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Interest in LibreOffice, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, is on the rise, with weekly downloads of its software package close to 1 million a week. That’s the highest download number since 2023.

“We estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but it’s important to note that we respect users’ privacy and don’t track them, so we can’t say for sure,” said Mike Saunders, an open-source advocate and a deputy to the board of directors at The Document Foundation.

LibreOffice users typically want a straightforward interface, Saunders said. “They don’t want subscriptions, and they don’t want AI being ‘helpful’ by poking its nose into their work — it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,” he said.

There are genuine use cases for generative AI tools, but many users prefer to opt-in to it and choose when and where to enable it. “We have zero plans to put AI into LibreOffice. But we understand the value of some AI tools and are encouraging developers to create … extensions that use AI in a responsible way,” Saunders said.

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[-] Irelephant@lemm.ee 1 points 29 minutes ago

irm get.activated.win | irm

[-] vane@lemmy.world 285 points 1 week ago

Yeah desktop apps era is back baby. Fuck you cloud.

[-] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 75 points 1 week ago

Syncthing has been so helpful in making me move away from cloud based options. And to think only reason I found out about it and gave it a shot was because I was trying to figure out how to easily sync my non Steam game save files between my Desktop and my Steam Deck. It's been invaluable since then.

[-] baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 45 points 1 week ago

Donate if you regularly use Syncthing. Help close the causal loop.

[-] thesystemisdown@lemmy.world 43 points 1 week ago

LibreOffice too for that matter. Kick 'em a few bucks if you can spare it.

https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/

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[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago

OnlyOffice is also good - my preferred for the basic Word/Excel type stuff I do.

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[-] Condiment2085@lemm.ee 19 points 1 week ago

Woowoo! Cloud has its place and I love it but it's not for literally everything

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[-] Peffse@lemmy.world 147 points 1 week ago

I'm afraid to find out how many people are still downloading OpenOffice, thinking it's the same software they heard about back in 2010.

[-] digger@lemmy.ca 61 points 1 week ago

Is it not the same software they heard about in 2010?

[-] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 91 points 1 week ago

It was discontinued in 2011. Anything that is out there today is outdated at best, and malicious at worst.

[-] Lojcs@lemm.ee 2 points 6 days ago

.. so it is precisely the software they heard about in 2010

Oracle bought (and quickly killed) it. It’s not under active development, and anything that claims otherwise is likely malicious. LibreOffice is a lot of the original OpenOffice devs who got fed up with the way things were going, and jumped ship.

[-] haakon@lemmy.sdf.org 27 points 1 week ago

It literally is.

[-] Buffalox@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice
It seems it's still legit, but of course Libre Office is the better choice.

[-] takis@lemm.ee 123 points 1 week ago

I must be one of them. In the last couple of weeks I'm transitioning my apps and services to open source and EU based. I switched from Windows to CachyOS, switched my emails, switched browser, degoogled my phone, deleted FB and X and many more.

It feels so refreshing and free.

[-] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago

Good job! Welcome to Beltalowda :) Next up: join the OPA!

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[-] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 65 points 1 week ago

Nice. Maybe now Microsoft will respond by ~~offering non-subscription options~~ inventing a new proprietary industry-standard file format so their bloated ransomware remains mandatory.

[-] cactopuses@lemm.ee 32 points 1 week ago

Fortunately platforms like docs are providing sufficient competition that I don’t think they’d be able to lock it down as effectively as they once could.

[-] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 week ago

They'll have to settle for "warning" the user if they detect a file that was made by libreoffice.

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[-] passenger@lemm.ee 53 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Sure, to avoid costs...

They really don't see the connection with the trade war, buy european movement, boycott america movement, trump presidency in general... Really? Or could it be the editor told them not to mention it?

[-] Apocalypteroid@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

As someone who has recently cancelled my Microsoft subscription and switched to libre office I can vouch that it was not the subscription cost that made me switch.

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[-] venotic@kbin.melroy.org 53 points 1 week ago

Took them long enough.

Now how long will it take them to try Linux?

[-] FlihpFlorp@lemm.ee 47 points 1 week ago

So here’s a single data point for you, in a good couple months (for money reasons) I was gonna switch over to Bazzite or another distro if it came preinstalled

So with a sample size of 1 we know 100% of people you’ve found are switching to linux

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[-] aceshigh@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

Linux needs to sound a lot less intimidating for people who don’t really do tech besides the very basics.

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[-] gitamar@feddit.org 49 points 1 week ago

Don't forget to seed the torrents to help the servers. And donate if you can ✊🏻

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[-] MunkysUnkEnz0@lemmy.world 49 points 1 week ago

I'm glad to see foss Software taking off. In the past, we had to be a tech enthusiast to Realize it with an option. Now it's pretty well known.

The large tech companies didn't get greedy and try to be so gross with privacy settings. People wouldn't make the move. They only have themselves to blame.

If you're into music, there's a great open source synthesizer.

https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/

[-] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 39 points 1 week ago

The US becoming a questionable country and people realizing how almost every digital service and product is US based also ended up becoming a huge incentive to start seeking out alternatives instead putting all their eggs in one country. If it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have been making so many product shifts and seeking out foss alternatives or at the very least nonUS alternatives.

It's been very cool seeing lot of people making attempts to try out stuff like Linux too even if they don't stick with it.

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[-] Legom7@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago

I have a job that involves working with spreadsheets. I have Librecalc at home and both Libre and MSOffice at work. I have also had a college course about using Excel specifically. Both really can do mostly the same things but because MS does everything in a specific (backwards) way, people trained on MS who are not otherwise "computer people" can't cope with needing to unlearn and relearn. So the end result is paraprofessionals are locked in.

[-] LordPassionFruit@lemm.ee 18 points 1 week ago

I really enjoyed spreadsheets before becoming a programmer (I still enjoy them, I just spend less time on them) and basically self taught over the years using Google Sheets.

There are several really useful functions on sheets that simply do not exist in Excel, and there are others that work almost the same but not quite. Having to use Excel drives me insane sometimes because of how clunky it feels.

By contrast, using LibreCalc feels kinda how you'd expect an open source Google Sheets to feel? It's slightly clunkier, but it gets the job done and generally feels better to use than Excel

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[-] SirFasy@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago

It doesn't surprise me, Microsoft is enshitifying everything they have.

[-] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 36 points 1 week ago

If you're going to download it, try the torrent option! That way, you can give back to the community that gives you LibreOffice.

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[-] JakobFel@retrolemmy.com 34 points 1 week ago

Love to see it. I haven't used MS Office in well over a decade at this point and I have no plans to go back. LibreOffice is fantastic, suits all my needs, doesn't pack itself with bloat and it respects my freedom and privacy. What more can I want from an office suite?

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago

Dropped the Word suite and used openoffice, then switched to libreoffice. Definitely a slightly clunkier feel to it, but avoiding yet more subscription, cloud based, internet connection needed, account needed software is becoming more and more important.

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[-] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The funny thing is you can still buy Office standalone but you have to actively go looking for it and Microsoft doesn't advertise it because 365 subscriptions make more money.

Microsoft doesn't want you buying standalone versions of software, but they still have to sell it because there's still a market for it.

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[-] MetalMachine@feddit.nl 28 points 1 week ago

European countries should adopt linux and these alternatives instead of paying for windows and Microsoft. Much more private too.

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[-] lumony@lemmings.world 24 points 1 week ago

Is it just me, or do new office features seem kinda pointless or unnecessary?

I use libreoffice the same way I used microsoft office decades ago. Never really cared for 'advanced' or even 'intermediate' features because they are never necessary to what I'm doing.

I can't imagine that people who are more computer-illiterate than me getting significantly more involved in what should be simple and easy to use programs.

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[-] firepenny@lemmy.world 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Besides the jank, you can set up libreoffice inside a docker container and server it over https. There you now have cheap-ass MS365.

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[-] clot27@lemm.ee 23 points 1 week ago

I replaced MS Office with libreoffice on my dad's PC and he didnt even noticed for months. Libreoffice is just better.

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[-] Sauvandu60@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 week ago

This is a great news! I hope more people would use open-source software like Libreoffice.

[-] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago

If you're a nerd, also check out Typst and LaTeX. Being able to format your documents with pure code is awesome, and you can also define functions for different things, import libraries to generate graphs, and write comments that don't show up in the document.

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[-] MrSulu@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

Hopefully more of us make donations. Free is good, but it's nice to contribute even small amounts to your well used FOSS apps

[-] Brotha_Jaufrey@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

I’ve used Libre Office, but unpopular opinion, the formatting sucks. I just pirated word, never paying for that again

[-] orcrist@lemm.ee 25 points 1 week ago

The formatting... The formatting that you can easily modify. Sigh. It takes two minutes, my friend.

Anyway, you do you.

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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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