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Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

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Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#211

Post by dralley »

bandrami wrote: post #119
Gigachad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably how things will be moving. It doesn't make sense for every single distro to maintain customized versions of user level applications now that we have one package that works everywhere.

Flatpak is a non-starter for me. The runtimes required by my office would mean 2 KDE versions and 2 Gnome versions installed as flatpak runtimes in addition to the KDE running on the host, which quintuples the security space I need to monitor. Sweeping package management problems under a rug doesn't actually make them go away.

Flatpaks unlike Snaps are actually sandboxed properly.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#212

Post by dralley »

bzzzt wrote: post #91
redprince wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I imagine that includes assets.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#213

Post by bombcar »

hulitu wrote: post #112
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. Why would LibreOffice need access to microfone or location ? Asking for a friend.

PowerPoint let’s you record audio and video for slide presentations- I could see libreoffice having something similar.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#214

Post by galkk »

makeitdouble wrote: post #116
mumblemumble wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Even as casual user who once in a while wanted to open and manipulate csvs in libreoffice I was hitting issues and it even straight died on me couple times. I dropped the attempts to use it after couple days

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#215

Post by dralley »

freedomben wrote: post #85
5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #2

I guess Fedora users are supposed to use flatpak from now on. Between this and the recent VAAPI controversy Fedora starts to lose some of that shine that made it appealing for me for many years: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Disable-Bad-VA-API I wonder why way smaller distributions are fine with maintaining LibreOffice, but Red Hat supposedly doesn't have enough resources to keep it going.

On the VAAPI thing, do you disagree with their legal analysis? Do you think they can ship patent-encumbered algorithms? I think it sucks, but it would suck far more to see Fedora/Red Hat hit with legal challenges over it. It's also not usually a huge deal. This is the sort of thing that RPM Fusion has been great for many years.

SUSE also followed suit with VAAPI, so apparently their legal team doesn't disagree.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#216

Post by martinpw »

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 just don't understand this kind of comment. I've used Google docs for many years with dozens of collaborators. Could it be better? Sure. But "absolutely terrible"? That sort of comment makes it hard to take any other part of the comment seriously.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#217

Post by seabass-labrax »

dralley wrote: post #211
bandrami wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flatpak is a non-starter for me. The runtimes required by my office would mean 2 KDE versions and 2 Gnome versions installed as flatpak runtimes in addition to the KDE running on the host, which quintuples the security space I need to monitor. Sweeping package management problems under a rug doesn't actually make them go away.

Flatpaks unlike Snaps are actually sandboxed properly.

Just being sandboxed though isn't a help if you actively want the software to process sensitive data! If you want to read a private document in LibreOffice, you have to be sure your copy of LibreOffice and every library it calls is trustworthy and reasonably secure.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#219

Post by seabass-labrax »

htag wrote: post #152
water-your-self wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool which one of those is libre?

Exactly. These SaaS solutions are way less (speech) free, with anything you write being a accessible to various powerful entities depending on legal jurisdiction you reside in.

A few years ago, Google Docs restricted access to a family member's documents for 'suspected copyright infringement'. When asked about this, I could not find an infringement, and even if there was one it may have been permitted under the exception to copyright afforded to 'educational establishments' in the 1988 Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act here in Britain (the relative was a teacher).

Thus, another problem is the SaaS providers ignoring the legal jurisdiction you reside in, and restricting technically rights you have legally!

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#220

Post by bandrami »

dralley wrote: post #211
bandrami wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flatpak is a non-starter for me. The runtimes required by my office would mean 2 KDE versions and 2 Gnome versions installed as flatpak runtimes in addition to the KDE running on the host, which quintuples the security space I need to monitor. Sweeping package management problems under a rug doesn't actually make them go away.

Flatpaks unlike Snaps are actually sandboxed properly.

I literally don't care about sandboxing. The data the apps themselves handle is the only thing valuable; protecting the rest of the system is pointless since I can reimage essentially for free at any point.
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