Office technologies, which are understood as a combination of information products that allow optimizing work with text, tables, presentations, images and formulas, are necessary today not only for managers, journalists, accountants and other specialists whose professional activities are directly related to the above actions. Pupils and students use text editors , a table processor is suitable for planning a personal budget, and database management systems allow you to systematize large amounts of information of various kinds.
The cost of the latest version of the most popular office suite Microsoft Office 2016 is about six thousand rubles for one computer. This fact leads many users to look for free alternatives. These are LibreOffice or OpenOffice software packages.
Composition of office software packages
Free counterparts of Microsoft Office largely duplicate the flagship solution for creating, viewing and editing text documents, tables, images and formulas. LibreOffice and OpenOffice, the differences of which are extremely insignificant, and the convenience depends on the preferences of a particular user, include the following programs:
Text editor Writer.
Spreadsheet Editor Calc.
Program for creating presentations Impress.
Graphic Image Editor Draw.
Program for editing formulas Math.
Program for creating Base databases .
Similar paid software products are MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio for image editing and Access - database editor.
LibreOffice or OpenOffice are cross-platform software products, applications work both on the most common Windows, and on Linux or Mac OS X. In addition, LibreOffice is developing versions of editors for mobile iOS and Android.
Interface and functionality of software products
If you don’t know what kind of product is installed - LibreOffice or OpenOffice - you will not distinguish the interface at first glance. On the toolbar, the same “File”, “ Edit”, “View”, “Insert”, “Format”, “Table”, “Tools”, “Window” and “Help”, in one form or another, are characteristic for MS Office, and for the online service Google Docs. All the basic elements of text editing are available right there: print, scale, font style and font size, layout and so on.
LibreOffice (the OpenOffice comparison wins here, but the competitor’s customizable functions fill this gap) is not equipped with a side toolbar, which is convenient to use on widescreen screens, otherwise the interface and functionality of graphic editors converge. By the way, in LibreOffice the last option is included in the “experimental features”, so it’s quite possible that the developers will eventually display the side menu in the default display.
Comparison of OpenOffice / LibreOffice and a macro by user name is also equivalent: scripts are created in this way, no significant differences are observed.
Compatible with MS Office formats
Microsoft Office is installed on 85% of devices, and the “native” format .doc or .docx (or respectively .xls and .xlsx for tables, .pptx for presentations) is ubiquitous, so it is impossible to consider the compatibility of compared software packages with MS.
Documents prepared in LibreOffice or OpenOffice are most likely to be viewed in standard MS Office, so a correct display is necessary. The leading position in this matter (except, of course, the recognized MS Office) is LibreOffice, which can directly edit files from Word or view documents from Visio. OpenOffice opens .doc or .docx, but when saving it offers to change the extension to its own format or save the file in the old MS Office extension.
In the case of presentations, everything is somewhat more complicated: there are no problems with static slides, while dynamic ones can be distorted when opened in a different format. So before speaking, it’s better to double-check the correctness of the presentation in another editor.
LibreOffice vs OpenOffice: unique features
Despite the external identity, the programs differ in some unique functions. More precisely, LibreOffice is distinguished by solutions that, unfortunately, are not observed in a direct competitor. So, for example, LibreOffice implements the function of dynamically displaying the number of words and characters, while a competitor in the office program displays only the number of the current page in the lower menu.
LibreOffice also supports embedded fonts. This means that the style and other text attributes or styles applied when creating or editing the source file are saved when the document is opened on a computer where the font used is not installed. The text file will not be distorted, which is not provided in OpenOffice.
Software Productivity
OpenOffice has a small advantage over its competitor in speed. In tests conducted on a personal computer with three gigabytes of memory and the Windows 7 operating system, the office program is slightly ahead of LibreOffice in speed of saving, opening a file or converting a document to another format.
On average, OpenOffice Writer and Calc are 20-23% faster than a similar product from the LibreOffice package. Of course, this fact is not decisive when choosing an office software package, but it is quite important in conditions when it is urgent to send a report or carry changes to a previous version of a document.
The popularity of office software packages
OpenOffice, as a rule, is the first product that they switch to in the process of finding alternatives to Microsoft Office. So, in the first quarter of 2010, this particular office software package was installed on 21% of German users' devices (both private individuals using this package and commercial organizations, public funds, administrations and other government departments were taken into account). In Russia, the product is used by Rostelecom, the Federal Bailiff Service and the Pension Fund.
However, by 2011, mass migration to LibreOffice began from French, Spanish and Italian users, residents and companies of Denmark, Italian military departments and the city administration of Valencia. In 2014 (due to the imposition of sanctions), the transition to a freely distributed package of office programs was launched by the Russian metallurgical and mining company Evraz.
And what about the current situation in the confrontation between LibreOffice vs OpenOffice? Not taking into account the similar product package from Microsoft, we note that LibreOffice is the leader in terms of prevalence among both individuals and the corporate user segment.
Development speed and new versions
Today, as already mentioned, the difference between LibreOffice and OpenOffice is negligible, but things can change over time. The speed of developing new versions and eliminating the shortcomings of previous versions of the program is higher for LibreOffice, while OpenOffice developers slowed down the pace for audit of the code, which is also good. It can be expected that the shortcomings of previous versions of the program will be eliminated, but you should not rely too much on new functionalities.
According to expert forecasts, LibreOffice will be more actively developing in the near future, so it’s possible for users who work a lot in text, spreadsheets, graphic editors, and databases to choose this software.
So which is better - LibreOffice or OpenOffice?
We examined the advantages and disadvantages of software packages, but as they say, it is better to see once than hear a hundred times. Better yet, test it, because the definitive answer to the question: “LibreOffice or OpenOffice - which is better?” giving is quite difficult without trying both products. Both OpenOffice and LibreOffice are freely available, so it is not difficult to verify the convenience, functionality, speed and compatibility of software products with other common formats using personal experience. This is the only way to finally decide on a free analogue of a recognized market leader.