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posted by martyb on Thursday November 10 2016, @02:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the differences-are-good dept.

I find the Libre Office Update tool for the Windows version of the Suite is not really worth having at all. A notice will pop up indicating that an update is available, but the tool just goes to the Libre Office web site for you to download the full package manually. Compare that to the Pale Moon web browser, which will download small update packages when a new version becomes available. You do not need to remove the old version of Pale Moon to install the update, because its update tool takes care of it automatically.

Libre Office is a high profile Open Source application, I am surprised that their version for the Windows operating system does not have an easy upgrade path. I think that working on the Upgrade tool would be a worthy upgrade to the Suite, and the current version is holding back adoption of it.

Disclaimer: I am not a programmer, so I can't write an upgrade tool on my own. Also my employers owns any software I create (employment agreement).

[Ed note: I was debating whether or not to run this story. Sounds like it could lead to a good discussion. If LibreOffice can download deltas on other platforms, why not on Windows? What practical reason could there be?]


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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:15AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:15AM (#424975)

    I've got both Office systems installed, one is the Golden Angel, the other is the Bastard Child of Satan. Both do what I need to do just fine.

    So, which one do I hate, and which one do I keep using?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:26AM (#424980)

    Just use the One True Office, 365.

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:30AM

      by Gaaark (41) on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:30AM (#424983) Journal

      One true office to screw us all, and in the darkness ream us.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:59AM

        by Celestial (4891) on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:59AM (#424990) Journal

        Most attorneys and law offices seem to use Corel WordPerfect Office. At least the ones I work with do, anyway. That would make it more qualified to be the work of Sauron. :P

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @05:17AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @05:17AM (#425006)

          Yeah, I've seen that in my experience as well. I think that can be 100% explained by software momentum. The higher ups started out with WordPerfect and have refused to move to anything else. However, that trend does seem to be reversing because the larger firms are transitioning away because they have non-US clients and WP doesn't support Unicode or they like the Office 365 + 2016 use case of being able to access and edit anywhere and they don't have the same sort of compatibility issues. Smaller and medium size firms are also moving away because they are either too cheap (last I checked WP was almost $200 bucks), momentum of their own from new blood, Office 365 features, or are copying what the big firms do in an attempt to copy their success.

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @01:58PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @01:58PM (#425116)

            WordPerfect does line numbering the way that lawyers need it done ("pleading line numbering"). Courts have very picky requirements about line numbering, and Word never did it well. WordPerfect supports it out of the box. Some academics and architects still use WordPerfect for right-hand margin line numbering, too.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @04:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @04:12AM (#424993)

        > One true office to screw us all,

        ...which is why I still use Office 97 when I'm doing the writing/creating. Last version that does not phone home (afaik), still has normal menus and is damn fast on recent hardware. A bit of a pain to get working on Windows 7, but there are tips out there to help. I usually install this first on any new system so the MS installer doesn't muck up anything else.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:28AM

    by Gaaark (41) on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:28AM (#424982) Journal

    What is libreoffice for the win, Alex!

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Celestial on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:53AM

    by Celestial (4891) on Thursday November 10 2016, @03:53AM (#424987) Journal

    IIRC, most of the OpenOffice.org developers have jumped ship to LibreOffice over the past couple of years. So much so that Apache is considering shutting down OpenOffice.org entirely as it has few developers left. So, LibreOffice would be the safe bet to use.

    • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday November 10 2016, @09:04AM

      by pTamok (3042) on Thursday November 10 2016, @09:04AM (#425045)

      This is correct. However, your choice may be modified by whether you have strong opinions on the software licence used.

      Apache OpenOffice : Apache OpenOffice releases are made available under the Apache License 2.0. https://www.openoffice.org/license.html [openoffice.org]
      LibreOffice : LibreOffice is made available subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License v2.0 https://www.libreoffice.org/about-us/licenses/ [libreoffice.org]

      • (Score: 2) by TheReaperD on Thursday November 10 2016, @02:27PM

        by TheReaperD (5556) on Thursday November 10 2016, @02:27PM (#425125)

        The majority of the world doesn't care about licence details. Few people even care about the differences between open and closed licences and that's the difference between being beholden to a corporate overlord or not. To be nitpicky about the details of two truly open licences means you're either a lawyer, someone that has to deal with a very specific legal issue or someone with too much spare time and too much self-righteousness to spare.

        --
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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @04:05PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @04:05PM (#425163)

          sometimes it's not about self-righteousness. sometimes it's about not being a spineless, ignorant slave so you can leave the world a better place than you found it.

          • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 11 2016, @02:46PM

            by tangomargarine (667) on Friday November 11 2016, @02:46PM (#425678)

            Not in this case, though. Apache and Mozilla licenses are practically identical.

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