Unfortunately, I don't think either is particularly great. LibreOffice looks horrendous, performs at or below average, and does not have fabulous compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. On the other hand, ONLYOFFICE has better compatibility but feels cheap and pushes web services.
If this is for personal use, I would go with LibreOffice. If you need to share documents with others using a common format, go with ONLYOFFICE.
I'm not sure if this is accurate OpenOffice appears to be abandonware with development stopped in 2011 while LibreOffice is the fork and still being developed.
edit...ah Oracle OpenOffice vs Apache OpenOffice
OpenOffice and OnlyOffice are two different things. We were talking about the latter.
OpenOffice is not a thing anymore, stop keeping it in your brains XD
LibreOffice literally looks exactly like MS Office in my computer, what are you talking about? It does take a little bit of configuration, but nothing you can't find with a quick search
They are probably using the default installed theme, which doesn't have scalable icons so everything is horribly pixelated. Not sure why it's still the default, but as you said it's pretty easy to change.
Could you share how you did that?
I'm recommending Libreoffice to others n the UI difference seems to be the main thing that they notice.
Yeah, I will admit that it looks much better on Linux than macOS. My other qualm is that it eats up my laptop battery, while Pages and Word use considerably less power
Dont agree on looks etc, but yes Onlyoffice feels like that and I would prefer Libreoffice+Web integration too.
I've been using LibreOffice for a number of years without issue. Literally takes care of all my word processing and spreadsheet needs. I don't miss MS Office at all, which I use daily at work.
Why not use LO at work?
Because most employees can't just install random software on their machines and because compatibility between Libre Office and Microsoft Office is nowhere near perfect. You don't want to send your boss a file that ends up looking mangled on their screen.
Send them a PDF... unless explicitly required otherwise.
Company computing assets are managed. One normally doesn't get to override IT policy without business justification.
Its not hard to justify giving everyone free cross-platform office suite at work lol
It is when your business relies on Microsoft services which are inherently incompatible with LO
That's a huge bill for a business, and businesses are always looking to cut expenses. Again, its an easy sell
What happens when you need to collaborate with other businesses who use O365? The business would also have to spend time updating any legacy documents, templates, spreadsheets and so on. Then you have the IT teams, who will need extensive training so that they can field the inevitable flurry of support tickets and calls. And that's not getting into the support side of things - who do I go to if something breaks in LibreOffice?
I am an advocate for OSS, but there is a bigger picture here, and unfortunately it's not always as simple as just switching over. I wish it was, believe me!
Tell the other business to use LO. Shouldn't be an issue because its free and runs on every platform.
Y'know, this conversation doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so I will leave it here: if it's such an easy sell, every business in the world would have done it by now.
It became the default in every business I ever worked at. If that's not the case where you are, perhaps you should look into a mirror and ask why?
If that's your view of it, then you truly do not understand how businesses operate (especially larger companies). "Hey this is free, let's switch to this!" isn't a pitch. There are so many factors to consider: service, support, contracts, deployment, on and on and on. It would be great if every business adopted OSS, but they're not going to. And that's not a failure of one employee to convince a Fortune 500 company, for example, that LO would be a cost-saving measure.
Call Microsoft about a bug and tell me how well their support works for you. Theres zero benefits to going with MS and a thousand for going with libre
Not when you're already on an annual contract with Microsoft and the majority of your company's employees are nontechnical
Yes. We're talking about Libre Office here. Its a very mature and accessible app. Not something that requires technical knowledge.
And, yes, if you're on an annual contract then its even easier to convince management to cancel it for all users by default (with some exceptions as needed). Lots of money to be saved.
LibreOffice unless MS Office comparability is the most important thing. Then maybe try ONLYOFFICE.
Both are good, but different focuses. OnlyOffice has fewer features, but extremely good MS Office cross-compatibility.
Libre Office has more features, but can run into compatibility issues when going back and forth between MS Office.
That being said, for the average user's needs, both are perfectly fine.
OnlyOffice is also able to be used in a cloud framework similar to Google docs, but to my knowledge Libre Office cannot do that.
I think Collabora Online
uses or is built on LibreOffice. It's a subscription service but you can host it yourself for free (I think for personal use). I've not tried either. I'm pretty sure the Collabora team are big code contributors to LibreOffice. If I got anything wrong I hope someone will correct me.
Oh nice, thanks for the info!
I use OnlyOffice and enjoy it. I do notice some fancy features missing but as I'm not a power user it doesn't bother me. I've opened OnlyOffice docx files in MS Office and vice versa many times with no issues ever. I've also installed MS fonts on my Linux distro and they work in OnlyOffice. I don't notice it pushing online features like somebody else said
LibreOffice should receive more updates than OnlyOffice OpenOffice.
I switched my uncle from OnlyOffice OpenOffice to LibreOffice (for work) and he never complained.
Edit: I've confused OnlyOffice with OpenOffice.
Anyway, I have both LibreOffice and OnlyOffice. I always use LibreOffice but for one file (yes it is an excel spreadsheet) I need to use OnlyOffice 'cause Libre can't open it.
You're sure you're talking about OnlyOffice, and not OpenOffice. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are related. OnlyOffice is not.
Ops, you're right. Sorry, I've answered on phone while on movement.
Try both out as flatpaks if you're on Linux and keep the one you like as I did :). I think both flatpaks come with the full suite.
I ended up sticking with OnlyOffice and feel it will probably work better for most people doing things like writing documents and spreadsheets with various formatting, tables, charts, formulas and equations.
I am mainly a Google docs user (and in the past MS office) as most people are and the OnlyOffice UI and workflow is much more comfortable if you're coming from these products. Things work and look the way you would expect. LibreOffice UI feels very clunky and dated (even after trying different layouts). For example, charts look really bad by default in LibreOffice. OnlyOffice seems to work pretty much just as well as gDocs/MS office so far in my limited experience for most scenarios.
As part of my effort to reduce reliance on gDocs I am planning on setting up a self hosted Nextcloud office instance and it is based on OnlyOffice so it is more motivation for me to stick with it!
I had issues with Onlyoffice taking ages to load documents with lots of pages while Libreoffice did it instantly as expected. So back to Libreoffice for me.
LibreOffice for local files, OnlyOffice for cloud
@t0mri I have both. and i use both in different situations. depends on the specific document.
Why not both?
I use onlyoffice with nextcloud (at the time nextcloud docs + collabora was alpha level software that crashed the server) or when I need better Ms office compatibility
And then i use LibreOffice when I need better implemented features like CSV import or print dialog
libreoffice
Unfortunately, I don't think either is particularly great. LibreOffice looks horrendous, performs at or below average, and does not have fabulous compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. On the other hand, ONLYOFFICE has better compatibility but feels cheap and pushes web services.
If this is for personal use, I would go with LibreOffice. If you need to share documents with others using a common format, go with ONLYOFFICE.
I'm not sure if this is accurate OpenOffice appears to be abandonware with development stopped in 2011 while LibreOffice is the fork and still being developed.
edit...ah Oracle OpenOffice vs Apache OpenOffice
OpenOffice and OnlyOffice are two different things. We were talking about the latter.
OpenOffice is not a thing anymore, stop keeping it in your brains XD
LibreOffice literally looks exactly like MS Office in my computer, what are you talking about? It does take a little bit of configuration, but nothing you can't find with a quick search
They are probably using the default installed theme, which doesn't have scalable icons so everything is horribly pixelated. Not sure why it's still the default, but as you said it's pretty easy to change.
Could you share how you did that?
I'm recommending Libreoffice to others n the UI difference seems to be the main thing that they notice.
I think I used this guide
Thank you
Yeah, I will admit that it looks much better on Linux than macOS. My other qualm is that it eats up my laptop battery, while Pages and Word use considerably less power
Dont agree on looks etc, but yes Onlyoffice feels like that and I would prefer Libreoffice+Web integration too.
I've been using LibreOffice for a number of years without issue. Literally takes care of all my word processing and spreadsheet needs. I don't miss MS Office at all, which I use daily at work.
Why not use LO at work?
Because most employees can't just install random software on their machines and because compatibility between Libre Office and Microsoft Office is nowhere near perfect. You don't want to send your boss a file that ends up looking mangled on their screen.
Send them a PDF... unless explicitly required otherwise.
Company computing assets are managed. One normally doesn't get to override IT policy without business justification.
Its not hard to justify giving everyone free cross-platform office suite at work lol
It is when your business relies on Microsoft services which are inherently incompatible with LO
That's a huge bill for a business, and businesses are always looking to cut expenses. Again, its an easy sell
What happens when you need to collaborate with other businesses who use O365? The business would also have to spend time updating any legacy documents, templates, spreadsheets and so on. Then you have the IT teams, who will need extensive training so that they can field the inevitable flurry of support tickets and calls. And that's not getting into the support side of things - who do I go to if something breaks in LibreOffice?
I am an advocate for OSS, but there is a bigger picture here, and unfortunately it's not always as simple as just switching over. I wish it was, believe me!
Tell the other business to use LO. Shouldn't be an issue because its free and runs on every platform.
Y'know, this conversation doesn't seem to be going anywhere, so I will leave it here: if it's such an easy sell, every business in the world would have done it by now.
It became the default in every business I ever worked at. If that's not the case where you are, perhaps you should look into a mirror and ask why?
If that's your view of it, then you truly do not understand how businesses operate (especially larger companies). "Hey this is free, let's switch to this!" isn't a pitch. There are so many factors to consider: service, support, contracts, deployment, on and on and on. It would be great if every business adopted OSS, but they're not going to. And that's not a failure of one employee to convince a Fortune 500 company, for example, that LO would be a cost-saving measure.
Call Microsoft about a bug and tell me how well their support works for you. Theres zero benefits to going with MS and a thousand for going with libre
Not when you're already on an annual contract with Microsoft and the majority of your company's employees are nontechnical
Yes. We're talking about Libre Office here. Its a very mature and accessible app. Not something that requires technical knowledge.
And, yes, if you're on an annual contract then its even easier to convince management to cancel it for all users by default (with some exceptions as needed). Lots of money to be saved.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice unless MS Office comparability is the most important thing. Then maybe try ONLYOFFICE.
Both are good, but different focuses. OnlyOffice has fewer features, but extremely good MS Office cross-compatibility.
Libre Office has more features, but can run into compatibility issues when going back and forth between MS Office.
That being said, for the average user's needs, both are perfectly fine.
OnlyOffice is also able to be used in a cloud framework similar to Google docs, but to my knowledge Libre Office cannot do that.
I think Collabora Online uses or is built on LibreOffice. It's a subscription service but you can host it yourself for free (I think for personal use). I've not tried either. I'm pretty sure the Collabora team are big code contributors to LibreOffice. If I got anything wrong I hope someone will correct me.
Oh nice, thanks for the info!
I use OnlyOffice and enjoy it. I do notice some fancy features missing but as I'm not a power user it doesn't bother me. I've opened OnlyOffice docx files in MS Office and vice versa many times with no issues ever. I've also installed MS fonts on my Linux distro and they work in OnlyOffice. I don't notice it pushing online features like somebody else said
https://mangakakalot.com/chapter/ep919152/chapter_13
I was like "what the f" and then I read it
I use Libre Office. I have zero need if back and forth with enshitified MS Office.
Is it possible to download just the word processor (libreoffice's) and nothing else?
Like abiword? Depends what you need
Sorry. Im asking about word processor from libreoffice
Not that Iām aware of.
And LibreOffice
In Flatpak no, just the bundle for whatever reason. Pretty annoying, as I will never, never use Base of Draw.
Dont use flat pak anyway, unless you want to get malicious packages
There are no viruses on Flathub. That is the Snap store. Those are two entirely different things.
LibreOffice should receive more updates than
OnlyOfficeOpenOffice.I switched my uncle from
OnlyOfficeOpenOffice to LibreOffice (for work) and he never complained.Edit: I've confused OnlyOffice with OpenOffice.
Anyway, I have both LibreOffice and OnlyOffice. I always use LibreOffice but for one file (yes it is an excel spreadsheet) I need to use OnlyOffice 'cause Libre can't open it.
You're sure you're talking about OnlyOffice, and not OpenOffice. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are related. OnlyOffice is not.
Ops, you're right. Sorry, I've answered on phone while on movement.
Try both out as flatpaks if you're on Linux and keep the one you like as I did :). I think both flatpaks come with the full suite.
I ended up sticking with OnlyOffice and feel it will probably work better for most people doing things like writing documents and spreadsheets with various formatting, tables, charts, formulas and equations.
I am mainly a Google docs user (and in the past MS office) as most people are and the OnlyOffice UI and workflow is much more comfortable if you're coming from these products. Things work and look the way you would expect. LibreOffice UI feels very clunky and dated (even after trying different layouts). For example, charts look really bad by default in LibreOffice. OnlyOffice seems to work pretty much just as well as gDocs/MS office so far in my limited experience for most scenarios.
As part of my effort to reduce reliance on gDocs I am planning on setting up a self hosted Nextcloud office instance and it is based on OnlyOffice so it is more motivation for me to stick with it!
I had issues with Onlyoffice taking ages to load documents with lots of pages while Libreoffice did it instantly as expected. So back to Libreoffice for me.
LibreOffice for local files, OnlyOffice for cloud
@t0mri I have both. and i use both in different situations. depends on the specific document.
Why not both?
I use onlyoffice with nextcloud (at the time nextcloud docs + collabora was alpha level software that crashed the server) or when I need better Ms office compatibility
And then i use LibreOffice when I need better implemented features like CSV import or print dialog