Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
I want to thank all of you who replied to my question. As usual I got many different viewpoints and as such have decided to install LibreOffice give it a go. As for those concerned about my implied failure to do my own discovery...well that is exactly why I've been a participating member of the Debian 'community' for many years. It's not that I did not research the area, just that I wanted outside input from some who are already on the road to changing over. I really appreciate the input. I have also found over the years, that in many cases, points of concern are brought out that I may have NOT thought of. Such was the case here. Thanks! Frosty -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1309536986.4739.8.ca...@beast.home
Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:55:22PM +0200, Steven wrote: On Wed, 2011-06-29 at 13:26 -0500, John W Foster wrote: [cut] 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? It is supposed to be faster, has more bugs fixed, and so on. It also appears to me much more active in development than OpenOffice. These questions are not intended to start a flame war! I have never even looked at LibreOffice, as I did not need to. Now I'm concerned that a large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a new format that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff. I wouldn't worry to much about that, LibreOffice is effectively a fork of OpenOffice.org, both go their separate ways from that point on, but much will remain the same at first, such as the format in which documents are saved. The user interface has changed a bit, but not dramatically, I doubt it you'll see the difference at first, some dialogs have changed a bit, but most people seem to agree that is for the better. In my experience (I run Debian testing with LibreOffice) you can see LibreOffice as a major upgrade of OpenOffice itself. I believe the OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice change is similar to what happened a few years back with XFree86 to Xorg. Both are roughly similar products and perform the same function - as far as a user is concerned, there should be no real difference - but the product being switched to has a better developer community so changes can be introduced quicker (newer features, more stability fixes etc). This is the beauty of open source. :) -- Paul Saunders signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:26:39 -0500, John W Foster wrote: 1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few days ago? I suppose because is a community based development and supported upstream. 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported? OpenOffice is dead by now. I mean, Oracle is no more investing resources on it, there was an official announcement not so long ago. 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? That is still maintained and community driven (Oracle is a comercial company, in the end...). These questions are not intended to start a flame war! I have never even looked at LibreOffice, as I did not need to. Now I'm concerned that a large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a new format that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff. Any rational comments are appreciated. The sooner you start testing it, the better. Greetings, -- Camaleón -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/pan.2011.06.30.13.44...@gmail.com
Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
On Wed, 29 Jun 2011, John W Foster wrote: 1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few days ago? Because that PR was unfortunately worded. We are not _switching to_ LibreOffice, we're switching package names. We've been shipping what is now named LibreOffice all along: LibreOffice is derived from go-ooo, which was the fork of OpenOffice.org that we were shipping. 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported? Someone might see fit to package apache-ooo.org, but right now there is only LibreOffice (formely go-ooo) in Debian. Support for the packages that have been shipped in Squeeze has not been discontinued at all. 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? See above. Right now, LibreOffice 3.3/3.4 are newer versions of what Debian has been shipping. But if you want to compare LibreOffice with Apache OpenOffice.org, it is best to ask that again in about one year. It is still too soon to ask that kind of question. -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110630202934.ga5...@khazad-dum.debian.net
OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few days ago? 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported? 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? These questions are not intended to start a flame war! I have never even looked at LibreOffice, as I did not need to. Now I'm concerned that a large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a new format that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff. Any rational comments are appreciated. Thanks! Frosty -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1309371999.13205.5.ca...@beast.home
Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
2011/6/29 John W Foster jfoster81...@verizon.net: 1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few days ago? Because the community has switched to LibreOffice. 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported? Perhaps by Oracle, the Apache foundation, IBM or whomever may be interestested, not by Debian, unless some maintainer decides it is worth his while. 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? Community, which translates into development, support and bug fixing critical mass. For now, this holds true, with LibreOffice developing faster, deeper and better than OpenOffice.org since Oracle, after Sun, declined to fulfill their promise of involving the community in the development of OpenOffice.org, and furthermore declined to get involved in the community aroung the Document foundation and LibreOffice. In other words, the .org in OpenOffice is a sham, and has been exposed as such by the Document foundation and LibreOffice. I would add that copyleft also makes LibreOffice better, but that is at least slightly more controversial. Now I'm concerned that a large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a new format that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff. No, indeed LibreOffice inherits the same compatibility and data formats as OpenOffice.org does, and the community which defined the ODF is behind LibreOffice today, not OpenOffice.org. Furthermore, the licensing model behind both projects ensure it is easier for LibreOffice to follow developments from OpenOffice.org than the reverse. Any rational comments are appreciated. I hope I was rational, and clear, enough. -- Skype:leandro.gfc.dutra?chat Yahoo!: ymsgr:sendIM?lgcdutra +55 (61) 3546 7191 Google Talk: xmpp:leand...@jabber.org +55 (11) 9406 7191 ICQ: AIM:GoIM?screenname=61287803 sip:leand...@iptel.org MSNIM:chat?contact=lean...@dutra.fastmail.fm -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/BANLkTikt=k-nzSXfsi=xfblrz_x91at...@mail.gmail.com
Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
On Wed, 2011-06-29 at 13:26 -0500, John W Foster wrote: 1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few days ago? From what I read and heard, most distributions switched, or are in the process of switching. It also appears most of the developers are behind LibreOffice, which has gained quite a number of new developers, cleaning up the code. You should read up on why LibreOffice has forked from OpenOffice. A short history can be found on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History But I'm sure others can give a much more detailed explanation. 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported? It is my understanding that OpenOffice will still be supported (security updates) for Debian stable (Lenny) until it is EOL. No new versions will be introduced as these are replaced in Debian with LibreOffice 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? It is supposed to be faster, has more bugs fixed, and so on. It also appears to me much more active in development than OpenOffice. These questions are not intended to start a flame war! I have never even looked at LibreOffice, as I did not need to. Now I'm concerned that a large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a new format that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff. I wouldn't worry to much about that, LibreOffice is effectively a fork of OpenOffice.org, both go their separate ways from that point on, but much will remain the same at first, such as the format in which documents are saved. The user interface has changed a bit, but not dramatically, I doubt it you'll see the difference at first, some dialogs have changed a bit, but most people seem to agree that is for the better. In my experience (I run Debian testing with LibreOffice) you can see LibreOffice as a major upgrade of OpenOffice itself. You don't need to worry about any existing documents, or learning a new user interface. As a user, you won't notice the difference at first (apart from the name change), it appears as just a new version of your existing office suite, getting faster, new features and it keeps improving. Any rational comments are appreciated. Thanks! Frosty Kind regards, Steven signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
On Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:26:39 -0500 John W Foster jfoster81...@verizon.net wrote: 1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few days ago? 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported? 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? These questions are not intended to start a flame war! I have never even looked at LibreOffice, as I did not need to. Now I'm concerned that a large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a new format that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff. Any rational comments are appreciated. From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice On 28 September 2010, several members of the OpenOffice.org project formed a new group called The Document Foundation. The Document Foundation created LibreOffice from their former project, over concerns that Oracle Corporation would either discontinue OpenOffice.org, or place restrictions on it as an open-source project, as it had OpenSolaris. It was originally hoped that the LibreOffice name would be provisional, as Oracle was invited to become a member of The Document Foundation. Oracle rejected offers to donate the OpenOffice.org brand to the project and demanded that all members of the OpenOffice.org Community Council involved with The Document Foundation step down from the OOo community council, citing a conflict of interest. The Go-oo project was discontinued in favour of LibreOffice. Improvements made by the project are being merged into LibreOffice. Improvements made in other forks are also expected to be incorporated into LibreOffice. Other improvements being made is the use of Java is being reduced to reduce any possible security issue and to improve application stability. As a result of the fork of OpenOffice.org into LibreOffice, and the resulting loss of developers, Oracle announced in April 2011 that it was terminating the commercial development of OpenOffice.org. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110629220511.1f00a...@jresid.jretrading.com
Re: OpenOffice vs LibreOffice Questions
On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 01:26:39PM -0500, John W Foster wrote: 1. Why is Debian switching to LibreOffice, per the posting I saw a few days ago? 2. Is OpenOffice still going to be supported? 3. What makes LibreOffice better than OpenOffice? These questions are not intended to start a flame war! I have never even looked at LibreOffice, as I did not need to. Now I'm concerned that a large body of work covering several years will have to be 'ported' to a new format that I will have to learn a lot of new stuff. Any rational comments are appreciated. If you have never looked at LibreOffice, what makes you think that your OOo files won't work as is? If you would bother to look instead of drawing an uninformed conclusion, you would find that the formats are identical. That's why it's called open format. -- Bob Holtzman If you think you're getting free lunch, check the price of the beer. Key ID: 8D549279 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
