Just for the name?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| r_a_trip Sep 29, 2010 9:41 AM EDT |
While everyone is free to do what they want, I wonder why you would want to replace Go-OOo/OOo provided with the Distro with the preliminary LibreOffice release. The project today is little more than a clean Go-OOo and a name change. I know LibreOffice is the designated replacement for Oracle's OpenOffice.org. In time, when developments pick up, it will come standard with most major Distro's. Instead of breaking your package management with out-of-repo and Alienized packages, why not wait till something more significant than a name change comes your way with the next 6 month wave of Distro releases. Codewise everyone is already running LibreOffice anyways. |
| caitlyn Sep 29, 2010 11:39 AM EDT |
It is not a "designated replacement" for OpenOffice. It is a fork or OpenOffice. Oracle's response makes clear they will be continuing OOo development and they employ a lot of the OOo developers. As such I really don't have any enthusiasm for the new project. I don't trust Oracle but at this point forking without having the Oracle-based developers doesn't do much for me. |
| bigg Sep 29, 2010 12:23 PM EDT |
> I don't trust Oracle but at this point forking without having the Oracle-based developers doesn't do much for me. It's a tough code base. If they can build a team with new developers, that will be worth a lot. The source code won't do anyone any good if only the official development team can work with it. There is also a lot that could be done to the apps other than the word processor. Calc, for instance, could provide a good interface to R, which would make Calc a high-end number crunching tool, and with a little work, would be able to outdo any graphics in Excel. Not that these things will happen, but with OOo, it's almost certain that they won't happen. |
| caitlyn Sep 29, 2010 12:44 PM EDT |
The bottom line to me is functionality. Whoever makes the most functional suite will win. I don't think dividing the project into three separate camps (Oracle, Novell, Document Foundation) advances the goal of improving functionality and having a top notch alternative to MS Office. |
| r_a_trip Sep 29, 2010 1:39 PM EDT |
It is not a "designated replacement" for OpenOffice. Tell that to the major distributors. If four of the top distributors are going to ship L.O., how is it not the replacement for OOo? For now, major distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and SUSE will ship LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice [ snip ] http://www.osnews.com/story/23843/OpenOffice_Forked_Into_Lib... Oracle can keep developing OOo, but Linux wise it looks like they're dead in the water. |
| caitlyn Sep 29, 2010 2:02 PM EDT |
I will repeat myself since you seem to have missed the main point: if LibreOffice lacks functionality (i.e.: OOXML support) and therefore lacks document compatibility with MS Office people will not use it. If Linux distros insist on including an office suite which lacks MS Office compatibility that will simply drive people away from those distros or perhaps from Linux entirely. That is NOT a good thing. |
| helios Sep 29, 2010 2:13 PM EDT |
I will repeat myself since you seem to have missed the main point: if LibreOffice lacks functionality (i.e.: OOXML support) and therefore lacks document compatibility with MS Office people will not use it. But that's the point. Many in the community are banking on this new set of developers, or former OpenOffice developers vastly improving the code. Recently, I received a pptx document from a friend for edit. While I was able to read it in its intended format, the simple changes in graphics I made looked like a bomb went off within it when I returned it to the original author. This is not isolated, this is common with OOXML standards and support. OpenOffice just doesn't seem to be making any real strides to fix the problems. Probably because they can't due to lack of access to the code. Again, I think many are counting on new, fresh sets of eyes fixing this. Will it happen? shrug...who knows. But hope springs eternal. h |
| herzeleid Sep 29, 2010 2:14 PM EDT |
Why on earth do you people assume that libre office will somehow lack functionality that currently exists in openoffice? Inquiring minds want to know! |
| hkwint Sep 29, 2010 2:21 PM EDT |
[quqote]I don't think dividing the project into three separate camps (Oracle, Novell, Document Foundation) advances the goal of improving functionality[/quote] Two notes: -Novell is member of the Document foundation, so I only see 'two' separate camps, -Deviding XFree86 in XFree86 and Xorg _did_ greatly advance the goal of improving functionality. I see parallels with the OOo fork: XFree86 was too conservative and hard to contribute to. Xorg was very unstable due to the lots of changes it went through, basically 'postponed XFree86 patches'. This caused lots of headaches for its users. Nonetheless, the more community driven Xorg became the new standard and most people forgot XFree86. |
| caitlyn Sep 29, 2010 3:00 PM EDT |
@herzeleid: Some of the statements about the Document Foundation, including the press release, indicate the LibreOffice will be fully free, as in the FSF definition of freedom. That would preclude the OOXML code, I believe, which was developed with Microsoft's cooperation. (That may also explain why it's so darned buggy.) |
| gus3 Sep 29, 2010 3:38 PM EDT |
Darned buggy, to the point of being useless. Business as usual. |
| caitlyn Sep 29, 2010 3:45 PM EDT |
@gus3: No, it's not quite useless. It correctly reads .docx formatted files and, provided they are something relatively simple, it saves them correctly as well. That has value. |
| gus3 Sep 29, 2010 4:22 PM EDT |
@helios: How complicated was that .pptx? |
| tracyanne Sep 29, 2010 5:05 PM EDT |
caitlyn seems to be the only one who sees the real issue here. OO.o may not be perfect at dealing with MS Office documents, but it does a good enough job at the moment that it's a viable alternative to MS Office for a lot of people, and it can be 'sold' as such. LibreOffice (what a terrible name, makes me think of a sanitary product) may at the moment be basically Go-OO, but already the developers who are going to be developing it are removing functionality, on the grounds that it's tainted, heaven forbid that Microsoft actually helped here. That to me sends a very clear signal that compatibility with MS Office may suffer, and that worries me. It's perfectly fine that there is a fork of OO.o that is in the hands of the community, but distibutions knee jerk moving to that version seems to me counter productive, and gives me cause to wonder if I will enjoy the same level of compatibility as I currently do. |
| Steven_Rosenber Sep 29, 2010 5:43 PM EDT |
I use OO as seldom as possible. I try to do everything in Google Docs, or AbiWord and Gnumeric if I need a local client app. AbiWord in particular has made tremendous strides in the past few releases. I make sure to save in Word97-era .doc or RTF format so just about anybody can read/write it. |
| bigg Sep 29, 2010 5:56 PM EDT |
Let's not be ridiculous here. It won't take but a trivial program installation to make OOo available, whatever speculation one might make about what LibreOffice will be. Lots of apps are not the default. |
| gus3 Sep 29, 2010 6:00 PM EDT |
AbiWord can deal with (most) Microsoft Word formats. Gnumeric can deal with (some) Microsoft Excel formats. Is there a stand-alone that can deal with (some/most) Microsoft PowerPoint formats? |
| Steven_Rosenber Sep 29, 2010 6:30 PM EDT |
PowerPoint is the big sticking point for me. I've used OO Impress before, but I'd like something more lightweight. |
| hkwint Sep 29, 2010 7:24 PM EDT |
As far as I know OOo had a plugin architerture as well, so maybe in the future OOXML-features may be distributed separately. If that's not good enough for you, just buy OOO and you receive nice support as well. |
| Sander_Marechal Sep 30, 2010 5:05 AM EDT |
Quoting:Tell that to the major distributors. If four of the top distributors are going to ship L.O., how is it not the replacement for OOo? Actually, that quote is a bit wrong. Debian and Ubuntu are currently not shipping OOo, they are shipping Go-OO. I don't know about Fedora and Suse but I bet that Suse ships with Go-OO as well. |
| nikkels Sep 30, 2010 9:01 AM EDT |
>>>> PowerPoint is the big sticking point for me. I've used OO Impress before, but I'd like something more lightweight Will this do any good ? http://linuxappfinder.com/package/pptview |
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