simpleMicrosoft Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward
Taasz/Woofwww.libreoffice.org if you want microsoft to stop messing with your office apps.
ThePowerOfGeekI second this. There’s a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it’s not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it’s been great.
atomicbocksOffice would have a learning curve too if you hadn’t been using it since you were a child.
DreamButtTbf it was simplier back when people first used it
When people were first using it they were coming from DOS or old machines. Many were using a mouse for the first time. It wasn’t simpler to them.
This is very true. I hadn’t used Microsoft Office since 2007 and at my new workplace everyone’s using it. It’s really hard and I don’t find anything. Yesterday I was working with tables but I gave up and had IT install libreoffice instead.
You can now enable a tabbed interface similar to Microsoft Office
There is also only office which has better compatibility with MSOffice file types
mintiefreshThis here.
I wish Only Office got as much fanfare as LibreOffice. The UI is much closer to Microsoft Office and it tends to have better compatibility.
I have both installed though and use them both lol.
Libreoffice their latest blogpost is from the 20th of August 2025. There have been a few releases in the past few months as well.
Openoffice their latest ( Apache Openoffice 4.1.15 ) was released almost 2 years ago ( December 2023 ).
Libreoffice seems like a more recent, better supported tool over Openoffice which hasn’t seen any updates since 2023 according to their own website.
I’m on my phone, so I didn’t search extensively. But I think that also plays a role in why there’s a much larger fanbase for libreoffice rather than Openoffice.
I’ve no recent experience with either so I can’t comment on how well either works.
I believe Open Office and Only Office are different products.
Only Office had a major release in June, 2025.
And you are correct that Open Office last update was back in December 2023.
openoffice is an apache project, created when oracle gave them the code and rights to the openoffice project. ibm later donated symphony to them. anyone familiar with apache knows they do things their own way, and usually slowly.
libreoffice originated from a fork when openoffice’s status under oracle was in doubt. it progresses faster than apache, as most developers also switched.
onlyoffice is an entirely different application. decent enough, but with its own quirks. it can also be slow on lower-spec systems due to the heavy reliance on js. originally a latvian-russian project, it was reorganized (via new corporate entities in uk and sg) to hide the russian ties for ‘reasons’.
Ah I see. Thanks for the information. I use both LibreOffice and OnlyOffice and generally am happy with both. I kind of just bounce around back and forth.
Man, wouldn’t it be nice if both of our counties didn’t have ridiculous propaganda and fascism so that we could just cooperate on shit like this without having to worry as much about maliciousness on a state level?
You are correct. I misread ( or my brain farted ) and looked up the wrong one.
LibreOffice has a ribbon UI too!
That it does :)
LibreOffice is awesome too. No complaints really.
I tried it years ago and it was pretty garbage. Took forever to load. Looked like shit. Has this changed?
NyanixTIL! Thank you, kind stranger!
egretsOnlyOffice is Russian-owned, via a holding company in Singapore. When Russia invaded Ukraine and sanctions threatened the business, they obfuscated this, but it’s still Lev Bannov’s product.
The importance you attach to this is up to you, but they try quite hard to hide it.
Scotty_TreesMm knowing that makes me never want to go anywhere near OnlyOffice now, oof.
Downside is ties to Russia and performance is really bad, as I understand it’s an Electron web app, not a native application. It also won’t save to network shares properly and will lose your file if you do.