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Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

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Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#91

Post by bzzzt »

redprince wrote: post #43
criddell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a small step in the right direction. IMHO, Flatpak (and similar schemes) with strict sandboxing should be the only distribution method for user applications. If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. If you want to give that application access to everything your user has access to, that’s fine, but it s…

> If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged. Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone…

> This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged.

Compressed source code archive is over 300Mb. That's not a manageable amount for one individual, so I wouldn't expect it to be systemetically reviewed.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#92

Post by nologic01 »

While this feels like just a delta in the scheme of things it sounds like it is a delta with the "wrong" sign.

For ages now it is clear that the Linux desktop community has lost the plot of how to move forward in the era of "cloud" and "AI" even while its value proposition, intrinsic advantages and cumulated achievement are immense. There is fragmentation, duplication, silos, and lack of interoperability among the vast array of available open source desktop apps.

And now there is AI knocking on the door. Of all the desktop apps Libreoffice is maybe the one that is exactly in the eye of the AI storm.

Its pretty obvious that cloud "productivity" suites will be increasingly integrating these algorithms and new functionalities will completely subsume and/or obsolesce old paradigms.

Libreoffice having access to local and sensitive data and a huge range of open source data science / ML libraries should have been at the forefront of integrating open source AI. Not only gaining a new lease of life for the next decade but enticing maybe many millions more users into FOSS platforms.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#93

Post by glowingly »

tssva wrote: post #66
phkahler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> If RH find it to be a lot of work that is supporting very few users, then it doesn't have to say anything about their solvency. Just a spreadsheet cost calculation. A Linux distribution is more than the sum of its parts. Having out-of-the-box ability to read MS office docs is a huge deal. Nobody wants to fuck around installing something extra to read a defacto standard document format.

Even the creator of the defacto standard document format doesn't ship the ability to read it out of the box. Neither does the other major desktop operating system vendor.

Wordpad has read docx files for a while now.

edit: I just checked my Win11 VM, and Wordpad is included by default. It also reads and writes docx and odt.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#94

Post by cripblip »

mrweasel wrote: post #79
pmoriarty wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more important for most users, document editing or image/video editing?

Only the color sensitive part is exclusively related to image and video editing. It's an interesting question, over the past few years I've only sparsely done document editing in anything but Google Docs (which I still find absolutely terrible). Most of the "documents" I write goes into systems such as Confluence or various wikis, rarely do a produce an actual document in a word processor. I might be completely wrong…

Could you expand on the Google docs comment?

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#95

Post by cjmcqueen »

mrweasel wrote: post #79
pmoriarty wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's more important for most users, document editing or image/video editing?

Only the color sensitive part is exclusively related to image and video editing. It's an interesting question, over the past few years I've only sparsely done document editing in anything but Google Docs (which I still find absolutely terrible). Most of the "documents" I write goes into systems such as Confluence or various wikis, rarely do a produce an actual document in a word processor. I might be completely wrong…

I tend to prefer Google over other docs tools. Occasionally I hear that people feel it's terrible, but I don't understand why. Would you mind sharing a few things that bug you the most?

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#96

Post by pmoriarty »

29athrowaway wrote: post #89
pmoriarty wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what ways it it superior?

LibreOffice is a noble yet doomed project that tries to fix the unfixable: the incredibly slow, highly complicated and unaesthetic StarOffice originally developed by Sun, that later reincarnated in OpenOffice. Fixing that suite is so monumentally effort intensive that you would be better off rewriting it from scratch or porting features to a simpler suite like Abiword/Gnumeric, etc. FreeOffice is the free version of…

Is LibreOffice really that slow?

Sure, it takes a while to start up, but after that my experience has been that it's as performant as Microsoft Office or Google Docs (ie. pretty much instant for everything I've done with it). Just start it once and keep it running, and you won't really have to worry about performance.

As for aesthetics, it looks fine to me... just like any other generic office app... besides which, aesthetics take a distant third place behind functionality and performance for me.

As for suing, what are you doing that you have to even consider suing someone?

That never even entered my mind for any software that I've ever used in my life.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#97

Post by pengaru »

pmoriarty wrote: post #71
trop wrote: post #68

The OP is burying the lede! The exciting news [0] is > We are adjusting our engineering priorities for RHEL for Workstations and focusing on gaps in Wayland, building out HDR support, building out what’s needed for color-sensitive work, and a host of other refinements required by Workstation users. This is a long-standing and important effort [1] to make Wayland more plausible for image/video-editing. [0]: https://lw…

What's more important for most users, document editing or image/video editing?

What's more important for RH's paying customers? Apparently their movie industry contracts are the ones keeping the lights on for the desktop group...

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#98

Post by gmiller123456 »

noobermin wrote: post #69

I get libreoffice is "bad" but the existence of alternatives online really drive home how it is not impossible to develop a modern office suite alternative to office. I honestly wish I could have a desktop tool again, I'm tired of giving the large IT corps more data they can train on. It's possible with some love. Blender did it, it is quickly becoming an accepted tool in 3D graphics circles, if not the standard.

What makes it bad?

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#99

Post by bee_rider »

noobermin wrote: post #69

I get libreoffice is "bad" but the existence of alternatives online really drive home how it is not impossible to develop a modern office suite alternative to office. I honestly wish I could have a desktop tool again, I'm tired of giving the large IT corps more data they can train on. It's possible with some love. Blender did it, it is quickly becoming an accepted tool in 3D graphics circles, if not the standard.

How do the online suites handle word documents?

IMO one of the problems with the LibreOffice/OpenOffice projects is that they took on an impossible challenge, working with Microsoft’s semi-documented mess of a file format. An office suite might not be hard, but Word is made of hacks and kludges, matching them is nearly impossible.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#100

Post by tssva »

glowingly wrote: post #93
tssva wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the creator of the defacto standard document format doesn't ship the ability to read it out of the box. Neither does the other major desktop operating system vendor.

Wordpad has read docx files for a while now. edit: I just checked my Win11 VM, and Wordpad is included by default. It also reads and writes docx and odt.

WordPad only supports limited capabilities of the docx format.
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