
LibreOffice 3.5.4 released with up to 100% performance improvements - Garbage
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2012/05/30/the-document-foundation-announces-libreoffice-3-5-4/
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eliben
I really dislike the term "up to N%" - this reminds me of sleazy commercials
reporting "up to 80% discount". 0.2% is also "up to 100%". Can't more accurate
figures be reported?

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mtgx
It could mean it's 100% faster for some tasks. So it could be 100% faster in
loading docx or whatever, and only 20% faster in loading .doc. Are you looking
for something like an average speed improvement? That probably wouldn't be
very accurate, either. But they could say the new LibreOffice is 20%-100%
faster, I suppose.

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eliben
How can it be 100% faster at anything? This is mathematically impossible. If a
task used to take 100 seconds, 1 second (an unlikely improvement!) is just 99%
faster.

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zokier
Throughput can be 100% faster. Eg if it could previously decode docx at
100kb/s and now can do it 200kb/s then it would be 100% faster.

Or wouldn't you say that a car that goes 100 mph is 100% faster than a car
that goes 50 mph?

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epo
No, I'd say it goes twice as fast.

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chc
That's the same thing. "Twice as fast" = "Two times as fast" = "200% as fast"
= "100% faster"

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av500
Does it import Microsoft document formats 100% better? That' _the_ biggest
issue that Open/LibreOffice has and until that one is solved for good, the
rest does not matter much...

EDIT: not wanting to contribute further to the fall of HN, I edited M$ into
Microsoft

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AlexFromBelgium
I would argue that's a Microsoft problem... I don't think office files are
even compatible with their own standard:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML> .

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av500
A problem _for_ Microsoft? or one _by_ Microsoft? Yes, sure it's caused _by_
Microsoft, but it has to be fixed on the LibreOffice side, since I am sure
Microsoft won't do anything about it.

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bad_user
I've had compatibility problems between different versions of Microsoft
Office.

This is also Microsoft's problem.

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streptomycin
It's not nearly as big a problem for Microsoft. First of all, the
compatibility problems are much bigger between LibreOffice and MS Office than
between different versions of MS Office. Secondly, if you tell your colleague,
"Oh, the margins are screwed up because I upgraded to MS Office 2051", they'll
just shrug it off. If you tell them, "Oh, I'm using this new software called
LibreOffice because blah blah blah", they'll probably yell at you for being a
moron and wasting their time.

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bad_user
If my colleagues ever said I'm a moron and that I'm waisting their time for
using LibreOffice ... I would tell them to either buy a Windows+Office license
for me, or otherwise go fuck themselves.

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streptomycin
And if you're in a position to tell your colleagues to go fuck themselves,
then you can do what you want. The rest of us aren't so lucky.

Also, the cost of a Windows+Office license is so small that pretty much any
company will happily buy it for an employee.

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dminor
Great. Now how about getting around to outline view, which just celebrated its
10th birthday in the OO bug database?

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sgt
Whether it's 100% or 40%, I'm very happy with this. The problem with
OpenOffice for many years was that it was very slow, and it's even a problem
today (e.g. if your machine is heavily loaded and you find yourself having to
start an office suite, you usually regret it).

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lloeki
Not just when under load. Up until now, it was a pain watching the UI match up
the information around caret position (e.g toolbar like bold, italic, font,
etc... and in the style window) _full seconds_ after it moved there.

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iwwr
So how is Apache's new OpenOffice since they got custodianship?

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Maakuth
Most of the community developers have jumped the bandwagon to work with
LibreOffice. It seems that the developers still with OpenOffice.org are mostly
working for IBM and Oracle. The project just did the first release
(<http://www.openoffice.org/news/aoo34.html>) after two years of silence, but
there's still a lot to do before they are featurewise competing with
LibreOffice. You can see a feature comparison here:
[http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-04-26-ooo-
compari...](http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-04-26-ooo-
comparison.html)

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samet
I can run new libre from /opt/libreoffice3.5/program only, without Gnome or
KDE. Old versions add softlinks to runnable paths. This new version doesn't.

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erkin_unlu
use gnome-do

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fidz
This is good news actually, we always want improvement in every new software
version.

But, i need a better, truly far better, presentation software. If we compare
between Ms Office, iWork, and Libre, the only thing i don't like with Libre is
the Impress. Impress do presentation like 10 years ago. No keynote-like (just
like MS do in Office 2k10) 3D animation, no simple color picker, no shadow
effects, no gradient,..

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kinleyd
I won't get into the nitty gritty of how much faster it is, or how that kind
of speed improvement should be calibrated. All I can say is it loads a heck-
of-a-lot faster than it did previously - and also add a big thank you to the
folks at LibreOffice.

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dmboyd
100%? so now instead of taking X amount of time to do something, it takes 0
time (X-X*100) to do something? Or have I completely misunderstood what a %
performance improvement is?

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ryankirkman
I think you're looking for an inverse relationship.

e.g. My car has 200hp and can do a quarter mile in 20 seconds. If I then
increase my car to 400hp (a 100% increase), let's pretend I can now do a
quarter mile in 10 seconds.

Thus, a 100% increase in performance drops cuts my quarter mile (or in this
case processing) time in half.

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velodrome
In general, I think vendors should be more transparent about performance and
reliability:

Microsoft Office 2011....Now using up to 30% less bugs, 20% faster load times,
and you get X amount of features.

At least performance/reliability would be considered a feature. It would be
better than a lot of the bloatware that comes out these days. Users should be
conditioned to ask about performance and reliability of a product rather than
how many features they added. You clearly see this from Apple but not
Microsoft.

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olaf
On Ubuntu 10.04 compared to Open Office Writer 3.2, storage of a 209 pages
document with Libre Office Writer 3.5.4.2 is even slower.

Program startup of Libre Office Writer is also slower.

Minor detail: after unpacking "LibO_3.5.4_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz"
I got a directory "LibO_3.5.4rc2_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US", the "rc2" lets
me doubt, that this is the release version.

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avallark
100% performance increase!! thats a bit too much of a statement.

I am wondering if a product can have an 100% performance increase, then it
must be pretty badly built the first time around. isnt it? I like openoffice,
and didnt really think it needed a 100% performance upgrade, but hey more is
better.

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jcurbo
So what makes it so much faster? Did they fix a major bug causing it to slow
down?

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noveltyaccount
If Libre Office or Open Office really want to get ahead, they need to innovate
on their user interface. Being libre/free isn't enough of a reason for some of
us, what we need is ease of use and productivity. The Ribbon has been a great
step forward IMO and I'd love to see the Libre team challenge it with
something even better. Traditional menu bars feel so... 90s.

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acheron
You are literally the first person (not counting Microsoft press releases)
that I have ever heard praise the ribbon UI. If you like it, great, but I'm
pretty sure you're in the minority.

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noveltyaccount
Literally every person I've talked to in the corporate world enjoys the
ribbon. Only geeks dislike it. It's like saying GUIs are stupid because a geek
can be proficient on a command line.

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gcb
Just fished helping the wife with a paper on libreoffice... Heck latex is the
ultimate user friendliness. But mostly because i can write in vim.

openoffice is a joke. Don't know if it's because i still can't find how to
fine tune key shortcuts but all the "speed" problems were me hunting down the
same 3 items in a menu over and over.

They should move all the focus on maintaining a non-word clone interface.

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antidoh
Yes exactly. I use LO because I use Linux and don't want to pay for Office on
Windows until/unless I have a requirement. But I detest using LO, and your
menu example characterizes my overall experience.

Chasing Office compatibility is a losing bet. I think they'd do much better
tracking Office at somwhere between 50 and 80%, with sensible
default/fallbacks, and spending the bulk of their time making LO the absolute
best office solution on Earth.

tl;dr If you try your hardest to be like Office, you're going to suck worse
than Office.

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erkin_unlu
oh really, can they open docx files on ubuntu 11.10 now? or do we just have to
watch libreoffice crash everytime trying opening one of those?

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samet
openoffice/libreoffice family can open docx for a long time.

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erkin_unlu
i know, but on a fresh ubuntu 11.10, it chooses to crash, now i updated to
3.5.4, it's finally OK with it. i hope at least.

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dbaupp
100% performance improvement? That seems a little ridiculous (and impossible).
I can't find the data that this claim comes from, so I have a feeling they
might mean 50% performance improvement (i.e. 1s => 0.5s). Is there more detail
anywhere?

(Edit: would it be possible to have an explanation for why this was downvoted?
If I've said something stupid/wrong, I'd like to be corrected please.)

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ars
Going from 1s to 0.5s is not a 100% improvement, it's a 50% decrease (in
time).

i.e.: 100% increase = 50% decrease.

Percents are weird to calculate.

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dbaupp
I know that going from 1 to 0.5 is a 50% decrease rather than a 100%
improvement. (I actually said this in the parent comment.)

But it's alright, I've got my definitions sorted out now.

