LibreOffice Adds Voice To 'Ditch Windows For Linux' Campaign
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The LibreOffice project is preparing to cut some Windows support - and encourages users to switch to Linux.
The Document Foundation, the organization that backs and guides development of LibreOffice since Oracle dropped the ball, has a strong point of view about the future. Some of it is very visible, in a blog post about the looming end of Windows 10, but some is buried in the development notes about the work-in-progress next version, which will be LibreOffice 25.8.
The title of the blog post is self-explanatory. The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it's time to consider Linux and LibreOffice. They're right. The post also links to the KDE-backed End of 10 campaign, which we covered a month ago. That site's list of places to go for help has been improved with a zoomable world map, but we feel it still badly needs some kind of hierarchical organization.
The blog also links to Distro Chooser, which is a noble idea, but with flawed execution. This site leads you through a set of questions and then recommends what Linux distributions might suit you. We found the presentation of the results overwhelming, though. It seems to be a list of all the candidates, color-coded according to how good a match they are. The Reg FOSS desk generally feels that "Less is more," and here, just distilling the results down to, say, a top three would far be more helpful.
We are sure that some people will dismiss any and all Linux distros as being inferior, just as they do of LibreOffice itself. That's not the point. The point is that it is a free alternative. You get the reward of breaking free of paid-for software you don't own.
Oracle washed its hands of OpenOffice and then dumped it on the Apache Foundation more than a decade ago.
OpenOffice doesofficially still exist but there hasn't been a new release in a couple of years, and we recommend avoiding it. LibreOffice is a direct in-place upgrade and will open the same files.
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