LibreOffice is preinstalled in Pop OS, and as someone who loves the idea of FOSS I want to use it, but inevitably I just use Google docs or Office Online. Is it really worth learning? Has anyone successfully incorporated it into your workflow?

  • ardent_abysm
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    1 year ago

    Not having constant internet access, LibreOffice is a valuable tool to me. I kind of dread the day when the development of fundamental desktop applications assumes a constant internet connection.

    • ProtonBadger@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Same, I’ve used a lot of office suites over the years so they’re all the same to me. LO is free so I use it at home and store my files on Cryptomator+Dropbox.

      Excited for Gimp 3.0, the dev snapshots are working well now but I’ll need the Resynthesizer plugin.

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I use collabora, which is essentially an online webUI implementation of libreoffice that can integrate with nextcloud, which I self-host.

    All the benefits of an online office suite, all on my own hardware.

  • marcos@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Well, I have a license for MS Office from work that I have never actually installed, because Libre Office is just much simpler to deal with. I’m sure at some point I will need it, but since WFH started there has been no such time.

    Honestly, I have no idea how people can stand MS Word. It’s a complete piece of shit that barely works. If you want it for a text editor, you will have a much better experience with any other suite. But Excel is good, and Power Point does that thing it does quite well (if that’s a good thing, it’s up to opinion). Those are harder to replace.

  • bquinlan@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Yes. I’ve been using it since the old OpenOffice days. It works well, it’s easy to learn, it’s well supported, and it’s free.

  • lightingnerd@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I use LibreOffice! Calc, Draw, and Writer are very user friendly once you get used to where the tools are. Impress is a pretty good replacement for Powerpoint: the stock graphics leave a lot to be desired–but that’s a simple fix with a good stock image service. About the only thing LO doesn’t do is notes, but I’d check out Xournal++ if you were looking for a way to replace OneNote. Plus, LibreOffice doesn’t push OneDrive down your throat. It’s been a win-win for me.

    Another thing to consider if you really like typesetting is to learn LaTeX: it’s a slightly steep learning curve(especially for advanced topics), but it’ll do things that your typical WYSIWYG word-processing suite couldn’t dream of doing. Plus there are a lot of templates available that you can adapt for your purposes.

    • Anamana@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I exclusively use the libre office suite and its apps since many years, but it’s defo not user friendly lol. The UX is confusing, outdated and ugly af. But at least it’s open-source, free and useful.

  • albert@lemmy.sysctl.io
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    1 year ago

    Used LIbreOffice throughout college. I use it when I need to, though I don’t use any office productivity apps beyond a spreadsheet these days. When I DO need something like that, I Just use the LibreOffice integrated into Nextcloud.

  • Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    For me, yes, and not just for personal or academic use. I’ve created and editted countless business documents with it. I’ve gotten at least four jobs with the resume I wrote with it.

  • JakeBacon
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    1 year ago

    There was a time where I’d boot up Libre office for tasks that Google docs wouldn’t cover. But it’s been so long I don’t remember what it was.

    Now I just use Docs for all my personal work.

  • rwsl@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I prefer OnlyOffice over LibreOffice cause it seems to have better support for MS formats.

    • linux_user_6967@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yep, LibreOffice misses up with the format sometimes so I wouldn’t use it on documents that I’m gonna send to someone

  • Michael Murphy (S76)@lemmy.worldM
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    1 year ago

    If you need collaborative editing then Google’s office suite is unmatched. Otherwise LibreOffice is perfectly fine as an alternative to keep your personal data off the cloud.

    I used OpenOffice, and later LibreOffice, for all of my assignments in grade school and college. If you know how to use one office suite then you essentially already know how to use them all. There are some guides that can help you find certain features in the menus.

    Compatibility-wise, if you intend to share documents across systems that may also require editing the documents, avoid saving documents in the Microsoft OOXML formats; use the Open Document Formats instead. You may also want to embed the fonts used in the document in case the person who opens the document doesn’t have the same fonts. As a good portion of document layout issues are caused by missing fonts being replaced by substitutes that have different character heights and widths.

    Finalized read-only versions of your document should be exported as PDFs. LibreOffice does have the option of generating a hybrid PDF that contains the original ODF source embedded in it, which can be convenient if you’d like to bundle the read-only PDF with an editable ODF source.

    Although I would recommend Scribus over LibreOffice Draw because it’s much easier to snap elements to a precise grid for perfect precision with a printer.

  • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I use nothing else, unless my employer forces me to use MS office, offline. No online documents here, you never know when they sell your data…

  • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I use LibreOffice to fill out important documents and taxes. I don’t trust google, or myself for that matter, to hold that kind of data securely in the cloud without encryption.

  • thanksbrother@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I used OpenOffice and then LibreOffice all the way through college. However in the past couple years I moved to a combination of Office 365 and VSCode because I used the OneDrive cloud storage which comes at a pretty solid discount.

    • thanksbrother@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I don’t enjoy using Google docs - but I seem to be an exception to the rule there. Most people seem to see no reason to have anything else.

      • korokua@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        same here! The whole Google suite is just so unbearably slow at the school i go to, but we’re all forced to use it.

      • Tim.jl
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        1 year ago

        I like Google slides, but I’m not a fan of the others.