Libreoffice or Openoffice - which is better? ONLYOFFICE or LibreOffice: choosing the best Microsoft alternative.

Software products LibreOffice and Microsoft Offcie are world famous office suites. The first of them is completely free and free, the second is paid program corporate level, which is a conventional standard for maintaining documents and various reporting.

Both programs have a long history of development and are almost identical in purpose. In the operating room Linux system Only Libreoffice can fully work, but is that really that bad? Than Microsoft Office is better? In this article we will try to compare these two products and also find out which is better Libreoffice or Microsoft Office. As expected, we will compare by category.

LibreOffice was first released in 2001. Then software package developed by Sun Microsystems and called OpenOffice. From the very beginning the program was distributed under open license GPL and was completely free. Its code was based on the StarOffice project. Then, Sun was purchased by Oracle, and most of the developers founded the non-profit organization The Document Foundation, which began developing a fork of OpenOffice - LibreOffice.

Microsoft Office began to develop much earlier. First version Microsoft company released in 1990. Professional programmers worked on the program and new versions were released almost every year. Therefore, a situation arose when, at the first release of LibreOffice (then OpenOffice), the product from Microsoft was almost 10 years ahead of it.

2. Development and coordination

As already mentioned, the non-profit organization The Document Foundation is currently coordinating the development of LibreOffice. Initially, the TDF included only Google, SUSE, Red Hat and FSF, but later other organizations such as Intel and AMD joined. Product development is mainly carried out by enthusiasts, but many companies allocate developer resources to develop the project. Previously, many developers singled out SUSE, followed by Red Hat and Canonical. On average, there are 300 active developers working on a project, but this is still not enough for very rapid development.

Microsoft Office is controlled by one company. All developers are hired full time and give their all to this project. Thanks to this, Microsoft Office is developing much faster than LibreOffice.

3. Package contents

Each office suite contains everything necessary programs for editing documents. Microsoft Office includes:

• Word- word processor for working with documents;
• Excel- program for working with spreadsheets;
• PowerPoint- program for creating presentations;
• Outlook- management personal information and by mail;
• Access- working with databases;
• Binder- management of binders;
• FrontPage- creation of web pages;
• PhotoDraw- graphic editor;
• Publisher- a program for working with business cards, booklets and other publications;
• Project- project management.

LibreOffice has the following package:

• Writer- for editing text documents;
• Calc- for editing spreadsheets;
• Base- for database management;
• Draw- editing vector images;
• Math- work with mathematical formulas;
• Impress- a program for creating presentations.

As you can notice, LibreOffice lacks some programs, for example, mail client, graphic editor etc. But this is not a problem, since there are many such programs with open source, which you can use. For example, the same Thenderbird, Gimp, Krita.

4. Functionality

One of the important differences between LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office is the difference in functionality. Over so many years of development, LibreOffice has largely caught up with Microsoft, so ordinary users may not notice the shortcomings, but they still exist.

In the Libreoffice text editor, you cannot mark text with the left mouse button by clicking in front of the row, there is no support for sections to delimit formatting at all, setting the size of the margins on the ruler does not stick to the divisions, which can make it difficult to select correct size. Inserting images into the footer does not work correctly; inserting short and em dash using keyboard shortcuts.

In Writer, the deviations are insignificant and, in principle, you can put up with them; in Calc, there are also several problems: MS Office macros are not supported, you cannot move one cell, smart auto-filling of cells by right button, the names of the functions are only in English, and besides, you cannot use a function from a macro. The most significant drawback of all the programs in the package is that if you open them Microsoft document Office, it may look completely different.

One of the advantages of LibreOffice is the support for extensions, with the help of which you can greatly improve the performance of the program. MS Office only supports Basic programming, while LibreOffice allows you to use Basic, JavaScript, BeanShell and Python, and also supports the ability to synchronize documents with cloud storage, such as Google Drive, OneDrive and so on. LibreOffice has better support for working with large documents, as well as other possibilities.

From all of the above, we can conclude that despite its shortcomings, LibreOffice is completely usable. And in some cases, it even turns out that LibreOffice is better than MS Office.

5. Interface

This is the most basic difference office packages Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, which prevents many users from switching to using the free package. The LibreOffice interface looks very old-fashioned, the icons are too simple, and the menu items are not in the usual places. Libreoffice is trying to catch up with Microsoft Office, in version 5.3 a ribbon interface was added, but the program is still far from the original in terms of interface.

The Microsoft Office interface has become the standard for office programs. Most users are accustomed to this interface. Even when Microsoft changed the interface standards in Microsoft Office 2010, many did not want to switch to the new version.

6. Platforms

In terms of supported platforms, the comparison between libreoffice and microsoft office is clearly on the side of the former. LibreOffice fully supports Windows, Linux, MacOS, and a port for Android is currently being developed. Also, a version of LibreOffice Online was recently released, given that it is distributed as open source, you can install it on your server.

Micorosoft Office only has a version for Windows and MacOS, as well as an application for Android. The online version of MS Office has reduced functionality and is available for free on the official website, but you cannot deploy it in your infrastructure. There is also a paid and more complete online version Office 365.

Conclusions

In this article we looked at the main differences between libreoffice and microsoft office. It's easy to understand that Microsoft Office is far ahead of its competitor in most respects. But it has two advantages, it is support Linux platforms, and also free to use. It is very easy to understand which is better libreoffice or microsoft office, but perhaps large corporations need to use the package from Microsoft, and ordinary users LibreOffice functionality will be sufficient.

Some already significant time ago, the space of my psychological growing up reached computers and gadgets. I mean, down to the software on them. The problem, in general, is clear to everyone. The difficulty is that it is not close. But I had to grow up and I started legalizing.

In practice, it turned out that everything is much simpler than it seemed at first, and you just need to start paying all your attention to it. Firstly, at first it turns out that commercial software, without which you are kind of without hands and which cannot be adequately replaced with free analogues, is in fact the cat crying. I only have 4 such programs, and all of them are small and inexpensive utilities. (On a tablet/phone it’s even easier - programs there cost an average of $2, and it’s not even clear how much of a redneck you have to be to steal them. And the shares in Google Play Happens all the time in the market: if you just wanted to use only licensed software, everything would work out without really straining or spending much money.) And secondly, the working DreamSpark from Microsoft solves all the problems with the software of the Redmond giant. Or rather, all but one - our DreamSpark does not include Office.

And now I don’t have a single broken program on my machine. But something needs to be done with the Office, especially since I really need it for work. I looked at the prices for Microsoft Office- and this is a complete robbery. For home version(it's enough for me) they want $105 for a license for one car. But there is still parent laptops... Fuck it, this price is far from reasonable, in my opinion.

I went to look free analogues. To be honest, there’s not much to look at - you have to choose from one LibreOffice. This is a fork of OpenOffice, which, having passed into the hands of Oracle along with Sun, became... Well, like everything else with Oracle, in general. So that leaves only LibreOffice. Therefore, I decided to drive it in “combat” conditions to understand whether it could be adequate for me replacing Microsoft Office.

First, a word processor. In Microsoft Office it is Word, in LibreOffice it is Writer. Word processor I use it most often - fonts, colors, alignment, tables, inserting illustrations, that's all. And impressions of LibreOffice Writer I have quite positive ones. He can do everything I need, on my DOC files. full compatibility with Word in both directions. There are some minor problems, but overall everything is fine here. Summary - test.

Secondly, presentations. In Microsoft Office it is PowerPoint, in LibreOffice it is Impress. I worked with him a lot for a month and... I was not at all satisfied. In principle, all problems can be solved, but general impression- many small tedious problems and even bugs. After this month of agony, I made a PowerPoint presentation this week for comparison (I have one at work), and it was like a breath of fresh air. Everything is clear, predictable, without glitches, and all these convenient little things are worth a lot. Alas, Impress also has compatibility problems - there’s nothing to even say about PPTX files, the entire LibreOffice works poorly with the new X-formats, but also with the correct opening/saving of regular PPT files big problems. It turns out that in addition to problems and bugs, Impress is also just a thing in itself, and this is already very bad. A resume is no credit.

Third, spreadsheets. In Microsoft Office it is Excel, in LibreOffice it is Calc. Here I just can’t say anything, because I myself don’t make any spreadsheets as it is unnecessary, but only read/fill out ready files, which they send me at work. I can only say one thing: everything that was sent to me at work opens in Calc and is displayed correctly, but there are no even somewhat complex formulas or macros there. Just tables with a minimum of automation. Well, everything is ok with them, but you have to understand that this doesn’t mean anything. Collective Internet claims that from the point of view of compatibility with Microsoft Office, the situation in Calc is the worst in all of LibreOffice: formulas and macros are more or less complex - and Calc raises its paws to the top. The resume is a test, but we keep it in mind low level my requirements for him.

There was no need to compare the rest of the big Office: instead of Outlook, I have been using it for a long time and with pleasure Mozilla Thunderbird, and Access and Visio are available via DreamSpark.

General impression: Microsoft Office, of course, is head and shoulders above LibreOffice, no matter how much you would like the opposite. In some places the difference is already small, but in others there is still an abyss. In my case, everything would have been fine if not for the presentations. In general, I think that the office problem remains unresolved for me.

I started thinking about Microsoft Office 365. There is a different form of payment - not a one-time fee, but a subscription, but our Ukrainian price looks very reasonable, and at the same time for this money you can install it on 5 computers at once. So yourself family subscription it turns out. Friends, do any of you use it? Tell us about your impressions, please. Otherwise I'm still thinking.

By default, LibreOffice applications are configured to save to OpenOffice format- ODF and the like, which may make them inaccessible to users of older Microsoft Office office suites (versions released earlier version 2007).

To force LibreOffice to save in the format you want (for example - Microsoft Word 2003), then you need to do the following:

1. Open Options; to do this, in any program from the LibreOffice package, select the “Tools” menu item, and in it the “Options” sub-item.

3. Now we have to select for each LibreOffice application the format in which we need to save documents.

For backward compatibility with older versions of Microsoft Office 97, 2000, XP, 2003, you should select:

Editing a Configuration File

If you need to install LibreOffice on large quantities computers (for example, in an enterprise), then this approach to configuration can be tedious. In this case, there is the following way:

1. Create text file, and copy the following there:

And save it under the name registrymodifications.xcu.

2. Copy this file at the following address: %appdata%\LibreOffice\4\user(for the third version of LibreOffice the address will be different - %appdata%\LibreOffice\3\user). The current user will now save documents to Microsoft format Office.

3. In order for this to apply to all new users, do the following: go to the directory " %HomeDrive%\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data", and create a folder there " LibreOffice", in it the directory " 4 "(for the third version of LibreOffice we create a directory " 3 "), and in it we create a directory " user". Move your file there registrymodifications.xcu.

As a result, the path to the file should look something like this: " C:\Documents and Settings\Default User\Application Data\LibreOffice\4\user\registrymodifications.xcu".

Your file saving settings will now be applied to all new users.

Configuration via group policies

You can also configure the format of saved files via group policies. About how to do it.

The office suites of the two named companies have a lot in common, although there are significant differences

For a long time, Microsoft with its Office was considered the recognized leader among office suite manufacturers, but now it has another opponent that deserves attention - LibreOffice.

It’s safe to say that the office suites of the two companies mentioned have a lot in common, although there are also significant differences. LibreOffice's package is compatible with a large number operating systems including Windows, OS X and Linux, while new version Microsoft Office is only suitable for Windows 7 and Windows 8. The question is not whose office suite is “better” or which package has “more features.” The question is what suits you best, what do you really need. Now that LibreOffice 4.1 has appeared, it makes sense to compare the office suites of the two companies.

Working with texts: Word vs Writer

It's safe to say that LibreOffice Writer and Microsoft Word are among the best text editors. If you have used Microsoft Word before, it will be easy for you to switch to Writer, and vice versa. And in many ways, Writer will even give Word a few points ahead.

Editors are incredibly similar in terms of the functions they perform. Writer duplicates all the main ones Word functions: Features include a stunning grammar editor, reliable system automatic saving, support for a huge variety of formats and much more. Changing one editor to another will not be any problem, they work and look the same. And if you are just learning to use text editor, it will be easier for you to learn how to use Writer, it is easier to learn and use.

For years, Word's unrivaled strengths included rich editing and tracking. changes made. However, today Writer has the same functionality. With the help of the latter you can track changes, edits and everything like that.

Tables: Excel vs Calc

Creating spreadsheets is one of the main office functions. Microsoft package Excel and company for a long time was a recognized leader in this area. However, most users may well be satisfied with the features offered LibreOffice Calc. However, if you work with tables at a professional level or if you are already used to using Excel, Calc is not quite suitable.

Basically Calc and Excel work the same way. If you are a novice user, then most likely you will not notice much difference between them. Both Calc and Excel perform basic calculations, simple math calculations, and create tables different formats. However, if you use a lot of macros and multitask in Excel, then you will have problems when switching to Calc.

The fact is that Calc has its own macro language, and it is not always compatible with the format VBA Excel. This means that if you try to switch from Excel to Calc, you will have to redo a lot of your macros. However Calc macros read well Excel language(not vice versa): if you forward tables to your friends or colleagues, you can be sure that the LibreOffice Calc office suite will be sufficient for these purposes.

Presentation Software: PowerPoint vs Impress

Even the word “PowerPoint” itself has long been considered almost synonymous with the word “presentation”, and for good reason: it is high-quality software that allows you to create presentations that are superior to any other visual representations. The presentation software from LibreOffice is called Impress; it has quite a lot of functions, but the company's employees did not set out to convince users of other programs of their superiority - it is a simple and convenient thing.

To date main problem for Impress users is that sometimes problems arise when working with presentations created in PowerPoint. When working with such presentations, some fonts may disappear and other rendering problems may arise. However, if you're creating presentations from scratch, Impress will help you make them very well, albeit without all the "conveniences" that PowerPoint offers. Although, according to by and large, the only “inconveniences” of Impress include the lack of some slide animation capabilities and support for the video export function. Impress also lacks the ability to create animated charts and does not have the ability to group work over presentations.

However, Impress also has its advantages. This software is capable of exporting presentations in the most various formats, which makes life much easier for the user, since there is no need to look for a person who prefers PowerPoint. Despite the great similarity software Impress and PowerPoint, and remembering that none of them will magically bring us an Oscar for the presentation we create, it should be noted that both programs are quite easy to learn how to work with.

Database Software: Access vs Base

The last major piece of software in both office suites is the database management system. Database management application Microsoft data Access has been installed on computers by default for a long time, but the LibreOffice Base application today is a worthy competitor to it.

The main difference between Base and Access is their compatibility with operating systems. Access app is compatible with Windows only, while Base is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux. Otherwise, the applications are very similar: when connected to external databases, they both generate the necessary documentation, reports, structured query language and tables. The Base application is designed to work with small databases and does not itself launch any processes, therefore, again, for a more advanced multi-level work use Access.

Both app packages have a smart and intuitive interface and are very similar in use. As you can see, the majority LibreOffice programs created by analogy with programs from Microsoft. Only, perhaps, there is nothing similar to Outlook in the LibreOffice package. But LibreOffice is always free. The rest is up to you.