Been using LibreOffice for years. Everyone should. If we don't vote with our choices companies like Microsoft will keep pushing the envelope until you have to pay a monthly fee to turn on your own computer.
And Macs are bundled with Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, all of which are excellent.
I don’t hate myself enough to have a Mac but I have an iPhone and there are so many bugs in apple supplied apps (mail, safari, iOS itself, iCloud) that apple have known about for years. And yet these bugs are still there with no desire from apple to fix them.
Apple has divisions for Design, Engineering, etc instead of divisions for products as is more normal. So sometime 20 years ago someone in the Design department designed a spreadsheet app, and they've been stuck with it ever since because Engineering isn't empowered to say to Design that this UI fucking sucks. Even though the app is otherwise regularly updated.
You see the same with Tahoe, when users report that they can't resize the window because the corner radius is so large that it excludes the hit box, Engineering does their best to move the hitbox, but they are not empowered to make the obvious fix which is to reduce the corner radius because that would be a UI change and those only go through waterfall.
10% of users with MacOS Office 2019 installs just got NERF'd by Microsoft. This story will not encourage users to spend more money on a disappearing rabbit trick. =3
It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser. Just somehow make it possible to easily connect and edit collaboratively. I know, I know, it is a huge ask, unfortunately.
LibreOffice Writer online was not popular, so it is understandable you assume it doesn't exist. There is also the trivial headless Linux remote desktop cloud hosting with 100% identical functionality.
>"edit at the same time"
Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..."
Most documents that support OLE have difficulty handling concurrent writes. Office 365 abandoned desktop publishing in 2019, and replaced it with a web document management system.
Best workaround is every user imports each instanced changes: "File -> Merge Document."
And manually handle any collisions.
I would post how to setup your own remote collaborative environment on an $8/month host, but people seem like they are not interested. =3
I have recently tried to use it, but couldn't find a way to open files from local computer in it. It showed me a fake filesystem and dragging and dropping files also didn't work.
I have not used another web browser LO thing, I think. If you are talking about another thing, do you have demo site/link?
> Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..."
No, I mean a mode or so that is like online word processors like Google Docs, where you see the cursor of someone else, with their name, and can see them typing live, while you are also typing somewhere in the document. Unless "Track Changes" somehow enables connecting to someone else and seeing their actions concurrently, it is not what I am talking about. I really mean collaboratively editing a document, at the same time, seeing changes others make live, not merging afterwards (the git model).
https://en.libre-office.fr/article.php/free-online-libreoffi...
https://www.collaboraonline.com/
Drag and drop will depend on browser specific security policy. =3
I had to install office after that
As a word processor, I like Writer even more than MS Word, but Calc, for example, is just much slower than MS Excel when you build a bit larger spreadsheets.
So from an ideological perspective, I agree, but you should know that there are some drawbacks / the products have different strengths.
(it's AGPL... there is an ongoing dispute with a fork now)
I guess they used "binary blobs" in the broad FOSS-maintainer sense, e.g. bundled third-party assets, fonts, generated/minified JavaScript in sdkjs, and possibly precompiled mobile components...
However, onlyoffice removed their mobile editor repo from Github a few days ago, and EuroOffice has been particularly critical of the mobile apps, claiming they contained proprietary sections. So if there is a concrete concern behind the "binary blobs" accusation, the mobile side seems like the most likely place it was directed at.
It feels a bit like a mudslinging match right now and you were completely right to question the claim :-)
I wrote my CV in LO, to avoid my endless tinkering mode, that I had with my LaTeX CV, that still never looked exactly how I wanted it to look. Then 2 things happened:
I upgraded my desktop computer from Debian 12 to 13. Now LO can no longer start. I am only getting a crash without UI error, and on command line I get a nothing saying C++ error, saying "std::alloc bad alloc" or so, and that's it. No details, nothing. Already tried reinstalling a few things, including LO, but apparently it doesn't come with all it needs.
On my laptop, which is the same OS, Debian 13 LO still works, so at least I can edit my CV. However, there is another issue there. Scrolling takes approximately 1s, before the document is re-rendered. I found out I need to set an env var to make LO use XWayland compatibility layer, instead of using Wayland directly, because if it uses Wayland directly, it is just pure laaaag, unbearable scrolling experience.
Needed: Way better error messages, not just slinging low level C++ crap at me.
Needed: Why doesn't it recognize Wayland and perform properly when scrolling?? Or act through XWayland by itself, rather than me having to search for a solution for an hour? If the Wayland experience is that rough, maybe it should not use Wayland at all and use the XWayland instead from the start?
In short, a very bumpy experience recently. But once it works, which it still doesn't on my desktop PC, it is maybe the best word processor tool. Briefly I looked at OnlyOffice, thinking it is also free/libre software and maybe it is good, but alas it is a child's toy, when it comes to editing styles. Character styles don't even work properly, so it's an instant no-go for me.
Maybe I will investigate Calligra, which has been mentioned here.
EDIT: Tried Calligra. Couldn't even open the first fairly trivial odt document I tried: My CV. My CV document is basically just a few tables with text in them, one photo, bullet lists, some paragrah styles for headings and such, and some character styles to highlight words. The writer tool of Calligra instantly crashed, with no error message dialog whatsoever. It does have paragraph styles and character styles, but the font rendering looks weird, blurred as well and often users a way too small font in the styles editor. Aside from paragraph styles and character styles I didn't see any other styles in the styles editor though. What about list styles, table styles, page styles ... To me the writer tool of Calligra looks also very immature at this point. (version 1:25.04.2+dfsg-1, as shown in "Discover" on Debian 13, KDE)
EDIT: Maybe I will truly have to invest more time and create a good looking LaTeX CV. Or just be lazy and use something pre-made I find online. Though I already know there will be something that will not satisfy me or that is not anticipated by some pre-made template and then I will probably be fiddling with it again ...
Sure, better error messages could help, but when it no longer even starts...