Will Libra Office be as good as Ms Office?

[Mindswap1]

I don't know if this is the right section to ask this, but will Libra Office be as good las MS Office? I really need something productive as Microsoft Office for college. So I was wondering if Libra Office would do the job right. Open Office is not working out for me.

[wojox]

If your in college then personally I would dual boot. It will save some headaches.

[Mindswap1]

I cannot afford Microsoft Os I am using my cousins old system 76 laptop.

[1clue]

Dual boot sucks. You only ever need to switch operating systems for one thing, then chances are you want to switch back. Find a way to run everything you want on one OS.

There isn't anything that's 100% like Microsoft Office (hereafter referred to as MSO) except MSO.

If you're in college to learn to use MSO then nothing else will suffice. If you want to be able to use documents that most people use, then OpenOffice (OOO) in the best I've found. Frankly I don't use any of that, so I don't keep up with the latest office applications.

If you must use Windows for anything, then use VMware or similar.

Frankly though, if you want MSO then just install Crossover Office and run MSO directly from Linux. I did that once for work, it worked really well. You have the fee for Crossover Office and for MSO, no need to install Windows.

Good luck and have fun.

[AlphaLexman]

Open Office is not working out for me.I installed a beta version of libre office a while back and didn't notice any working difference between open office except for the licensing.

[lidex]

Yeah, I don't see Libre Office unseating MS Office anytime soon. Seriously, the development of OpenOffice has been glacial. Why should this be any different? I also believe the beginning of the end is near for monolithic office suites. I think we're evolving to cloud-based computing here.

[balaji.alla]

Hi,

I am new to ubuntu forums, i dont know where to post my queries, can you help me.

[mastablasta]

I don't know if this is the right section to ask this, but will Libra Office be as good las MS Office? I really need something productive as Microsoft Office for college. So I was wondering if Libra Office would do the job right. Open Office is not working out for me.


Hmm lets see... Open Office is a bit better developed MS Office 2003, which seems productive enough. People write books in it, many companies still use the MS 2003 version. i am not sure what you need to do that is so special. Indeed MsOffice 2007 has some advanced features that make it easier to use but default settings are just that - defalt. if more people use it then everyones text and such is the same.

next since MS Office seems to be the only option for you, you could try their student version. it's cheaper, ment for students and might be missing some applications that students don't really need anyway.

[lidex]

OK. Found some info on a PPA to install Libre Office. Have a look here:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/01/new-ppa-makes-installing-libreoffice-on-ubuntu-easy/

Or here:
http://ubuntu-tweak.com/source/libreoffice-ppa/

[ninjaaron]

I've been writing papers for college and grad school in OpenOffice for years in a fairly demanding field (I have three different alphabets in most of my papers with multiple text directions, ligatures, and by-the-book Chicago formating). I think it is superior to MSOffice for type-setting and document organization, if not quite as powerful with presentations.

It's just a matter of getting used to it. Some of the controls are a bit counter-intuitive, and the 'help' is about as helpful as a sharp stick in the eye. Googling your problem, on the other hand, will often bring very good results.

Of course, as other people have mentioned, there are ways to use MSOffice in Ubuntu if you can't handle learning OpenOffice.

[ram2500]

You will not need Microsoft Office (more often than not) if you save formats that Office can read to (hence, non ODF formats). Whenever I send something I created in OpenOffice to someone, I export it as a PDF so it would be "verbatim" (meaning, the document is WYSIWYG), or I simply save in a Microsoft format (I have it set up to do this by default). A few years ago, I was teaching math courses during the summer at the community college, and other instructors "required" Microsoft Office, but many students successfully used OpenOffice. My theory of instructors and institutions as a whole suggesting or requiring MS Office is: because many instructors aren't aware of OpenOffice or have had bad experiences with OpenOffice collaboration (students sending in unreadable ODF formats). All I required was, "turn the assignment in ON TIME and COMPLETE" :). Ignore the college's requirement of having Microsoft Office (unless you are taking a course designed around Office, such as a business communications course). You will NOT need Microsoft Office to write or hand in an assignment about Shakespeare or the quantum theory.:p

I have Office 2007 ONLY because it was given to me at a steep discount due to the fact that I am an educator. Had I not received the discount, I would strictly be using OpenOffice. $150+ for a basic (aka Home and Student) edition of Office is not justifiable.

[tshirtdr1]

When I was in Grad School a couple of years ago, Open Office did not support EndNote. EndNote is required by many groups/courses/programs, so if you need EndNote, look into that. For me, it was required, so I had to use MS office for my dissertation. I used Open office for quick presentations straight from Linux, since we used Linux for our primary working OS in our group.

[1clue]

That's a good point. As far as I'm concerned, MS Office has so many options I have no use for that they get in the way. Everything I actually use is in OOO.

The only issue I have is that occasionally when somebody sends me a word doc, the formatting isn't always very good. I've never heard complaints when I send a word doc I created with OOO, but sometimes OOO doesn't format a word doc well enough to do the job.

As well, some of the formatting on Excel doesn't translate to OOO well either.

So if your main issue is perfect document compatibility or perfect function compatibility, then Microsoft is the only way it will work for you. If on the other hand the production of a high quality document in an open format (or on paper) is your goal, then there are other tools that do a significantly better job.

I'd make a plug for latex, but I don't really want to start a war.

[AHoneybun]

Since MSO is such a default program (Windows in general as the main OS of the world) it is needed much more often. But for my Science class I write the definition of the words in OpenOffice (OOO) but from now on I will use LibreOffice to write it out, save it and send it to the cloud with DropBox and then print it from a Windows based PC. And I did not see any format issues so far. As from that I am really happy with the whole office suite but the Presentation could use some work on how you start to make a project.

[Mark76]

At the very least it'll be well balanced :D

What? :p

[Frogs Hair]

I don't know . I have to take MSO class as part of progam and no employer I have worked for has ever has allowed the use of personal software . I use OO at home and plan to switch when LO when 11.04 comes out . Unless I find an employer that is less uptight about what software is used I won't be using anything open source for work.

[Spice Weasel]

I consider it to already be better than MSO, but mainly because I absolutely hate the new Office interface.

[jerenept]

I consider it to already be better than MSO, but mainly because I absolutely hate the new Office interface.

I like the new interface, but it's just personal opinion. I do believe that the LO team is rolling out large UX improvements soon. I can't wait!!

[Quadunit404]

A bit off-topic, but one of the new students at my school doesn't have a proper office suite installed on his laptop and Microsoft (not MS, aka Mississippi :P) Office won't install (as in, the installer doesn't launch or anything.) That, and it'd probably take about an hour to install, which he probably doesn't have in school. Should I recommend LibreOffice to him?

On topic, I think that if we give The Document Foundation enough time they'll eventually make LibreOffice as good as or better than Microsoft Office. I already do pretty much all my schoolwork on it now, only using Microsoft Office when I absolutely NEED to.

[jerenept]

A bit off-topic, but one of the new students at my school doesn't have a proper office suite installed on his laptop and Microsoft (not MS, aka Mississippi :P) Office won't install (as in, the installer doesn't launch or anything.) That, and it'd probably take about an hour to install, which he probably doesn't have in school. Should I recommend LibreOffice to him?

On topic, I think that if we give The Document Foundation enough time they'll eventually make LibreOffice as good as or better than Microsoft Office. I already do pretty much all my schoolwork on it now, only using Microsoft Office when I absolutely NEED to.

LibreOffice Portable (http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable) for Windows is a good bet.

[beew]

LibreOffice Portable (http://portableapps.com/apps/office/libreoffice_portable) for Windows is a good bet.

There is also a LO portable for Linux. :)

http://portablelinuxapps.org/
(http://portablelinuxapps.org/)

[forrestcupp]

Open Office is not working out for me.+


I cannot afford Microsoft Os I am using my cousins old system 76 laptop.

I'd say you're out of luck. :)

If you can get a cheap copy of MS Office in your college bookstore, you can get it to run in wine.

[Giant Speck]

I don't really like OpenOffice and only really use Microsoft Office, but I do have high hopes for LibreOffice's future.

[Docaltmed]

My company switched over to OO before we made the switch to all-Ubuntu, so I've been using OO (now LibreO) for many years.

Never had a problem with it, written everything from books to professional journal articles.

In terms of pure, clean, get-it-doneness, LibreOffice eats MSO for breakfast.

YMMV, of course.

[ssam]

Seriously, the development of OpenOffice has been glacial. Why should this be any different? I also believe the beginning of the end is near for monolithic office suites. I think we're evolving to cloud-based computing here.

developers have been fed up with how difficult it was to get fixes and code into openoffice for a long time. thats why projects like go-oo and neooffice existed.

now those devs have fully broken away (and they have picked up a lot of new devs). the first LO release was mostly a massive code clean up. i expect progress will speed up.

[marl30]

It's clear that LO is being improved at an impressive rate. It's not long ago that they released a stable version (3.3.0). Then two or three weeks ago they released 3.3.1. I went to their site two days ago to download the Windows version. I was surprise to see that 3.3.2 RC was out for testing. This means another updated version is expected in a few more weeks. I think if they continue like this, they'll soon catch up to Microsoft. :)

[Simian Man]

Unfortunately, no it probably won't. MS Office is just a good product, with tons of man-hours behind it that none of the free offices can come close to. If you need office software, especially to work with others, there is no other good choice.


At the very least it'll be well balanced :D


I see what you did there :).

[weasel fierce]

I find it amusing that from experience, openoffice is more compatible with word documents, than MS Office is with itself across versions.

At work, we have three versions of excel and it is a nightmare. Word documents are better about it

[false truths]

Over the past year, my laptop has had MS Office Professional 2007, OpenOffice.org, and LibreOffice 3.3.1. Out of all of these, the most naturally intuitive is undoubtedly MS Office. It's got a lot of nice features that are easily accessible that take some work to get in the other two.

For actual usability, compatibility, and productivity, though, I was really impressed in what LibreOffice has to offer. I write papers on my laptop for school, then I have to move them to a NTFS flash drive and onto a Windows desktop, where my teacher opens them in MS Word 2007. None of my teachers have complained about bad formatting or not being able to open the file, and I've been saving them all in .docx since that is what they insist on having.

The only other thing I have really used in all three (used each part of the office suite, but not with every suite) is the presentation system. As far as that goes, I admit I prefer MS Office just because I don't get an annoying template window every time I try to create a new presentation. The LibreOffice presentation program is just as capable where it actually counts, though.

[1clue]

@mark,

I think that's a really clever reference.

@everyone else,

By definition, as long as the comparison is phrased the way the title of this thread is phrased, then the answer cannot even theoretically be yes. Microsoft Office is the only thing that can get a perfect score by that measure, and it will AUTOMATICALLY get a perfect score. Microsoft Office is not a static target. The OP needs to go buy Microsoft Office, because nothing else will satisfy.

On the other hand, it's extremely possible that Libra or OOO or whatever could be BETTER than MS, as long as your yardstick is the ability to do whatever office-related tasks you need to do.

Frankly I think Microsoft Office is so bloated its usefulness for everyday use is very low. You spend more time trying to figure out how to apply a style than you do typing.

My documentation requires a few consistent styles be applied without variation across the whole document. Microsoft Office sucks for that. Frankly though so does OOO and because of that presumably Libra as well. For me markdown or multimarkdown is better than anything else. That said I don't expect anyone else here to agree with me because it's a documentation processor that doesn't even have an editor. Lyx is another possibility, or even html constrained by css with no style tags.

[scouser73]

The fact that LibrOffice can work with Microsoft Office file formats is a yes, and it's free and you're not constantly bombarded with updates every time that there's a patch out.

[weasel fierce]

and I guess in the end, what is freedom worth ?

[Zlatan]

I don't know if this is the right section to ask this, but will Libra Office be as good las MS Office? I really need something productive as Microsoft Office for college. So I was wondering if Libra Office would do the job right. Open Office is not working out for me.

would be easier to advise if you post your specific needs

[forrestcupp]

Can everyone start calling it LibreOffice, instead of Libra Office? :)


Unfortunately, no it probably won't. MS Office is just a good product, with tons of man-hours behind it that none of the free offices can come close to. If you need office software, especially to work with others, there is no other good choice.

While I agree that MS Office is the best, I wouldn't go so far as to say that there is no other good choice.

[KegHead]

Hi!

Libra is much faster and crisper!

KegHead

[Johnsie]

Without a suitable Outlook/Exchange alternative, no.

Most corporate offices use Outlook for their internal/external communication and the rest of office ties nicely into that. The address book system on the Exchange server makes it easy to send emails to other colleagues without knowing their email addresses and syncing through exchange is really good on phones.

The ability to create files is nice, but an important part of business includes sending and receiving those files in an efficient, user-friendly manner.

Add decent email/company address book functionality into Libra Office and I might change my mind.

[MasterNetra]

I think LibreOffice could be as good as Ms Office if not better, at release probably not. However, no one can truly say for sure if it will be down the line of course, its something only time can tell, any "predictions" are really just random guesses pulled out of ones rear end.

[smileyacid]

Open office and Libra office are both fantastic theres barely a difference between the two if you use Ubuntu and Open office is standard maybe you could stick with that for now? but computers and software are just tools you need to decide exactly what you want, If its only a word processor Abiword is good or maybe Gnome office or K-office one last thing to look at is defiantly cloud stuff like Google Docs they are pretty good I use them for some of the charity work I do providing they are not confidential documents.

[bobbob94]

Again, its Libre Office, as in 'free' not Libra, as in astrology ;)

"Libre (pronounced /ˈliːbrə/) in English is adopted from the various Romance languages, ultimately descending from the Latin word lībere; its origin is closely related to liberty. It denotes "the state of being free", as in "liberty" or "having freedom". The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) considers libre to be obsolete,[2] but the word has come back into limited[3] use. Unlike gratis, libre appears in few English dictionaries,[3] although there is no other English single-word adjective signifying "liberty" exclusively, without also meaning "at no monetary cost"."

from: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre

[madjr]

libreoffice works very well, it just depends if you know how to use it enough, for what you want it to do.

and there are other good alternatives like:

google docs
zoho
softmaker office 2010
ms office online
upcoming calligra suite
etc.

anyway, am pretty sure libreoffice will be getting up to par, since development and integration of patches are going at a much faster pace now.

[disabledaccount]

Some time ago I've discovered Gnumeric. Gnumeric kills Excell and OOO in every aspect of possible area of usage - several times faster, better accuracy, more functions, 3D-array support, python scripting - what means you can do everything what python can do trough its bindings - means everything, supports over million of rows with simple patch, very light. The only thing that I can appreciate in MSO is VB IDE - but VB itself is slooooow comparing to python. OOO spreadsheet is not better than excell - it is comparable, with at most the same functionality and speed.

[jennybrew]

I don't know if this is the right section to ask this, but will Libra Office be as good las MS Office? I really need something productive as Microsoft Office for college. So I was wondering if Libra Office would do the job right. Open Office is not working out for me.

Im doing some night classes at local college and MS Office is a prerequisite for the course. Nothing else will do. The course is based on Windows system programming so I suppose thats to be expected.

You need to check out if you can get away with an alternative for your course. If not then Microsoft do a stud
ent deal which is very affordable.

http://www.software4students.co.uk/Microsoft_Office-software.aspx

If you canget away with the open source software all the better.
Good luck with college :)

[LowSky]

Every college has computer labs where you can do your work. just keep your work on a Flash drive or a cloud service like ubuntu one.

[Shining Arcanine]

I don't know if this is the right section to ask this, but will Libra Office be as good las MS Office? I really need something productive as Microsoft Office for college. So I was wondering if Libra Office would do the job right. Open Office is not working out for me.

I am not familiar with Libra Office. Did someone fork Open Office again?

[UncleOwl]

A little different story, to balance out those "colleges need MS Office" messages a little :) .

I teach at two different higher ed facilities in Estonia. My main employer has had all computer labs in dual boot for ten years.

I have had only Linux in all my machines (laptops, desktops, servers) both at home and at work since 2000. Besides teaching, I've been doing research, writing papers and taking part in projects - all on FOSS. Granted, I have had some problems over the years, but not anything insurmountable. So for the office software, I have never needed anything but OO.o (will switch to LO with the next wave of distro releases).

Now, I do teach mostly subjects which do not require specific software (mostly IT-related social issues - licensing, ethical problems, security, privacy, free culture etc). But I think that nearly everything besides direct MS software courses (e.g. MSO usage) can be handled with free and and open-source software today.

By the way, students are asked not to use MSO 2007/2010 document formats when submitting papers to me - but it's mostly as a counter-measure to make people think about problems with these formats, no one has actually been rejected for sending .docx-s (in some rare cases, I ask to re-send some .pptx slideshows which display glitchy in OO.o). I also publish all my materials under CC BY-SA or GNU FDL and use only free formats for these (right to self-publish all my stuff under free licenses is included in my contracts).

What I do agree with is that finally getting an equal-level FOSS alternative for MS Exchange is of great importance.

So - for the original question, I really hope that the answer is "LO will rule the world". :)

[Ugluk]

No. They have no work forces to fix serious problems or introduce major features. They can only fix trivial bugs, like tabs coloring and obscure language support.

For 3 years none of my 22 bugs was fixed in OO; they definitely won't in LO.

[sydbat]

I am not familiar with Libra Office. Did someone fork Open Office again?Yes.

However, this is a very specialized version that only people born between September 23 and October 22 are allowed to download between September 23 and October 22 and run between September 23 and October 22...not necessarily in the same calendar year. :-\"

[marl30]

No. They have no work forces to fix serious problems or introduce major features. They can only fix trivial bugs, like tabs coloring and obscure language support.

For 3 years none of my 22 bugs was fixed in OO; they definitely won't in LO.

But part of the split with the OOo developers was caused by Oracles' refusal to listen to the suggestion of developers, which probably would have addressed a lot of bugs and brought new features. This is why they forked OOo into LO.

Do you really believe they are not trying to fix bugs? Then why do you think LO had two update releases in less than a month? And what do you think they have planned for the major release set for May?