Office: Libre or Open

[ofnuts]

I'm currently using the OpenOffice 3.2.1 that is the standard issue with my Lucid Lynx. Not bad, but I use KDE and a nasty bug in the KDE integration (excruciatingly slow file dialogs) had me remove the KDE integration package and the result is OO windows with a Motif look from the previous millennium.

I'm considering an upgrade, to a more recent version (3.2.1 is so 2010) but the question is: Libre or Open?
Or is this distinction moot now that Open in Apache's hands?

Also, since I work surrounded by MS-Office addicts, compatibility is important.

Please avoid an office suite war in the answers

[dino99]

Open is own by Oracle now, so development have continue with Libre; have never met compatibility issue

[Frogs Hair]

I really don't see much difference . I have OO installed on Windows and 11.04 comes with LO . I am not a power user of programs though .

[WorMzy]

Open is own by Oracle now

Nah, they couldn't be bothered to support it, so they gave it to Apache.

Personally, I use LibreOffice; it's supposed to include a lot of feature and stability improvements from other OOo forks, but whether or not OOo has incorporated these too, I have no idea.

[ninjaaron]

Libre is a fork of Open. At this point, they are almost identical. Developement will probably continue more heavily on LibreOffice, while OpenOffice will probably become a legacy app.

I prefer to move to the one that has a future.

[Hagar Delest]

You can use both versions in fact if you install both from their official site.

LibO has additional features but also additional bugs. Their Navigator is different (and a show stopper for some, including me).

They want to support as much as possible OOXML and that's not a very good point IMHO. OOo has made a better choice by not letting users save in OOXML (.docx, ...).

[aura7]

Open Office is a much more mature product developed initially by Sun Microsystems

Libre Office is a recent spin-off, Open Office is much more stable .... and has more functionality and compatibility with Microsoft Office documents.

Open Office is definitely my choice.

[IcarusR]

Am correct in believing that Ubuntu no longer support OO ?
I have 10.10 installed & as stated by op it seems to be stuck on OO 3.2 when OO 3.3 was available in January 2011.

[ninjaaron]

Open Office is a much more mature product developed initially by Sun Microsystems

Libre Office is a recent spin-off, Open Office is much more stable .... and has more functionality and compatibility with Microsoft Office documents.

Open Office is definitely my choice.

This is sort of false advertising. LibreOffice started off as an exact clone of the OpenOffice code base, and most of the OO development team left Oracle and have continued there work with LibreOffice. LibreOffice currently has better compatibility with MS Office than OpenOffice, though they are not much different yet. OpenOffice has hardly been developed since LibreOffice began.

LibreOffice is the new OpenOffice. It's just managed by a different organization now.

OpenOffice is actually also managed by a different organization now.

[Hagar Delest]

LibO has indeed replaced OOo in the repositories. But anyway, OOo has never been updated in the repos once an Ubuntu flavor has been released. If you want to keep your OOo/LibO up to date, you've to install the vanilla version from the OOo/LibO web site.

See [Ubuntu] Installing OOo on Debian and Co.