HN Reader

First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly.

Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps.

From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice or Collabora Desktop Classic is that it has a sane UI/menubar visual paradigm. (Which MS obliterated eons ago.)

But let's talk about what matters: Collabora (the online document suite) is slow as heck.

It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.

That should be the top priority. Full stop.

LibreOffice works fine for desktop. But, for Collabora, the web experience needs to be fast. The lag in Collabora is simply unacceptable.

People expect online, and they expect collaborative, and they expect nearly instantaneous updates (at least not painful to type and wait for screen to update).

Talk about misplaced priorities. In my very humble opinion.

If anyone from Collabora Office is looking, there is a weird paragraph with syntax-colored HTML in https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-online-now-av... "*A Note on Early Releases"

I’m right there with you on the desktop side. The main reason I love LibreOffice is specifically because it isn’t bloated. It has a minimal footprint and loads fast, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the resource-heavy alternatives. Keeping that speed and simplicity is exactly why it’s still my go-to.

Seems to be a dumbed down UI with less customization, but built with shiny new browser tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS)! Also limited macros. No embedded Java

I have super light office requirements these days and those are satisfied with OnlyOffice (https://www.onlyoffice.com/). I do believe it's an Electron app but works quite fast in my personal experience. (Probably faster than LibreOffice if it's still like the last time I used it).

It's open source: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/

I hadn't looked at the Github page in a while. They seem to have a ton of new features one of which regrettably is a very front end center AI presence.

I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background.

I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box.

I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Excel got rid of 26+ years ago).

Uninstalled.

Download button takes me to windows store. That doesn't work on my machine. On Linux got as a flatpak.

Collabora vs LibreOffice branding is always quite confusing to me.

How is this project related to LibreOffice and also to what used to be called LibreOffice Online? (And Collabora Office Classic. And Collabora Online)

For those who tried it, how good is the Calc (Excel equivalent) and Impress (PowerPoint equivalent)?

Nice, does it have Excel for Windows hotkeys?

Man, welcome to the current millenium. Somewhat. I really love FOSS but LibreOffice’s bulky and awkward UI was always too much for me. Happy to see Collabora doing it a bit better.

Why is 'Differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic' document gated behind a email-wall? Nothing but enshittification.

https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/differences-bet...

There has been a conflict building up within the LibreOffice ecosystem, with Collabora publishing a desktop version of their web-focused LO-based suite, while TDF (The Document Foundation) has decided to hire several developers to work on an on-line and potentially mobile version. So, essentially, both "sides" are taking each other on, even though a plurality of LibreOffice commits are made by Collabora employees. There have also been some "beheading" in the form of the expulsion of a few members of the TDF, particularly the former long-time TDF board-of-directors chairperson who is with Collabora (previously Allotropia) and a couple of others - a highly contentious decision which some argue is contrary to the TDF statutes.

This is a no way a complete or a fair summary of everything that has gone on; and it's been simmering for a number of years now.

Due disclosure: I am a TDF trustee.

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About Collabora Office for Desktop itself: Personally, I don't see it as being up to par. The main thing going for it is that its ribbon-ish interface is more polished than LibreOffice's. But - I don't like ribbons; and features are missing; and it feels clunkier than LO itself.

Hmm. I can't actually find the link to start using it to try it out. ? It offers a Free Demo that is behind some kind of details harvesting form. I don't want a demo. Is this usable enough to move a small (6 people) team away from google sheets ? hard to say since i can't test it and it doesn't say what the cost is. Stop hiding your shit behind hard to navigate/use/privacy invading bullshit. Just let us use the stuff. If you must gimp it, do it in a way that doesn't stop us using it first.

Is it based on some open source core? Like the original Collabora Office?

I briefly tried it : I don't see the point, there is no way to connect it to your online collabora instance or directly to Nextcloud or anything except your local files.

Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances and is not an app bundled inside a browser.

"Get a quote"

Okay, so what does it cost?

Why doesn't Amazon adopt libreoffice?

I use Collabora online all the time (via Nextcloud) but I don't quite understand why I'd use this over LibreOffice on the desktop, which feels significantly more powerful than the online tool.

The few screenshots they show make this look similar to the existing online tool, which is fine for a lot of work, but like Word Online hits a wall with more complex documents.

> The New Collabora Office for Desktop

> online.

Wrong answer. I want offline.

There is no reason for an office programm to connect to the internet.

Honestly, OnlyOffice works extremely well for my purposes, and I install it on all my friends' PCs. It looks a lot like MS Office and is quite compatible with a variety of documents I've tried, in my experience.

This is probably great software. But the design, both of the site and the office software, looks so dated, it doesn’t even tempt me to try it