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Note about version 4.4: Anyone with familiarity with OpenOffice or LibreOffice should check out some of the changes that have happened in the latest release. I've been really impressed with some of the updates including change management, skins, paragraph line spacing, and more.

Usage note: I've been having some stability problems with the latest "Fresh" or cutting edge version (4.4.1).  It's evidently a little too cutting edge and crashing frequently.  The "Still" or more stable version (4.3.6.2) is working fine.

webfork wrote:Usage note: I've been having some stability problems with the latest "Fresh" or cutting edge version (4.4.1).  It's evidently a little too cutting edge and crashing frequently.  The "Still" or more stable version (4.3.6.2) is working fine.

Quick update on this:

So some unfortunate news: after some weird crashy errors with both LibreOffice Fresh AND Still versions, I broke down and tried to download X-OpenOffice to open up my ODT files.  Unfortunately, I'm getting errors there too:

Initial English prompt
http://i.imgur.com/jaeowfm.png

I couldn't figure out how to switch it over to English.  It didn't appear to be in the options:
http://i.imgur.com/rvi9U4b.png

Current plan: I downloaded the previous version of LibreOffice Fresh (4.4.1) from PortableApps.  LibreOffice has been great to this point but this was a huge pain in the ass this week as I was trying to resolve this while finishing something important on a deadline.

On a related note, though I was not thrilled with my experience with WinPenPack's OpenOffice install, I was pleased to see an easy-to-access look at every previous version of LibreOffice they've offered.  I had a tough time finding a complete list either on LibreOffice's site or PortableApps.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/winpenp ... /releases/

webfork wrote: So some unfortunate news: after some weird crashy errors with both LibreOffice Fresh AND Still versions, I broke down and tried to download X-OpenOffice to open up my ODT files.  Unfortunately, I'm getting errors there too:

Initial English prompt
http://i.imgur.com/jaeowfm.png

I couldn't figure out how to switch it over to English.  It didn't appear to be in the options:
http://i.imgur.com/rvi9U4b.png

I couldn't reproduce that. I downloaded X-ApacheOpenOffice and it started in English for me.

In addition, I think that "Inglese (USA)" in your second screenshot means English.

FWIW, I tried LibreOffice Portable recently on a Windows 7 box and Writer crashed when I tried to open it.

SYSTEM wrote:In addition, I think that "Inglese (USA)" in your second screenshot means English.

Damn. This just shows what happens when you're panicking and trying to get something done. Good catch.

freakazoid wrote:I tried LibreOffice Portable recently on a Windows 7 box and Writer crashed when I tried to open it.

I've actually been installing it to get the slight speed increase associated with the included QuickLoader but I know the core program is solid on both x86 and x64 boxes. Only the latest version was crashing and then the stable release developed a problem after about a month of use.

I guess I've got to start getting involved with the development process and start submitting bugs. The program is too critical.

webfork wrote:

SYSTEM wrote:In addition, I think that "Inglese (USA)" in your second screenshot means English.

Damn. This just shows what happens when you're panicking and trying to get something done. Good catch.

Update here: I went back and tested and that didn't work. Got an error message that I couldn't discern, restarted, no dice.

For those that were following this, I'm back on LibreOffice Still. After about the 20th crash, I almost gave up on the program. I was surprised by how stupid Microsoft's ODT importer was with the most basic formatting so a breif effort to switch over to Word was quickly defeated. After some digging I figured out I was probably my own enemy here due to some config file nonsense.

Latest version is a big bugfix release:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/libreoff ... 5746.shtml

Some good and bad news on the LibreOffice front:

Some encouraging details on adoption via infographic (care of softpedia). Short version: claims 100 million active users and 18 governments.

Negatively, a recent review gives LibreOffice 5 a meh review as it lacks toolsets of modern office tools, specifically cloud and collaboration. I'd counter that each release is getting gradually better, more stable, and more refined but you'd have to follow the project close to see those. Also, my own standards enter here as I definitely dogged Microsoft for years as their collaboration capabilities were a joke compared to Google Docs.

So LibreOffice is faster now. This has been the primary complaint about the whole codebase since StarOffice. Notably, LibreOffice performs faster on an SSD drive, so hopefully this is getting fixed on two fronts. This took a little longer for me to see as I only just updated to the "Still" installation (now at 5.0.5.2), which jumped noticeably in speed.

Also (old news), a specific call to ditch OpenOffice.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/libreoff ... 1061.shtml
Hope it'll be optional:

@joby_toss
What a bad piece of news. What a degradation. What a disgrace. This will be another reason to keep to OpenOffice. Shame on you, LibreOffice developers!

As I see it, the plan is to make it optional, but who knows how the development will turn out...

But I really don't understand why the need to copy M$ Office looks? Why not looking for something different, innovative?

@joby_toss

As I see it, the plan is to make it optional, but who knows how the development will turn out...

But I really don't understand why the need to copy M$ Office looks? Why not looking for something different, innovative?

The times of innovation are gone, now imitation is the driving force, not innovation. Lately I see innovation very rarely and entirely by independent developers. I doubt that the obnoxious ribbon will be optional, the prevalent trend is less freedom, less customization, less options and more restriction, more dumbness, more ugliness. Just look at what happened with once great projects like Firefox and Opera. Lately I see shocking requests at GitHub, for example conversion of promising programs to UWP apps, the idiots want to continue being idiots with all their passion and the developers are tempted to serve the idiots becoming idiots too. Anyway, I have simple and strict rules concerning the ribbon abomination- I do not use programs mutilated by ribbon interface.

joby wrote:Hope it'll be optional

I think the move toward ribbon is responding to critics in the press:

One of the major negatives given for PCMag was a "Clunky Interface" http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418419,00.asp ... meanwhile PCWorld said: "LibreOffice's interface is enough like Microsoft Office's that few users will have trouble adjusting to it." http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042552/ ... ffice.html

Since the goal for this group is to make it easier for folks to make the switch from MS Office to LibreOffice, a ribbon interface was probably inevitable. Good or bad, that look has been around for roughly 7 years now some time now as is increasingly expected, even if it remains contrivercial.

As to the suggestion that not innovating on the interface is lazy and not a way to pull ahead of Microsoft, I saw this discussion play out on similar terms years ago with the Linux desktop. I saw a lot of great responses in the press to moves made by various distros but Linux still hasn't made any headway on either desktop or mobile platforms after numerous very cool releases, suggesting that familiarity is more important than innovation when you want to grab users.

For my part, I'm not thrilled with the ribbon move but I can attest to the fact that there's a lot of great stuff going on under the hood. I've been thoroughly testing this program for the last few years and I've been constantly impressed with improvements and a lot of tools and features that I can't find in MS Office. If I've got to put up with a look I'm not fond of, that's okay.