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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

#221

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.

For enterprise software it's a feature. For most consumer software it's an anti-feature. Each of these crowds are on opposite ends of the same axis: the executive class coalesces around the mantra that LLMs bring automation benefits that will positively affect the org's bottom line. The populist belief is that LLMs and generative models are at best annoying and at worst anti-human.

At the risk of sounding trite there is a kernel of truth to both of these camps and things will eventually shake out. As LLM capabilities plateau and people broadly realize that they excel in domains that don't require discretion or taste the market will settle someplace in the middle.

I'm flexing my PM muscles by working on small personal projects and am constantly asking myself 1) what problem is what I'm building solving, 2) which parts of solving this problem are largely janitorial/annoying, then 3) could an LLM be leveraged (not used, leveraged) to reduce struggle. My golf app and fitness tracker telling me "lol u 3-putted too many holes" or "bro yr sleep is cooked - have you tried breathing slowly" do not fall into this category. Feeding an apartment lease into an LLM and having it enumerate the ways that my landlord is trying to push the boundaries of tenant law does.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You underestimate the public's hatred of AI-in-everything. HN is a bubble of AI.

I fully expect the bubble is the people in tech who have strong feelings about the goodness or badness of AI one way or another.

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

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did that actually happen as something that appears on maps or did it just get ignored as senile rambling?

Did that actually happen as something that appears on maps or did it just get ignored as senile rambling? Both Google Maps and Apple Maps changed it for users in the United States. MapQuest publicly refused, causing literally dozens of people to ask, "MapQuest is still a thing?"

you joke but number of mapquest downloads jumped 400% (from 1 to 5 weekly downloads)

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

#224
post #209
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless It is the first to break a million in a week. Even if it has been steadily going up most people would consider passing that number interesting.

That would make sense, but according to the stats posted in a sibling comment they crossed the million weekly downloads in week 31 already.

Something isn't adding up. Here's what the Document Foundation says about 26.8 [1]:

> 1,031,162 downloads

> This is the highest number of downloads in the first week of any LibreOffice release! These are just stats from our official downloads page, of course – many Linux users will have acquired the new release via their distribution’s package repositories.

But their weekly stats page [2] does not show anywhere near that many downloads. It shows a small number in the first week, then a bit over 700k next week, then almost a million in the third week. Even if we combine the first two weeks on the chart under the assumption that release weeks might not align with the weeks using in the chart it is nowhere near a million.

Also the mouseover popup on the stats page is showing 26.8 several weeks before release.

[1] https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/09/02/one-week...

[2] https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#week,version

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

#225
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global population is still rising. In general you should expect numbers to go up.

Unless they're is a negative force, such as people being put off by the lack of AI features. While a lack of such a response might not justify the headline used here, I think it is certainly worth noting.

If you know absolutely nothing, though: expect usage of something used by humans to scale with the number of humans.

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

#226
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The year 2025 progressed to 2026. Never in the history of the Gregorian calendar have we EVER made it to 2026. That is an accomplishment. That is a record.

It's not an accomplishment. It's obviously been recorded and is therefore a record.

There is a semantic difference between capturing data (recording) and putting somethng on record (capturing/recording an achievement). One is the process of documenting and the other is the documented result that acts as a benchmark.

When you record an achievement, there is no need to record another one until you surpass it. You can record attempts, but they are now just data that makes the actual record more meaningful the longer it exists without being surpassed.

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

#227
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually no correct. A record by definition is an unsurpassed accomplishment or statistic. It needs to be an accomplishment before it can be called a record. The passage of time does not qualify as a record. Also, a statistical certainty cannot be called a record.

The year 2025 progressed to 2026. Never in the history of the Gregorian calendar have we EVER made it to 2026. That is an accomplishment. That is a record.

We do consider the oldest person alive and the oldest recorded person ever, to be records of a sort. So if that counts, why wouldn't a personal best count?

I certainly celebrate mine every time.

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

#228

this is temporary marketing towards a direction that they may change their mind on in the future, which would likely anger people who downloaded it because of this preference not a call I'd make early on, a preference to disable AI features like Firefox added is maybe a more reasonable call all we know today is that AI is being used in annoying ways, this won't be forever

It has no AI built in, which is a feature to a growing set of users. No AI buttons all over the place and sending your personal data off to who knows where. And if you want AI, you can add your choice of AI via plugins if you want AI in your word processor.

Sure, but local LLMs are getting smaller all the time... so it could in the not so distant future ship with its own locally-hosted LLM embedded (no data leaving your device).

I guess it could always be relegated to plugins, but I suspect over the next 5 years the line is going to get a lot blurrier.

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

#229
post #224
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would make sense, but according to the stats posted in a sibling comment they crossed the million weekly downloads in week 31 already.

Something isn't adding up. Here's what the Document Foundation says about 26.8 [1]: > 1,031,162 downloads > This is the highest number of downloads in the first week of any LibreOffice release! These are just stats from our official downloads page, of course – many Linux users will have acquired the new release via their distribution’s package repositories. But their weekly stats page [2] does not show anywhere near…

Update. Looking at the stats in day view instead of week view, the downloads for their release week were actually around [1] 1.259 million, using 2026-08-26 as the release date. That's the date in the release notes.

However, if we take the release date as 2026-08-25 then the 7 day total is exactly what their blog post said.

Also by comparing the week numbers to the daily numbers, we can determine that their week 35 is August 23-29 (Sunday to Saturday). They are using US week numbering, not ISO week numbering. In ISO it would be 24-30 (Monday to Sunday).

The Document Foundation is based in Germany so I kind of expected they would use ISO weeks.

[1] "around" rather than the exact number because this originally was an update to the original comment, but the edit window closed while I was writing it. When you submit in those circumstances you don't get an error and your editing area is undisturbed. You simply lose the editing area. I'm not going to go and add up everything again, so am going from memory of the number.

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google remote desktop with my mother. It's not perfect but it's adequate.

To continue further down the IT family support software, I use DWService because it seems like it's almost impossible for my sweet friends and relatives to accidentally break it. It's like a cockroach once it's in there and i've been very thankful for that

RustDesk can be self-hosted.
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