Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

computerworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 227 posts

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#111

Post by mksaunders2 »

mksaunders2 wrote: post #76
nilram wrote: post #10

I started using OpenOffice a couple decades ago when I got tired of pirating the market leader. Not wanting to start any religious wars, but I still haven't made the leap to Libre.

It's extremely risky to keep using OpenOffice. Apache has marked its security status as "Amber" with "three issues in OpenOffice over 365 days old and a number of other open issues not fully triaged." It's also worrying that The Apache Foundation continues to promote and distribute OpenOffice despite unfixed security issues and zero updates to the software. So many people in the FOSS world have called on them to fina…

BTW, anyone concerned can email apache at apache dot org and ask why they're still distributing OpenOffice despite vulnerabilities. A few people on Mastodon have done that but gotten no answers yet. The more pressure there is to put it in the Attic, the sooner this awful situation will end...

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#112

Post by gelert »

milesrout wrote: post #110
Yoric wrote: post #105

It's probably also related to the geopolitical context. The US has threatened war at least against Canada, Europe, Panama and China, while clearly eyeing an alliance with Russia, which would in turn threaten many countries bordering Russia. That's a pretty large number of users who don't feel safe using US products anymore.

[flagged]

While I agree the leap to linking geopolitics to LibreOffice's success is a stretch you are misrepresenting the American position.

The President of the United states, its commander in chief, explicitly did not rule out military action when discussing his desire to bring Greenland and the Panama canal under direct American control. The rhetoric of making Canada the "51st state" while less explicit a threat is still one. Greenlanders, Panamanians and Canadians all clearly see these as threats.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#114

Post by vanviegen »

milesrout wrote: post #110
Yoric wrote: post #105

It's probably also related to the geopolitical context. The US has threatened war at least against Canada, Europe, Panama and China, while clearly eyeing an alliance with Russia, which would in turn threaten many countries bordering Russia. That's a pretty large number of users who don't feel safe using US products anymore.

[flagged]

Saying you're planning to take over (part of) another state's territory, and that we'll "go as far as we have to" to do it, doesn't sound all that peaceful to me.

And people seem to be learning to take Trump's insane talk seriously. So no, I don't think the connection with LibreOffice downloads is a "load of tosh", but just one example of a larger shift.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#115

Post by 2b3a51 »

yummypaint wrote: post #108
baq wrote: post #99

I need a Calc which doesn't suck. I don't necessarily need Excel, but the spreadsheet shouldn't be unusably slow at 100x100 cells with simple calculations and a literal couple of V/XLOOKUPs.

Gnumeric may be the answer for you. It was the answer for me. It's amazing how quickly both excel and libre office documents shit the bed and produce outright wrong behavior once they hit a few MB of data and/or a few dozen plots. Not to mention the fiasco of all the genetic information corrupted by excel's boneheaded auto complete (which they STILL haven't fixed afaik). I have gnumeric documents with hundreds of plo…

Nice to see gnumeric getting a mention. Might be worth pointing out that it can use glpk [1] which provides a subset of ampl [2]. I use it about once a year to demonstrate a simple linear programming model. Gnumeric's file format is plain text as well which is nice.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/glpk/

[2] https://ampl.com/resources/books/ampl-book/

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#116

Post by concerndc1tizen »

milesrout wrote: post #110
Yoric wrote: post #105

It's probably also related to the geopolitical context. The US has threatened war at least against Canada, Europe, Panama and China, while clearly eyeing an alliance with Russia, which would in turn threaten many countries bordering Russia. That's a pretty large number of users who don't feel safe using US products anymore.

[flagged]

The US has literally expressed intent to annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#117

Post by HelloNurse »

dijit wrote: post #94
tombert wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also like to throw in Lightworks into the “very good Premiere alternatives”. If you are ok with exporting 720p, the free version is pretty capable but if you want higher export resolution it cost money. It has a subscription option, but also a “buy outright” option, and it’s often on sale for half price for the permanent license, ends up costing around ~$200 and it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I think it…

I upvote any option that has a “buy outright” baked in.

You are easy to satisfy.

Once upon a time, we complained about undependable applications that, although installed on a computer, dared to "phone home".

Before that, we complained about undependable applications that, while not fucking around with remote servers, employed invasive and annoying anti-piracy measures.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#118

Post by okanat »

apexalpha wrote: post #83

I've been trying different office apps that work with MS office !!! I understand this is a shifting requirement but I just don't work in an environment where I can force everyone to switch. Currently I find OnlyOffice to be much better than LibreOffice. Does HN know of any others?

Note that OnlyOffice is a Russian clone of MS Office. Its Russian branding P7 is still sold to Russian government and military. They didn't stop business with Russian government and opened offices in Latvia and Singapore to continue West presence. The clients are not fully open source either. You cannot independently build it. It is quite shady.

There is WPS from China with similar issues.

So your options are limited. LibreOffice sucks ass with any serious document. On Windows GUI bugs are annoying as hell. KDE's Calligra is slowly rotting.

I made the exact search as you did and decided to get a perpetual MS Office license. No other way around unfortunately.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#119

Post by Wololooo »

milesrout wrote: post #110
Yoric wrote: post #105

It's probably also related to the geopolitical context. The US has threatened war at least against Canada, Europe, Panama and China, while clearly eyeing an alliance with Russia, which would in turn threaten many countries bordering Russia. That's a pretty large number of users who don't feel safe using US products anymore.

[flagged]

Just to set the record straight even if this is going to be flagged

Repeatedly The current administration has stated

* That they would acquire Greenland by any means necessary https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense/3361358/us...

* That they would Make Canada part of the US as its 51st State https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg198xxy1xo

* That they would engage in trade war with Europe over alleged imbalance and loss in trade https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/27/trump-threatens-far-larger-t...

Given this context, if you are not directly in the US or directly a US company, it makes a lot of sense to start to question your future ability as well as future costs for access to US controlled systems.

Re: LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

#120

Post by prell »

Can you guys recommend an android app which can do simple edits (mostly data entry) on spreadsheet .ODS files stored locally on the device. Right now I use Collabora but UX is not the best and it feels very slow and unresponsive at times. MS Excel requires conversion to xlsx before you can edit and Google Sheets requires to upload to google drive so neither is an option. Any alternatives?
Post reply on HN