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Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

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Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#141

Post by acka »

DonHopkins wrote: post #46
godzillabrennus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s telling how good the browser based productivity suites are if Redhat customers aren’t relying on LinreOffice anymore.

I don't know so I'm asking: does LibreOffice solidly support live collaborative multi-user online editing, the way Douglas Engelbart intended? If not, then good riddance.

I don't know if you are being cynical or asking a rhetorical question, but let me ask another question out of curiosity: are there any open source, privacy-respecting, non-data laundering, non-cloud-based, non-SaaS offerings which fit your requirements?

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#142

Post by einpoklum »

creatonez wrote: post #70
psychphysic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it does not make sense business-wise, it's their call. I'm pretty sure they know their userbase and did the math. This assumes companies don't make mistakes. They do. A lot. And if users aren't allowed to voice concern then they will make many more mistakes.

> And if users aren't allowed to voice concern then they will make many more mistakes. Generally, RHEL does exactly what RHEL customers want. They are extremely loyal to their user base. The issues come when these changes set a trend and ripple to the rest of the community, and affect people who would never become a RH customer in the first place (e.g. anti-systemd fanatics)

> They are extremely loyal to their user base.

Are you sure it's not the other way around? :-(

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#143

Post by shp0ngle »

People mention Google Docs a lot in this thread.

There seem to be a server version of LibreOffice, called confusingly LibreOffice Online and Collabora Office (?) somewhat interchangeably; Collabora is the #1 contributor to LibreOffice.

I cannot find a free online demo of that though, so I don't know how good it actually is.

edit: there is also some confusing thing about maximum number of users, and if you want to remove it, you need to rename the server because of trademark? I don't know. Seems confusing

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-online/

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#144

Post by water-your-self »

mumblemumble wrote: post #83
pmoriarty wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The companies I work at are all using either Google Docs or Office 365. The collaboration benefits are pretty immense, and can save people a lot of synchronization and communication effort. Most my colleagues see oldschool desktop document editing software as obsolete and frustrating to work with.

Cool which one of those is libre?

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#145

Post by einpoklum »

LeFantome wrote: post #103
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.

Having to install a Flatpak does not make Linux any less “out of the box” than MacOS or Windows. They are all going to require installing something. If you are not going to buy Microsoft Office, LibreOffice may be your best bet on all platforms. These days, if you ARE going to buy Office, it is likely to be a subscription to Office 365. If you are a subscriber, you can your documents in a web browser in Linux as well…

Indeed, Windows has no out-of-the-box office productivity suite. But - at large companies, and most organizations with IT services setting up a machine for you, the default image installed for new users does have it.

For independent individual users, if we could somehow arrange it so that LO were installed by PC builders / laptop vendors - that would increase its user base from ~200M to 2 Billion within a few years. It would trounce MS Office.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#146

Post by ravenstine »

Maybe I'm ignorant, but I don't see why Red Hat even should support LibreOffice. I still use LO sometimes to this day, particularly because it's offline-only, but it's hardly a paragon of software today. It hasn't meaningfully improved in a very long time, and it still looks clunky. I don't think it has much to do with the age of the software because Microsoft Office has always looked and felt nicer than LO and OO. At this point, someone just needs to be around to get it to compile for the latest operating systems. I can't imagine that interest in contributing to it has done anything but decline over the last decade.

Focusing on Wayland makes way more sense. I don't see why LO can't be considered "good enough" and allow the community to compile it and fix bugs or exploits.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#147

Post by pnpnp »

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?

My vote would be replacing the dumpster fire that X currently is. Everyone would benefit from that.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#148

Post by 2b3a51 »

29athrowaway wrote: post #12

FreeOffice is a superior alternative. Just not open source.

"Yes, the equation editor for Linux is in our wish list but we don't have any specific date to share with you. I have forwarded this request again to our development team." --June 27th 2020[1]

I'll allow others to download and try out the package - nice Web page though.

[1] https://forum.softmaker.com/viewtopic.php?f=389&t=20201

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#149

Post by loeg »

packetlost wrote: post #138
makeitdouble wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Office 365 I totally see how it renders LibreOffice like local monolithic obsolete. On Google Docs though, it's limited enough to hit some roadblock every now and then. Last time it was a gigantic csv that took forever to render as a spreadsheet. Other times it was formatting problems that made the document unusable. It's rare, but happens enough to warrant an alternative local office suite to deal with the excep…

It's just not shipping by default, I don't think they're removing it from their repositories, so you can still install it if you want

I think that's an optimistic read of their short and vague statement. Someone has to do the work of packaging it and if they're stepping back (for both RHEL and Fedora), who will do the work?

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#150

Post by einpoklum »

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.

It's the exact opposite of what you describe:

* LibreOffice is "good", not "bad". Writer is really good, Calc is pretty good, Impress is meh/not-so-good, Draw is ok, Base I haven't used.

* There is no alternative online to office productivity suites. What you might think of as alternatives only offer some of the functionality.

* bugs.documentfoundation.org - if something bugs you, file it :-)

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