

Ask HN: OpenOffice or LibreOffice? - gsivil

Which platform is more viable? Have you used any of these programs extensively? Is LibreOffice any better than OpenOffice in terms of equations handling? My experience with OpenOffice with respect to equations was at best terrible. I wish there was an open platform to replace Word but it seems that we are still far from that( with the respect to the developers of OO and LO).<p>Please do not suggest LaTeX as alternative for practical purposes(file sharing with colleagues that do not use it)
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brudgers
If you need the features of Office, a couple of hundred dollars is probably
money well spent. Particularly when your colleagues rely on your formatting.

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gsivil
I agree with that. But imagine having to buy licenses for a group of people
and at the same time giving up some of the advantages in using Linux. On top
of that having 2-3 machines and getting Office for all of them is not the most
trivial of expenses. I am a recent convert to Linux and the only thing that
keeps my connections to MS is Word.

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brudgers
Free is the price, not the cost. It's easy to burn through $1000 in lost
productivity - with a team of three it will take less than a day.

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Gentleman_Ryan
As of now, LibreOffice is equal to, if not better, then OpenOffice as it was
only forked off of it about 4 months ago. If you're already using OO.o then
switching to LibreOffice will be a snap and you won't have to worry about
Oracle.

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gsivil
Do you have any idea about the future of these products?

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Mithrandir
LibreOffice feels somewhat more fast than OpenOffice. Of course, I never had
much of a problem with OO (except for speed.)

