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LibreOffice 5.0 Now Available

libreofficsplashLibre Office is an open-source office suite available on many platforms (even Android) and capable of editing word files, presentations, spreadsheets, etc. Libre Office has been maintained by The Document Foundation ever since it was spun off of Open Office five years ago, and a new version is launching today.

According to the announcement, LibreOffice 5.0 improves on its predecessor by offering better interoperability with competing office suites MS Office and iWork. It has a significantly improved user interface, with a cleaner look and better management of the screen space. Other improvements have been added to every module of the suite, and support for Windows 64bit builds (Vista and later) has been added (or so the announcement says – I thought I was already using Libre Office on Win7 64bit).

libreoffice-5

LibreOffice has come along way since it was spun off of OpenOffice.org in 2010. It’s gone through three major release cycles in that time. First they cleaned up the code, then they made it faster, and now they’ve made it smarter.

Now might be a good time to upgrade your copy (assuming you’re not in the middle of important work, of course). I just checked and I am still running Libre Office 3.6. I’ve never bothered to upgrade because it works just fine for me when I needed it.

How old is your version?

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Comments


Muratcan Simsek August 5, 2015 um 4:44 pm

Biggest problem with word processors is typesetting. It is always weak and somewhat ugly. OpenOffice and LibreOffice are among the weakests. Microsoft Word is somewhat better than them but still not as good as dedicated word processors like Nisus and Mellel OS X has. On the Windows side Corel’s WordPerfect the best word processor, I think.

But, if you want good typesetting, TeX variants are still the best solutions. I use XeLaTeX myself.

Word processors like LibreOffice and Microsoft Word is good if you are taking notes or just writing for yourself; but if you are writing anything you will need to print and present, like an academic essay, they don’t really cut it.


Michel Alexandre Salim August 6, 2015 um 12:06 am

Nate, I think previously what happened is you’re running the 32-bit version of LibreOffice on 64-bit Windows. It would be a seamless experience for most use cases. One way to tell is if it installs to Program Files (x86) instead of Program Files

Nate Hoffelder August 6, 2015 um 6:22 am

That would explain it. Thanks!


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