Feature Comparison: LibreOffice - Microsoft Office

[simonlang]

i just happend to come across this and did not read every feature but the quick overview looks like that libre office does exactly what ms office can not and the other way arround.

wouldn't it be more profiting for users if both organizations worked together include all features and bring out the "perfect" office suite?

 

what are your opinions on this?

[T3X4S]

There is no comparison.

Try doing a pivot table in any of the knock-off distros.

Nice that its free, and its a great effort, but companies want solidarity, not lab experiments (most of them)

[BajiRav]

MS' vendor specific proprietary formats are irrelevant today. OpenDocument is the new standard. It has momentum and has seen adoption worldwide, especially by governments. Just take a look at the comments from the the UK's open consultation; the overwhelming response to which was to ditch Microsoft products and formats in favour of FOSS and vendor independent standards like OpenDocument.

There's a tipping point where we'll reach avalanche. Once that happens, Microsoft and its industry standard status will be meaningless. It's only a matter of time.

In which parallel universe do you live man? There are two standards in industry and governments.

Editable: .DOC (and .docx in some cases)

Fixed: PDF

[farmeunit]

The change to .docx was to enable smaller more portable (code wise as well as size wise) documents. Make a complex document with images and layouts in .docx. Then resave it as .doc and watch the file size balloon out.

 

The format change had nothing to do with OO/Libre office being able to use .doc. To that end Microsoft included the open document standard to help out the OO guys.

 

The document format uses XML. Whoever said that the code was "messy and broken" has literally 0 understanding of the format.

 

In all honestly, Office is a long way ahead of OO in terms of usability and functionality support.

 

There is a further reason people use Office: It just works. Attach rates of Office in my home country (before the introduction of 365 which massively pollutes these numbers) was about 60%. That's enormous.

 

I'm all in favour of open source, but OS != inherently better or as good.

Have you tried copy and pasting from Word into anything else?  Or publishing to HTML?  The result is terrible.  This might be better in 2013 as I haven't tried in a while.  Also exporting to PDF from Word has never been is consistent as LibreOffice.  MS's version of Open Document wasn't even "standard" when they came out with it.  That might have changed as well, but MS has always been know n to take standards and put their own spin on them.

[Ian S.]

BTW Libre Office does not even work on Windows RT at all, so why is it green for that section?

Office Online is also free

[T3X4S]

Have you tried copy and pasting from Word into anything else?  Or publishing to HTML?  The result is terrible.  This might be better in 2013 as I haven't tried in a while.  Also exporting to PDF from Word has never been is consistent as LibreOffice.  MS's version of Open Document wasn't even "standard" when they came out with it.  That might have changed as well, but MS has always been know n to take standards and put their own spin on them.

You can export PDFs into Word 2013.... and it is editable.  Works quite nicely

[Krome]

You can thank Obama for that! :D

 

Nah it's all GW Bush's fault.  (lol don't know what you guys talking 'bout but might as well join in)

 

OP: Your avatar looks similar to one of the publisher apps for Atari called "Calamus SL"... but anyways, I like the list.  It is long.  Skim through but good to know... will check more when I VM a Linux...

 

[blerk]

Have you tried copy and pasting from Word into anything else?  Or publishing to HTML?  The result is terrible.  

 

Copying and pasting with formatting is practically useless everywhere. I've never found a program/combination of programs that does it correctly. 

[Praetor]

You can export PDFs into Word 2013.... and it is editable.  Works quite nicely

 

Shouldn't be import PDF's into Word 2013?  :rolleyes:

[T3X4S]

just depends on how you look at it....if you're in the PDF, you are exporting, if you are in Word, you're importing :D

[PGHammer]

Few people really think it is.

 

Yes MS Office is an industry standard. But the keyword here is industry. What the industry use and what normal people need at home is 2 vastly different things.

 

It doesn't apply to MS Office only but it is true for Adobe products and others. The matter of the fact is 99% of the users at home don't need those professional products and can go along open source or 50$ softwares just fine.

Industry standard become home standards for the same reason - workers taking work home - that predates telework by a few decades.  It's why WordPerfect (pre-Windows), Windows itself, and then Microsoft Office became global (not merely industry OR home) standard formats.

 

The failure of Office alternatives is due to a common failure - an alternative to Outlook that can completely replace it.  Even the most common Office-alternative mail program - Mozilla's Thunderbird - is simply incapable of replacing Outlook even for most household usage - the addition of IMAP support to Outlook 2010 may well have put the ultimate nail in Thunderbird's coffin.

[PGHammer]

just depends on how you look at it....if you're in the PDF, you are exporting, if you are in Word, you're importing :D

And Word 2010 offered import/export PDF (and ODF) as a standard feature - it's why Nitro PDF was mooted in my own case.

[chrisj1968]

I go to school online with a university that uses strictly MSFT products. I used Libreoffice, the latest and saved the document to .docx and my professor was able to use it just fine.

 

Go with what works for you. If you like MSFT then go with MSFT. If you like Libreoffice/Linux, go for it.

 

I actually like both but can afford Libreoffice on my disability pension better.

 

I used to be purposely anti MSFT and now.. well... with the way times are, go with what you know.. (an old Army saying my sergeants used to use)

[binaryzero]

Enterprises getting discounts also helps in the decision making in which software they'll use.

 

Also you need to think about the interoperability between clients.

[T3X4S]

And Word 2010 offered import/export PDF (and ODF) as a standard feature - it's why Nitro PDF was mooted in my own case.

But you couldn't edit the PDF, only put comments -

In 2013, it is fully editable, like having Acrobat Pro

[blerk]

I actually like both but can afford Libreoffice on my disability pension better.

 

There is quite a good chance that your uni will offer you Office for free, so you should check with your school's IT department. And check Microsoft's website as well to see if you are eligible for free Office (with all the bells and whistles like 1TB of storage). 

[Dutchie64]

There's a free  MS office version? :wacko:

 

Just to ignore the troll modus here... ;-)

 

Free on:

- a Windows Phone

- a Surface RT/2 tablet

- online, as part of your MS account.

- on certain Windows tablets

 

Other than that, it's rougly ?8 a month for 5 pc's for Home use. Not a bad deal imho.....

[articuno1au]

Have you tried copy and pasting from Word into anything else?  Or publishing to HTML?  The result is terrible.  This might be better in 2013 as I haven't tried in a while.  Also exporting to PDF from Word has never been is consistent as LibreOffice.  MS's version of Open Document wasn't even "standard" when they came out with it.  That might have changed as well, but MS has always been know n to take standards and put their own spin on them.

Copy paste works just fine now days. Publishing to HTML is fine in 2013, but occasionally in little oddities gets slight glitches. 2010 was the suck.

 

Exporting to PDF creates a perfect representation of the word document. It does it as a print form rather than an editable PDF, so aiming for different things.

 

I thoroughly hate how MS ###### with standards, but Office has been improving on that for a long time, just like the IE team.

 

Xbox team on the other side, suck enormous ass >.>

[Crimson Rain]

Joke comparison. If Libre office is enough for your needs, the free online ms office is enough for you.