012/02/23/the-document-foundation-announces-libreoffice-for-windows-from-suse-is-now-available-in-intel-appupsm-center/
How carefully did Intel think about this? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been watching Intel since the 1970's, and I've been impressed with their technical skill and business judgment. I didn't like what the Wintel duopoly did for computing/science/culture, but it made Intel rich. When Andy Grove canned employees at Intel Supercomputing for using Apples, I took it to mean that he believed that his company's future was tied to Microsoft.
Do you think the decision to join LibreOffice was made at the highest level at Intel? If so, I think it is an important shift.
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if you have been really watching intel since the 70's you would know that the wintel duopoly did not kick into full effect until the mid 90's which was promptly greeted by competitors
What the? (Score:3)
Intel will also make available the LibreOffice for Windows from SUSE in Intel AppUp center.
There are a few too many proper nouns for this sentence to make any sense.
Re:OpenOffice once again? (Score:4, Informative)
s/IBM/Oracle/g;
(Was that a bad troll, comparison, or brain failure?)
Re:OpenOffice once again? (Score:5, Funny)
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You should get a refund. Whatever amount you paid to learn how to troll, it was too much.
Relax, it's the closest this person has come to engaging a female (as long as rule 1 is not a lie) in who knows how long.
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Did you mean Oracle instead of IBM?
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On LibreOffice's development stats there's a fair chunk that says Oracle (OOo code) - I'd say around 15%, so it would seem they pull in most of those improvements anyway if it's possible. So it seems there will be very little reason to run the Apache version, unless LibreOffice start breaking more than they fix...
Re:OK, so now can we start making it usable? (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but Libre Office is an unusable mess.
1) Trying to update it. The updater complains about the quickstarter still running and it exits. It doesn't tell you what that is, or how to turn it off, or even present you with the choice of turning it off. So now what do I do? Any answer other than "Libre Office messed up the update process" is why Apple has too much money while the open source geeks are perceived as smelly losers.
2) Try to use Writer as anything more than a notepad? Forget it. I loaded our company's template that uses heading styles. It already had four headings which Writer numbers automatically 1 2 3 4. Fine. So I add another heading, expecting it to be "5". Is it 5? Of course not. Writer numbers my new heading as "2" with not a damn thing I can do about it. Does no one check the code for basic things here?
3) Try to use the export as PDF? You better check that PDF because if you think that in 2012 we are 20 years beyond WYSIWYG, think again. Export as PDF exported a mess with every single letter replaced with various-sized dots. Jesus wept, my Commodore 64 running GEOS outperforms that. And don't you DARE say there's something wring with my system becasue using a PDF print driver worked flawlessly.
So Intel, what are you gonna do about this?
There's something wrong with your system!
Yes .... he installed garbage software (Score:2, Informative)
I have years of experience using OpenOffice ..... and I have the same problems he is having while used the garbage distribution. Then again, the problem really started on OOo 3.2
You create a document with heavy formatting, save it, come back the next day to make changes and guess what happen? All the time you spent formating was a complete waste of time .... the document opens up all screwed up and unreadable. Both OpenOffice and LibreOffice are so crappy that they can't even re-open files produced wi
Re:Yes .... he installed garbage software (Score:4, Informative)
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... and MS Word does a better job with retaining perfect formatting from older versions of Word? not in my experience it doesn't!
In my experience it does. After using OpenOffice (and now LibreOffice) on my home computer for 7 years, I am amazed when I use Word at work or elsewhere at how quick, easy to use and reliable it is.
It's not worth it to me to actually pay for the ease of use and consistency of Word, which is why I use Libre or GoogleDocs. But Word doesn't have the multitude of very minor flaws that LibreOffice has. I feel quite terrible for forcing my girlfriend at the time to do her essays and presentations in OOo all thos
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Yeah, but had to save things as PDF. Then get a PDF print-driver because printing direct to PDF wouldn't save italics if they weren't supported by the font. Then she wasn't able to edit it when at school. We'd lose references in the transfer to .doc and back. Positioning of illustrations would of course get ruined, and forget about using autonumbering. This was before Zotero, so we used whatever crap referencing thing OOo offered.
I had to save the gradient background of her OOo Presentation as a bitmap, oth
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(but it's perfect for starting flame wars...) (Score:2)
Sorry, but Libre Office is an unusable mess.
...
So Intel, what are you gonna do about this?
There's something wrong with your system!
And I think I know what it is. Just take a look at his username -- I think he may have turned his BBQ into a computer (or vice versa?)
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Yeah discovered an annoying bug when upgraded from 3.4 to 3.5 recently. The 3.5 version 1. refuses to use any of the perfectly functional cutom templates that I had made in 3.4 2. Barfs every time it starts up complaining that a "template already exists" and then subsequently refuses to use the template that already exists.... (this has shades of that !#%(&*!(%#& normal.dot in MS office).
Fortunately the error isn't fatal and I can continue to use the program, but even a trivial test of the upgrade
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Perhaps you'd have more luck paying Microsoft for the privilege of dealing with compatibility problems version to version (or even same version, diff desktop).
Your three complaints don't quite go far enough to suggest it truly is an "unusable mess". You're bitching that it didn't work with your companies custom template? And PDF export didn't work for you. I've exported to PDF many times without any problems. Maybe what your exporting is the problem (perhaps another custom template your company uses)?
I have
Re:OK, so now can we start making it usable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, among my other hats I'm a trained Technical Writer (in the superb Information Mapping methodology). I actually prefer LibreOffice to MS Word for just getting things done. LibreOffice doesn't has all the bells and whistles that MS Office does, and has the occasional glitch but MS Office is just painful to use. It's slow, it crashes a lot, I have to wrestle with it to get what I want done. I'm afraid I can't agree with your assessment. MS Office is worse than LibreOffice, at least for professional work. At the high end I wouldn't even use MS Office, Acrobat is much better, and beyond that is TeX/LaTeX (for pro-level typesetting). MS Word really is for n00bs that don't know much better and whinge if the interface doesn't look exactly like the version of MS Word they got their training on.
Oh, and complaining that a MS Word template doesn't work perfectly in LibreOffice is fairly lame. If you want to use Word templates you should pay for Word. How about you make a template for LibreOffice instead? - if you actually have the skill to do such a thing.
At least LibreOffice can display Word files, even a little junkily. Most versions of Word do an even worse job with Word files from different Word versions, and besides Word being so retarded it can barely deal with its own format it certainly can't deal with the formats of any other product (the bigger the organisation is, the more likely it is that they have critical systems that aren't Windows in addition to Windows desktops - but Microsoft want to pretend that this is not reality for the sake of their own business interests). If the person that made the company Word templates had instead made Open Document Format templates then things would have worked pretty sweetly for you, not matter whether you had used LibreOffice, OpenOffice or one of the other alternatives that use the (true) ISO standard format. It's just you are so inculcated with the Microsoft monoculture (you're certainly not alone in this) you blame LibreOffice for getting Microsoft's proprietary formats wrong (and Microsoft's ISO standardisation was a blatantly corrupt process and produced a 'standard' that is woefully underspecified). Please assign the blame where it is due, on Microsoft's proprietary doorstep.
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I use LibreOffice frequently. The one misfeature that is beyond annoying is subscripts. They, subscripts, happen pretty frequently in my field, and there's a long-standing bug with LibreOffice / OpenOffice saving documents that have subscripts as DOC formatted files. LibreOffice / OpenOffice gets it wrong, just plain wrong. Sure, those folks did a pretty good job at reverse-engineering the file format, but holy dotted I, Batman it's enough to make the ganglia twitch on that one bug. Save the file as OD
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Re:OK, so now can we start making it usable? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Please give more information. Items 1 and 3 are somewhat self-explanatory (even if I've never experienced the same problems), but as someone who regularly uses LO for things more than a notepad (including styles and headings and such) I don't understand your explanation of the headings problem. Please provide more information. Are you talking about outline numbering (#.#.#.#.# blah)? Or does this really come down to a MS Office compatibility thing? I'm certain LO supports the kind of headings you talk
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What are YOU going to do about it? you sound as if the libre office project owes you something because you deign to use it. It is the other way around.
It is this attitude that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of Apple and Microsoft each quarter.
The mega corp funds open source projects to advance its own interests. When a project doesn't measure up to the user's expectations the cord is cut.
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you're both right. but, unless the linux kernel and x.org have s3kr1t apis that libreoffice can't use, this argument is a bit thin... i've started from scratch with both libreoffice and office2007, and arguing that libreoffice is functionally better in any way (apart from supporting an open standard) is ridiculous. personally, i even preferred running office2007 on cxoffice to running libreoffice natively. please leave the "secret optimizations" argument back in the 1990s.
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Re:OK, so now can we start making it usable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually most people who used Wordperfect preferred it - because the prefessionals felt so much more productive in it compared to Word (same deal I guess with the Linux CLI fans compared to the OSI-inducing clickity click of Window admin tools). However, Word was favored because it got great reviews and was often bought based on the number of checklist items in the review - including one that one reviewer described as being only of use to reviewers.
I'm glad Word works for you. However that is not the experience of most people. Classic case I can remember from several years ago. A mate's flatmate had finished her Master's thesis in Psychology (lamers used Word instead of LaTeX like real scientists). It was due to be submitted the next day. She went to print it and *the same instance of Word* went and scrambled the format. Fcuk! She couldn't revert it. So she went with my mate to his word where they had the same version number of Word. Loaded it up. It was mangled in a different way. She spend the *whole night* sorting the formatting out (usual stuff, Word is a lame word processor rather than a true typesetting tool). Printed it out. Sigh, relief. Took the thesis back to her place and it was messed up on her machine, no surprise there. However, the original version she had now worked for no apparent reason. For bigger documents (although the thesis was relatively mid-sized, around 150 pages). Like I said, it is great Word works for you or you don't notice any glitches. For plenty of people Word is just too lame - including me. Installed (a legal copy) of Word 2011 on my Mac and Word is dog slow - I get the Mac 'beach ball' wait cursor even when I'm not actively doing anything in Word. In contrast, LibreOffice is lightning slick and doesn't get it my way - no beach ball there and most of the 8 GB RAM free (while Word is a hog and maxes out a whole CPU core when doing nothing). Also, I can use LibreOffice no matter whether I'm on my Mac, one of my Windows desktops, a Linux machine, or on a customer site. Plus, anyone wanted to edit my stuff doesn't have to pirate the tools to do it. For me, and plenty others, Word may be very common but that doesn't make it less sub-par compared to the alternatives.
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The funny thing is that much of the Office functionality actually didn't come from Microsoft - the products were acquired and then integrated into the Office suite.
Please explain why, when I am evaluating software for deployment, that has any relevance.
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It is this attitude that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of Apple and Microsoft each quarter.
No, the inability to properly estimate costs does. Development costs are not free. You have three choices:
In the long run, option 2 is almost certainly cheaper than option 1, especially for a big company. There are a lot of companies that pay
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Not everything he said is a lie. LibreOffice Writer does not know how to handle styles with the Office OpenXML file format. I came across that issue quite recently.
Face it: LibreOffice isn't perfect, but it still works well enough for many purposes. Microsoft Office has the equivalent of a 10 year headstart through the sheer amount of money they can throw at software development and at times it shows.
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Intel doesn't want you to spend hundreds of dollars on office software, they want you to spend hundreds of dollars on new processors because your FREE software is slow as fuck and requires new hardware.
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You have obviously never opened a non-trivial spreadsheet in Calc and Excel. Excel is way faster. But yeah, for trivially simple docs they are comparable.
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My experience is that open office prints the same documents faster than microsoft. They were 100+ pages with 300ish graphics each created under word 2003.
Finally with word 2010, word wouldn't print them any more at all so I ported them over to Openoffice native where they became superfast.
Likewise for a few 5000+ line spreadsheets 20-30 cells wide in calc.
Now, I haven't shifted over to Libreofficeyet because it won't print transparent layers correctly in Draw but I will once that is fixed since it's the a
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Business has somehow gotten the whacked idea that it can't survive without paying hundreds of dollars per seat for an app that creates and edits office documents.
The geek sees the stand-alone office suite.
What he does not see is that MS Office is sold as part of an integrated office system that scales to an enterprise of any size.
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Shouldn't you be using PDF for that anyway?
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Some recruiters want it as Word, because they scrape it into a database and they are too lame to get a scraper that works on PDF.
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You forget that the file conversion between Office versions is far from perfect, in fact, we have a display machine with LibreOffice on it just to handle people who bring in PowerPoint presentations that MS Office won't even read.
Procedure: Load in LibreOffice, save, Open in MSOffice, fix glitches, save, load in PowerPoint Viewer.
The best part is that we can't use MS Office for the display because some presentations require an Office Permissions dialog to work and those will just display blank slides if O