this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs | The free open-source Microsoft Office alternative is being downloaded by nearly 1 million users a week (www.computerworld.com)
submitted 1 week ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Interest in LibreOffice, the open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, is on the rise, with weekly downloads of its software package close to 1 million a week. That’s the highest download number since 2023.

“We estimate around 200 million [LibreOffice] users, but it’s important to note that we respect users’ privacy and don’t track them, so we can’t say for sure,” said Mike Saunders, an open-source advocate and a deputy to the board of directors at The Document Foundation.

LibreOffice users typically want a straightforward interface, Saunders said. “They don’t want subscriptions, and they don’t want AI being ‘helpful’ by poking its nose into their work — it reminds them of Clippy from the bad old days,” he said.

There are genuine use cases for generative AI tools, but many users prefer to opt-in to it and choose when and where to enable it. “We have zero plans to put AI into LibreOffice. But we understand the value of some AI tools and are encouraging developers to create … extensions that use AI in a responsible way,” Saunders said.

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[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 18 points 6 days ago (3 children)

If you're a nerd, also check out Typst and LaTeX. Being able to format your documents with pure code is awesome, and you can also define functions for different things, import libraries to generate graphs, and write comments that don't show up in the document.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

LaTeX is great for documents, mediocre for slides, questionable for spreadsheets, useless for mail and calendar.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Awesome, it does great at what it was designed to do. And it even does mediocre at things it was not designed to do. It even does incompetently things that aren't anywhere in its code? Amazing piece of tech.

[–] Samskara@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

LaTeX is great but it's not an office suite.

[–] Clandestine@lemmy.zip 2 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I have used latex a lot with overleaf, but I’d like to try using an offline version. Do you have any tips?

[–] iamkindasomeone@feddit.org 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Just to throw in some other options: you can easily convert basically anything to latex (and ultimately to Pdf) using pandoc. For instance, if you use Zettlr as your markdown editor, you can also use a citation software (eg., Zotero) and quickly invoke it using the @ character. Then, you can write your documents in Markdown and inline Latex and create Latex-powered Pdfs via pandoc. I use this approach to write scientific papers and it works pretty well.

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Personally I use a Guix template I made (Typst, LaTeX) which downloads necessary software/libraries and the LSP and pins the software versions, and I use the Helix text editor for editing. Not sure what the more common methods are. Also Typst's package management is weird.

[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I used TexStudio for my Master's thesis, it worked fine for me. I haven't done a full survey of available LaTex distributions and tools though :-)

[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago

Kile used to be great, probably still is