Live data from Hacker News

Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 53 posts

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#11
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the issue with just running LibreOffice on your computer The key advantage to Google Docs, an otherwise ordinary if not fairly lightweight word processer, is the ease of sharing (even if only with yourself on multiple devices) and collaborating with others. I've never heard of LibreOffice online, but depending how well it does those things, it might or might not be viable. As a word processor alone, Google D…

Dropbox does file sharing better than anybody, I think. Share with yourself and others. Pay a small fee for a better product and know it they have an incentive to please you. You can use any software products when sharing with Dropbox. I have been happy with it for many years and have never had any problems, knock on wood.

For me, the key point of sharing documents in google docs is that it solves the simultaneous editing problem, which simple file sharing (Dropbox and others) does not.

You can easily have three people editing the same paragraph in google docs; whether libreoffice online is a viable alternative depends on how it handles that.

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#12
LibreOffice Online is a viable alternative in my opinion. It integrates with NextCloud and allows you to easily share and collaborate. You can even get a "share link" for your documents like in Google Docs. There are some caveats though. Latency is unacceptable. Google Docs renders documents client side allowing characters that you type to immediately echo to the screen. LibreOffice renders documents server side with a noticeable lag. LibreOffice has the benefit of better interoperability with MS Word than Google Docs has.

I would also recommend trying OnlyOffice as some have recommended.

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#13

LibreOffice Online is a viable alternative in my opinion. It integrates with NextCloud and allows you to easily share and collaborate. You can even get a "share link" for your documents like in Google Docs. There are some caveats though. Latency is unacceptable. Google Docs renders documents client side allowing characters that you type to immediately echo to the screen. LibreOffice renders documents server side with…

"Viable alternative" with its "unacceptable latency" amounts to being just a viewer, which are dime a dozen, including most phones doing that out of the box, countless JS libraries and browser extensions, and every storage service like Dropbox having, if not basic editor, then at least very competent viewer.

I guess it's a start…

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#14

LibreOffice Online is a viable alternative in my opinion. It integrates with NextCloud and allows you to easily share and collaborate. You can even get a "share link" for your documents like in Google Docs. There are some caveats though. Latency is unacceptable. Google Docs renders documents client side allowing characters that you type to immediately echo to the screen. LibreOffice renders documents server side with…

"Viable alternative" with its "unacceptable latency" amounts to being just a viewer, which are dime a dozen, including most phones doing that out of the box, countless JS libraries and browser extensions, and every storage service like Dropbox having, if not basic editor, then at least very competent viewer. I guess it's a start…

I am willing to put up with the latency because I really do want to do anything with Google. And I only recently learned about OnlyOffice which seems a more viable solution going forward.

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#16
post #15

No. GDocs is one of the best pieces of software in existence. Each component is very capable on its own. The sharing turbo charges it past all others. You’d have to really be a google hater to choose not to use it.

What? The only thing I like about Google Docs is the sharing part. The rest of it is a slow, bloated web app that is limited in the number of features it has.

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#17
post #15

No. GDocs is one of the best pieces of software in existence. Each component is very capable on its own. The sharing turbo charges it past all others. You’d have to really be a google hater to choose not to use it.

The best pieces of software is Office 365. GDocs just free but vendor-locked.

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#19
post #15

No. GDocs is one of the best pieces of software in existence. Each component is very capable on its own. The sharing turbo charges it past all others. You’d have to really be a google hater to choose not to use it.

Or just need a good spread sheet program.

Re: Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

#20
One specifically negative thing about gdocs ... well ... gsheets ... is that if you create a document with many (e.g. > 5 or so) charts on a single page ... it will slow waaaaaaayyyyy down. Multi second latency/response times for things like scrolling, cell interaction, etc. It becomes effectively unusable.

Gdocs as a whole are ok, though you are giving Google the right to read your docs as I remember (in their terms of service).

Post reply on HN