LibreOffice is preinstalled in Pop OS, and as someone who loves the idea of FOSS I want to use it, but inevitably I just use Google docs or Office Online. Is it really worth learning? Has anyone successfully incorporated it into your workflow?

    • ProtonBadger@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Same, I’ve used a lot of office suites over the years so they’re all the same to me. LO is free so I use it at home and store my files on Cryptomator+Dropbox.

      Excited for Gimp 3.0, the dev snapshots are working well now but I’ll need the Resynthesizer plugin.

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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    2 years ago

    I use collabora, which is essentially an online webUI implementation of libreoffice that can integrate with nextcloud, which I self-host.

    All the benefits of an online office suite, all on my own hardware.

  • bquinlan@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    Yes. I’ve been using it since the old OpenOffice days. It works well, it’s easy to learn, it’s well supported, and it’s free.

  • Albert@lemmy.sysctl.io
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    2 years ago

    Used LIbreOffice throughout college. I use it when I need to, though I don’t use any office productivity apps beyond a spreadsheet these days. When I DO need something like that, I Just use the LibreOffice integrated into Nextcloud.

  • Michael Murphy (S76)@lemmy.worldM
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    2 years ago

    If you need collaborative editing then Google’s office suite is unmatched. Otherwise LibreOffice is perfectly fine as an alternative to keep your personal data off the cloud.

    I used OpenOffice, and later LibreOffice, for all of my assignments in grade school and college. If you know how to use one office suite then you essentially already know how to use them all. There are some guides that can help you find certain features in the menus.

    Compatibility-wise, if you intend to share documents across systems that may also require editing the documents, avoid saving documents in the Microsoft OOXML formats; use the Open Document Formats instead. You may also want to embed the fonts used in the document in case the person who opens the document doesn’t have the same fonts. As a good portion of document layout issues are caused by missing fonts being replaced by substitutes that have different character heights and widths.

    Finalized read-only versions of your document should be exported as PDFs. LibreOffice does have the option of generating a hybrid PDF that contains the original ODF source embedded in it, which can be convenient if you’d like to bundle the read-only PDF with an editable ODF source.

    Although I would recommend Scribus over LibreOffice Draw because it’s much easier to snap elements to a precise grid for perfect precision with a printer.

  • Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    For me, yes, and not just for personal or academic use. I’ve created and editted countless business documents with it. I’ve gotten at least four jobs with the resume I wrote with it.

  • marcos@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Well, I have a license for MS Office from work that I have never actually installed, because Libre Office is just much simpler to deal with. I’m sure at some point I will need it, but since WFH started there has been no such time.

    Honestly, I have no idea how people can stand MS Word. It’s a complete piece of shit that barely works. If you want it for a text editor, you will have a much better experience with any other suite. But Excel is good, and Power Point does that thing it does quite well (if that’s a good thing, it’s up to opinion). Those are harder to replace.

  • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I use nothing else, unless my employer forces me to use MS office, offline. No online documents here, you never know when they sell your data…

  • Espi@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I use it, I also hate it with a passion. I also hate Microsoft Office, its a little better but not worth installing and registering.

    Nowadays if I need to write something I use either plain text, Markdown or LaTeX depending on what I’m doing. For presentations I use LaTeX, Draw.io or Google Slides. For spreadsheets I haven’t found anything decent yet so I end up using Calc.

    Anyways, the Google alternatives are decent to be honest, I just prefer to avoid Google, otherwise I would use Docs, Slides and whatever their spreadsheet app is called.

    • sambeastie@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Yeah this is what happened to me. I use LibreOffice in the event that I need to work with Office documents, but if I’m writing something myself, I’m pretty much exclusively in Markdown. It’s just faster for my uses, and the files are nice and portable.

    • saucyloggins@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Lol I’m kind of the same. I LOATHE Office and I hate having to use LibreOffice. I have nothing against LibreOffice per say. I just feel every time I open an office suite for work which I do a lot, that it’s the least efficient way of doing things. Though obviously your average use wouldn’t get by with anything else.

      I do appreciate Libre Calc. I like that it’s a true spreadsheet without trying to tack on a billion features like tables etc. I use it for csv files often.

  • Bobo_Palermo@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I have been using it forever. I love it, and usually install it for friends and family members. Drive is fine, but they are indexing and reading your data, and I prefer to own my software.

  • PracticalParrot@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 years ago

    I use OnlyOffice. Mainly for the far superior MS office compatibility. Occasionally I’ll use LibreOffice for the extra features not available in OnlyOffice.

  • TheNumberOfGeese@feddit.uk
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    2 years ago

    Much of my work is collaborative document creation. I’d love to use LibreOffice but try as I might, I can’t work out how to connect it to corporate SharePoint sites etc.

    Working with MS Word on anything but trivial documents is miserable. So many bugs and weirdnesses. How is it even possible for Word to let its documents become sour using its own file format!

    I say “sour” because the documents are still accessible, so not fully corrupted… but over time, weirdnesses creep in such as tables losing their positioning data, cross-references breaking for no reason etc.

  • namesare4squares@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    I used LibreOffice exclusively in college — it was a lifesaver for my broke ass, since most of my money went to beer and hobbies (DnD, home severs, guitars, more drinking…)

    It got the job done, but I wasn’t doing a whole lot of writing fwiw. Once I got over the whole “save it using the correct format or your professors will fail you” hump, it was everything I needed and more.

    Don’t do any writing that isn’t markdown now, and I write that in Vscode or Obsidian these days.

  • lightingnerd@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I use LibreOffice! Calc, Draw, and Writer are very user friendly once you get used to where the tools are. Impress is a pretty good replacement for Powerpoint: the stock graphics leave a lot to be desired–but that’s a simple fix with a good stock image service. About the only thing LO doesn’t do is notes, but I’d check out Xournal++ if you were looking for a way to replace OneNote. Plus, LibreOffice doesn’t push OneDrive down your throat. It’s been a win-win for me.

    Another thing to consider if you really like typesetting is to learn LaTeX: it’s a slightly steep learning curve(especially for advanced topics), but it’ll do things that your typical WYSIWYG word-processing suite couldn’t dream of doing. Plus there are a lot of templates available that you can adapt for your purposes.

    • Anamana@feddit.de
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      2 years ago

      I exclusively use the libre office suite and its apps since many years, but it’s defo not user friendly lol. The UX is confusing, outdated and ugly af. But at least it’s open-source, free and useful.