LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

Sector11 · 2011-04-29 21:52:07

OK, AbiWord I understand - just a word processor, no "suite" or "office" but when it comes to LibreOffice vs OpenOffice what's the:

differences,
advantages
disadvantages

Read their sites and OK, all good points, they aren't going to focus on the downside.

But ... why would I choose one over the other?

Compatibility with each other? MSOffice?

FiniteStateMachine · 2011-04-29 21:55:22

I'm surprised you don't know the difference, considering its pretty huge in open-source and linux circles.

OpenOffice was created by Sun, who got bought by Oracle.
LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice. It is run (mostly) by the people who quit when Oracle took over.

At this point, the actual product they are peddling is about the same. You just get to choose between the big monolithic company and open-source guys.

Sector11 · 2011-04-29 22:07:03

FiniteStateMachine wrote:

I'm surprised you don't know the difference, considering its pretty huge in open-source and linux circles.
OpenOffice was created by Sun, who got bought by Oracle.
LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice. It is run (mostly) by the people who quit when Oracle took over.
At this point, the actual product they are peddling is about the same. You just get to choose between the big monolithic company and open-source guys.

Interesting. I had no idea. I don't really use either, they are here, I use gedit for almost everything, and if I need some sort of formatting for printing AbiWord does quite nicely. However my wife gets PPS files from friends on occasion so I have OO just for that - can you imagine!

Will LO ever make it to the repos do you think? Well, not the Squeeze repos that's for sure.

Last edited by Sector11 (2011-04-29 22:07:42)

macondo123 · 2011-04-29 22:25:17

Sector11 wrote:

However my wife gets PPS files from friends on occasion so I have OO just for that - can you imagine!

He,he, ditto here. As for LO, maybe Backports eventually...

bobrossw · 2011-04-29 22:32:46

there was an article in ars technica that I linked to in a post earlier this week. Basically people in the open source community that contributed to OpenOffice felt like they should have a say in it's development. Sun/Oracle said no. After a bit of this back and forth, the devs and community members decided to leave and start their own company. They actually need $10k to do this, and they managed to raise this in very little time by just asking for donations. They asked to take the Ooo name with them, Oracle said screw you. Oracle also kicked some libre office members out of their Ooo leadership board saying it was a conflict of interest. Then LibreOffice started to take off. Opensource backers pulled out of OOo and moved to Libre. At the same time, Libre was getting buzz, and their first few releases were actually fairly big departures from OOo, it runs much faster and works a bit better with certain formats. Anyway Oracle then said "hey guys, we're cool now, why don't we all get together and work on this stuff together?" And everyone else was like no...and so then earlier this week Oracle announced that OOo is officially dead. So LibreOffice will be taking over, and already has on many distros. It's just a matter of time till it makes its way into the debian stable repos.

Sector11 · 2011-04-29 22:39:06

macondo123 wrote:

Sector11 wrote:
However my wife gets PPS files from friends on occasion so I have OO just for that - can you imagine!
He,he, ditto here. As for LO, maybe Backports eventually...

Nice to know I'm not alone here.

Sector11 · 2011-04-29 22:51:14

bobrossw wrote:

Anyway Oracle then said "hey guys, we're cool now, why don't we all get together and work on this stuff together?" And everyone else was like no...and so then earlier this week Oracle announced that OOo is officially dead. So LibreOffice will be taking over, and already has on many distros. It's just a matter of time till it makes its way into the debian stable repos.

Hehehehe I think I would have said something a little stronger than "no" Pretty interesting how while they help "what they thought were" all the chips, there was no talking with them, then when they found out the chips were falling outside their area of control it was "Hey guys we're cool" and really expected that it would be.

Correct wording or not the gist of it fits. I just did some more googling, I never though to Google "OpenOffice dead?"

I guess my answer is shaping up quite nicely.

One more question do they conflict with each other?

Last edited by Sector11 (2011-04-30 13:27:29)

bobrossw · 2011-04-29 22:56:32

yeah, you can't have both installed at once. If you've already got OOo, you need to not only remove, but purge it before installing Libre

bobrossw · 2011-04-29 23:06:05

Sector11 wrote:

Pretty interesting how while they help "what they thought were" all the chips, there was no talking with them, then when they found out the chips were falling outside their area of control it was "Hey guys we're cool" and really expected that it would be.

I wonder about this point, because on the one hand it's a victory for the little guy, and shows a strength of open source, from the perspective of the little guy. If enough people don't like the way a company is taking a project, they can always fork...

On the other hand, for coorporations, this seems like a weakness of open source. Why would a company spend millions of dollars developing something that might be taken away from them at the drop of a hat?

Personally, I'm on the side of the little guy in this scenario, but I do wonder what it means for the future of open source.

anonymous · 2011-04-30 01:26:26

Sector11 wrote:

Will LO ever make it to the repos do you think?

It is available in unstable and testing so sooner or later it will come to stable.

rizzo · 2011-04-30 04:41:43

Sector11 wrote:

Well, not the Squeeze repos that's for sure.

No, but it should make it squeeze-backports and be nice and stable smile That said, I'm having no issues with the packages from testing.

johnraff · 2011-04-30 04:58:36

bobrossw wrote:

On the other hand, for coorporations, this seems like a weakness of open source. Why would a company spend millions of dollars developing something that might be taken away from them at the drop of a hat?
Personally, I'm on the side of the little guy in this scenario, but I do wonder what it means for the future of open source.

Interesting point. Still, I suppose one reason for Sun to go open source in the first place must have been to save millions of dollars by having people write their code for them? Maybe they, or Oracle, hadn't thought through all the implications of open.

bobrossw · 2011-04-30 05:25:24

^yup, it's certainly a double edged sword as far as the company is concerned. But it doesn't have to be if they behave reasonably and respectfully toward the community. I hope that's the lesson people take from this.

Last edited by bobrossw (2011-04-30 05:26:12)

boromeus · 2011-04-30 09:52:06

Now they're maybe pretty similar, but in the future they'll be different. Also, most of "the Linux world" have already (or will be) converted to LibreOffice, as the LO guys are the "good guys" smile

AFAIK, Libre Office comes with full support of Linux Libertine G and Linux Biolinum G fonts, the open-source and fully functional (ligatures, basic TeX commands and much more) typefaces. The first one is a serif and the second one is a modern sans serif font for screen or document titles. Both are amazing.

Last edited by boromeus (2011-04-30 09:52:43)

Sector11 · 2011-04-30 13:28:40

Interesting all of it.

I was wondering if I should "switch" my source list to "testing". From what I read Debian testing is more stable that Ubuntu and some say that of "unstable" however, I'm not willing to go that far. (This is not bait for a flame war, just stating that I read it.)

Next I have to figure out how to "purge" OO completely, I've read this and it's left a doubt that I can't put a finger on.

Grabbing a coin - heads: testing - - - - tails: LO website to grab it.
Anyone want to run interference on the coin feel free!

Last edited by Sector11 (2011-04-30 13:40:16)

bobrossw · 2011-04-30 14:20:30

^meh what's the worst that can happen? You break your system and then get to have fun fixing it, or distro hopping? by the way, make sure to test that you can save files on your Libre office install, as that tends to be what goes wrong if anything does.

Sector11 · 2011-04-30 16:27:39

bobrossw wrote:

^meh what's the worst that can happen? You break your system and then get to have fun fixing it, or distro hopping? by the way, make sure to test that you can save files on your Libre office install, as that tends to be what goes wrong if anything does.

Yea, I'm not afraid of fresh installs, especially with #!. However, I may wait until #! goes CRUNCH° Opps! BANG! (always my fault: testing "something") and at that point rather than install OO I'll go for LO. After all OO is here, only my wife uses it and only when she "clicks" on a PPS thing. No rush.

I was basically researching the difference. It certainly sounds like LO will be the one though. Maybe corenominal can put that in the "cb-welcome" script rather than OO.

Along with options for either.

IceWeasel, Chromium or Chrome (or whatever they are called)
I just hope #! doesn't go "cloud" based. I still like the idea of having my stuff on my computer. smile
But that's another subject.

bobrossw · 2011-04-30 16:35:01

Sector11 wrote:

I just hope #! doesn't go "cloud" based. I still like the idea of having my stuff on my computer.
But that's another subject.

Hah, yeah cloud based...that'll happen.

LaneLester · 2011-04-30 16:39:49

A minor hobby of mine is to have several partitions on my #1 drive with various flavors of Debian. I have LibreOffice installed in /opt, which is a separate partition shared by all the distros I have installed.

In two installs of Crunchbang Statler, LO starts out working fine, but then some days later, the File / Open function stops completely. No matter which way I go at it (icon, menu, shortcut), nothing happens.

I didn't want to do it, but I've started an installation of OpenOffice from the repositories.

Lane

macondo123 · 2011-05-01 01:03:41

Sector11 wrote:

Grabbing a coin - heads: testing - - - - tails: LO website to grab it.
Anyone want to run interference on the coin feel free!

Hmmm, i installed #! but my numpad/numlockx didn't work, i use a desktop, i need the numpad. Switched to Testing, added the Liquorix repo, installed the headers and linux-image for liquorix with apt-get.
Purged the OOo, dpkg -P openoffice.org, apt-get autoremove, apt-get clean, dpkg -l again to see if there was anything left...you get the idea.

As for moving to Testing, sometimes you have to say what the fuck and take the plunge and fly with the eagles smile

Having said this, if not for the numpad issue, i would probably be in Stable (i already got Sid) especially for production purposes.

Last edited by macondo123 (2011-05-01 01:12:01)

lewk · 2011-05-01 02:17:19

Libre Office and Calligra both are migrating to a less Distro-centric office suite. This should be great for Linux users, the terrible "twos" for MS Office.

Sector11 · 2011-05-01 15:40:06

macondo123 wrote:

Sector11 wrote:
Grabbing a coin - heads: testing - - - - tails: LO website to grab it.
Anyone want to run interference on the coin feel free!
take the plunge and fly with the eagles
Having said this, if not for the numpad issue, i would probably be in Stable (i already got Sid) especially for production purposes.

I like flying with the eagles. I'd rather fly with them then be their targets ... Oh wait, that's pidgins. Well, you get my drift.

How do you find SID?

Sector11 · 2011-05-01 15:44:45

lewk wrote:

Libre Office and Calligra both are migrating to a less Distro-centric office suite. This should be great for Linux users, the terrible "twos" for MS Office.

I had to look up Calligra, oh what a sheltered life I lead.
Seems I got stuck in conkylandia and the the world is flying by unnoticed.

@ omns - are you running testing or did you just grab LO from testing?

merelyjim · 2011-05-01 19:02:12

Somewhere in one of the posting from The Register was that because Libre split off from OOo, they were able to implement changes faster than getting approval from Oracle on a few things.

Libre is supposed to open/convert MS Works (a discontinued program that came free on computers sold here in the US for a few years that did excellent word processing, and very basic spreadsheets) files and Word Perfect (which hasn't been used there all that much in the last decade, but perhaps has more widespread use in Canada since the company was acquired by Corel?) stuff. I can't speak from experience with this feature, but I can say that both OOo and Libre were able to open and use Star Office files that I made waaaaay back and had burned onto a CD-RW recently unearthed during spring cleaning.

What I'd really like is if they allowed you to just install one component of Libre Office, in my case, the spreadsheet. Gedit and Nano does everything I need word-processing-wise, if I see a Power-point presentation my brain immediately goes into "sleep-mode," and the Draw application is not going to be fun while using a netbook. Spreadsheets were/are/will always be The Office Killer Application.

anonymous · 2011-05-01 19:15:42

OpenOffice/LibreOffice is so integrated that installing the separate components won't really save you much space anyways. Also if you just want spreadsheets, why not try Gnumeric?

CrunchBang Linux

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#1 2011-04-29 21:52:07

LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#2 2011-04-29 21:55:22

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#3 2011-04-29 22:07:03

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#4 2011-04-29 22:25:17

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#5 2011-04-29 22:32:46

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#6 2011-04-29 22:39:06

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#7 2011-04-29 22:51:14

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#8 2011-04-29 22:56:32

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#9 2011-04-29 23:06:05

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#10 2011-04-30 01:26:26

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#11 2011-04-30 04:41:43

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#12 2011-04-30 04:58:36

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#13 2011-04-30 05:25:24

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#14 2011-04-30 09:52:06

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#15 2011-04-30 13:28:40

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#16 2011-04-30 14:20:30

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#17 2011-04-30 16:27:39

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#18 2011-04-30 16:35:01

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#19 2011-04-30 16:39:49

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#20 2011-05-01 01:03:41

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#21 2011-05-01 02:17:19

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#22 2011-05-01 15:40:06

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#23 2011-05-01 15:44:45

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#24 2011-05-01 19:02:12

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

#25 2011-05-01 19:15:42

Re: LibreOffice vs OpenOffice vs AbiWord

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