Interest in LibreOffice, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, is on the rise, with weekly downloads of its software package close to 1 million a week. That’s the highest download number since 2023.
“We estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but it’s important to note that we respect users’ privacy and don’t track them, so we can’t say for sure,” said Mike Saunders, an open-source advocate and a deputy to the board of directors at The Document Foundation.
LibreOffice users typically want a straightforward interface, Saunders said. “They don’t want subscriptions, and they don’t want AI being ‘helpful’ by poking its nose into their work — it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,” he said.
There are genuine use cases for generative AI tools, but many users prefer to opt-in to it and choose when and where to enable it. “We have zero plans to put AI into LibreOffice. But we understand the value of some AI tools and are encouraging developers to create … extensions that use AI in a responsible way,” Saunders said.
I’ve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again
The formatting… The formatting that you can easily modify. Sigh. It takes two minutes, my friend.
Anyway, you do you.
I’ve used LibreOffice for years, and formatting is a constant struggle. I end up looking online to figure out how to make a small, simple change, and it turns out the only way to do it is by messing with styles, which is way more than I want. The focus on styles is LO’s biggest drawback, IMO.
It’s like this meme:
Alternative to Photoshop: Cracked Photoshop Alternative to Office: cracked office
XD
Microsoft is going to make the S, E, A, R, and . characters subscription only for $1.99 / month.
nice hahaha
I really like LibreOffice but I still need Excel. It’s a good 20 years ahead of the OSS software. It works find if your doing light work though
Easiest thing I can think of off the top of my head is dealing with pivot tables. UI is terrible in OpenOffice also integrations with PowerBI does not exist along with XLookup not existing last I checked
