The New Collabora Office for Desktop • Hacker News Board

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#71

Post by realityfactchex » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:12 PM UTC

zapzupnz wrote: post #70

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

> The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony LibreOffice has a Ribbon interface option, too.

If both remain available options, that's fine. Sometimes the new thing becomes the default, and then the old thing gets dropped.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#72

Post by karel-3d » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

doubled112 wrote: post #31

karel-3d wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually very, very janky and behaves like someone tried to reimplement ~15 years old Office UI in JavaScript. Not in a good way. I really, really want them to be successful, but I cannot pretend it's a pleasure to use at all.

When I tried it last, it was painfully slow. Have there been any improvements on the performance front lately? Typing in a word processor should not have input lag in 2025. It wasn't just a little lag, but the type and watch it catch up kind of lag.

It's laggy on MacBook Pro M4 Max. I have no idea what is it doing.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#73

Post by jonathanstrange » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

szszrk wrote: post #38

jonathanstrange wrote: post #35

"Get a quote" Okay, so what does it cost?

That's a "I may afford you, but I don't have people budget for those dumb calls" button for me.

That still doesn't tell me what it costs, though.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#74

Post by realityfactchex » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:52 PM UTC

0x1ch wrote: post #66

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design. I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment

If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better:

"...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent variables...results support the conclusion that the user interface of Excel 2007 did change for the worst in comparison with the user interface of the 2003 version." [0]

[0] Morales (2010), A COMPARATIVE USABILITY STUDY OF MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 AND MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003, https://scholar7-dev.uprm.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/a03...

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#75

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

realityfactchex wrote: post #71

zapzupnz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony LibreOffice has a Ribbon interface option, too.

If both remain available options, that's fine. Sometimes the new thing becomes the default, and then the old thing gets dropped.

That is not going to happen with LibreOffice.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#76

Post by ameliaquining » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

realityfactchex wrote: post #74

0x1ch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design. I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better: "...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent varia…

The question is, if you grant that a different design is better in a vacuum, how to weigh that against the benefits of existing familiarity.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#77

Post by chris_wot » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

karel-3d wrote: post #7

aaron_oxenrider wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also curious. It says this in about the middle of the homepage: "We love LibreOffice. We are privileged to be the largest code contributors to the codebase, Collabora employs several founders of The Document Foundation, and many of the top committers. We offer a Long Term supported product based on LibreOffice, branded as Collabora Office Classic, and are deeply grateful for and acknowledge many skilled communi…

I think - not sure - that * Collabora Online is rebranded, and hosted, LibreOffice Online * or rather - LibreOffice Online never really existed and it was always Collabora Online Development Edition (I cannot find any LibreOffice Online that's not just Collabora Online Development Edition) * Collabora Office for Desktop is Collabora Online, packaged as a desktop app * Collabora Office Classic is just rebranded LibreO…

All of that is true. Collabora has put a lot of time and money into LibreOffice.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#78

Post by itsrobreally » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 8:59 PM UTC

0x1ch wrote: post #66

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design. I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#79

Post by ameliaquining » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.

Re: The New Collabora Office for Desktop

#80

Post by wazoox » Thu, Feb 05, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

realityfactchex wrote: post #65

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice…

I'm currently working on a set of documents with 3 or 4 other people in collabora and we have no more problems than with office 365. It works. You can type simultaneously even in the same line (one types while another corrects the spelling of the previous word, etc), no problem at all.