The Document Foundation updates LibreOffice Community to 7.1.1

A month after version 7.1 of LibreOffice hit the streets, the first update has landed replete with a swathe of bug fixes for the suite. The fixes lurk in the Community edition of LibreOffice, aimed squarely at enthusiasts and early adopters. The Document Foundation (TDF) would much prefer biz customers sign up for something …

[karlkarl]

"The fixes lurk in the Community edition of LibreOffice, aimed squarely at enthusiasts and early adopters"

"The Document Foundation (TDF) would much prefer biz customers sign up for something from the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications"

And yet I am neither of those things.

1) I am hardly enthusiastic. I hate having to use office software

2) Early adopter... hardly, I cringe every time my package manager has updated packages and keep them held for as long as possible.

3) As part of my professional work, I don't really deal with office documents either. So certainly not a biz customer.

I suspect this is all just lies and that LibreOffice "Community" is in fact just for normal people to use like normal software and just get on with their lives.

[needmorehare]

That is exactly what community edition is for

It is a stable, free version of the software which does not get many, many years of long-term support for each major release. However, when compared to Office 365, even the community version of LibreOffice looks like long term support. Most people really don't need to pay for it, ever.

However, if you choose to buy Collabora Office (one of many LibreOffice Enterprise suites) you get the benefit of tech support and many, many years of LTS patch support like the good old days for something like £15/user/year, which is cheaper than both Microsoft Office 365 and old perpetual volume licensed versions of Microsoft Office 2013/2016. When combined with a simple IMAP server and a decent e-mail software like eM Client, one can have a much cheaper and more productive time for a fraction of the cost.

Thanks in a large part to the UK Government, Microsoft has committed to maintaining full compatibility with OpenDocument formats, meaning people can use LibreOffice with confidence these days and abuse an old Office 2013 license for conversions in the rare cases that LO can't handle it.

[Doctor Syntax]

As you seem never to have looked at what it's actually about: the LibreOffice download page always offers two versions.

Currently its 7.1.1 and 7.0.4. The first is the enthusiast's version, the second is the stable version and was the one that used to be labelled for business deployment or words to that effect. Once 7.1 is deemed stable enough, say at 7.1.4 it will be the older option and 7.2.0 or possibly 8.0.0 will become the enthusiast's version.

The stable versions continue to receive bug fixes. The previous stable version was 6.4 and that ended up at 6.4.7.2 (at least). An OS's repository might offer something older - for Mint 20.1 it's 6.4.6.

The only difference now is that LO are trying to push those willing to pay towards firms such as Collabora who actually do the development work and need to improve their income streams. In part it seems to be a consequence of the Document Foundation painting themselves into a corner by having a constitution whereby they couldn't actually pay for development so those of us who thought our donations were going to development discovered they weren't.

[Mage]

Versions

I've recently upgraded (not fresh install, which often was the only safe way on Windows) from Linux Mint 18.3 to Mint 20.1 as the support ends in April. The last 32 bit version is 19.3.

It comes with LO Version: 6.4.6.2, which seems fine. I'd manually upgraded via LO direct from 5.x something to LO 6.2.x while on Mint 18.3, both of those were fine.

I do have to re-add Lightproof Grammar AND change the default settings of it via Plug-in Managment.

Been using LO instead of MS Office, completely, since 2014 and finally completely switched to Linux in December 2016, though used it on servers and test systems and dual boot since 1999.

I do have a copy of MS Word 2003 (only) on WINE, which I've only run to check it's working, a full Office XP on a VM and also a copy of MS Word on a VM and an old XP box, none of which gets used.

Used Word since 2.0a and MS Office since 4.3. Used to sell MS products.

In 10 years of supporting and selling MS stuff, the only support I could get from them was TechNet and MSDN CDs. Expensive.

Currently online searches for Linux and LO Issues is better than that and better than MS's web site which now seems to mostly sell Office 365. Many articles seem gone or hidden.

[Ben Trabetere]

Linux users can use the AppImage

"A glance at the daily build suggests that enthusiasts might be better off rolling their own for the time being."

There are AppImages editions of LibreOffice starting with v4.3.7.2 up to the daily releases (currently at 7.2.0.0.alpha). I have been using the LO AppImages exclusively for a couple of years, and except for a couple of nagging inconveniences I have been very pleased.

One thing I like the most about the LO AppImages is I can have and use four versions on my system at the same time: the current release, the stable release, the daily release, and the installed version from the default repository. I have never had one interfere with any of the others.

https://libreoffice.soluzioniopen.com/