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LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

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Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#151

Post by juvvel »

matthewmc3 wrote: post #32
hn_submit wrote: post #22

Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.

Conversely, a no-AI ethos is one that will very likely need to be walked back at some point in the future for tech products. AI isn't going anywhere, so finding ways to use it constructively with your product is going to be a far better long term strategy. For now while it's new and scary and there's a lack of regulation and governance and ethical considerations - I can see why an anti-AI stance is popular, but it's…

I hate products that want me to find a use-case for their feature that they wanted to develop. It's great that some people love AI features, but for me, they are rarely solving an actual problem I have. But now I have to relearn the software because the company wants to go all-in on AI? Why should I? One example of that is Notion. I've loved it for years, and I'm still using it, but it's starting to lean heavier and heavier into an AI-first workflow and I don't like it to the point where I consider switching to something else regularly.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#152

Post by maxdo »

What is the role of tools like libreoffice in the age of ai ? Is it only viewer ?

I was fighting alignment on the doc created manually, after 3 mins struggle I typed in Gemini tab of Google Docs , and it did everything perfectly.

Same with presentations , tools like bento.page generates you perfect html .

I really do not want to go and edit things manually anymore

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#153

Post by VCFundedGenYer »

athorax wrote: post #102
Aurornis wrote: post #67

I found this graph of LibreOffice downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads Switching to the monthly view, the downloads are actually mostly flat going back to 2019 I can believe that the downloads record has been broken in the same way that the stock market hits record highs all the time because the long term trend is upward. I don’t see anything to suggest that LibreOffice is seeing a sudden surge in…

If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.

Highly doubt this. Do you have a source or numbers on that bold claim?

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#155

Post by NitpickLawyer »

kitd wrote: post #146
smokel wrote: post #6

The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless. Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.

Absolute number of downloads inevitably goes up. Weekly downloads number doesn't.

> In one week, the installer was downloaded more than 1 million times — not counting updates via Linux distribution repositories.

Either there's 1m people downloading new software "because no ai", or there's another popular thing that installs this, and is not counted in the "updates via linux repos". One is much much more probable than the other.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#156

Post by ToucanLoucan »

athorax wrote: post #102
Aurornis wrote: post #67

I found this graph of LibreOffice downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads Switching to the monthly view, the downloads are actually mostly flat going back to 2019 I can believe that the downloads record has been broken in the same way that the stock market hits record highs all the time because the long term trend is upward. I don’t see anything to suggest that LibreOffice is seeing a sudden surge in…

If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.

Tbh I wonder if it's related to AI at all, or just a consequence of Microsoft being institutionally unable to ship working software anymore and people are finally tired of spending so much money for such garbage products.

Buddy of mine tried to use some Exchange tools to troubleshoot a mail flow issue this morning. Puts in his query parameters (start/end date, and a user's email address). 1774 results, and the table below that shows "No data available." It'd be fucking comical if his company wasn't spending tens of thousands per month on their 365 infrastructure that's seemingly broken in new and exciting ways every. single. fucking. day.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#157

Post by robrain »

tux3 wrote: post #148
robrain wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a specific record being claimed. They're not just saying the absolute downloads are going up, as the OP suggests.

They're saying the weekly numbers grow a little bit every week, so every week is technically record breaking. The absolute number of lifetime downloads can of course only go up (but that's even more vacuous).

Their last sentence:

“Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment”

makes that vacuous connection, hence my original comment.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#158

Post by tcdent »

athorax wrote: post #102
Aurornis wrote: post #67

I found this graph of LibreOffice downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads Switching to the monthly view, the downloads are actually mostly flat going back to 2019 I can believe that the downloads record has been broken in the same way that the stock market hits record highs all the time because the long term trend is upward. I don’t see anything to suggest that LibreOffice is seeing a sudden surge in…

If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.

Came here to say this as well. It's the obvious all-encompassing free office document processing suite and LLMs know how to utilize it well.

Codex bundles it with the desktop app as well for the same purpose.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#159

Post by daishi55 »

dheatov wrote: post #86
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, all they really have to do is add an off switch for AI features so they’re not taking up space in the UI and aren’t consuming any extra resources. This toggle should also hide aggressive AI promotions in places like launch screens. That alone would be enough to make most with a distaste for AI happy. It doesn’t have to be binary, but no, it gets shoved down everybody’s throat whether it’s wanted or not,…

They shouldn't and they won't. That will introduce a new metric -- %user disabling AI, and it will definitely be non-zero, which threatens the "everyone loves AI" narrative, which is the only thing thats floating all the tech-related valuation right now.

How can you be so disconnected from reality? The valuations are based on the immense value of LLMs, which exists regardless of how consumers - who are very much not where the revenue is coming from - feel about it.

I can see how much we are spending on Claude and codex at meta. Believe me, the AI company valuations are not coming from Microsoft word ai assistant.

Re: LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features

#160

Post by hobofan »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #153
athorax wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.

Highly doubt this. Do you have a source or numbers on that bold claim?

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396

(and I can also just add that it's my go-to tool for that exact use-case, and used it in a dozen different client projects)

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