Coming up on May 28: Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 6.1 Beta 1

LibreOffice 6.1 is being developed by our worldwide community, and is due to be released in early August – see the release notes describing the new features here. You can help us to test it, and make it super reliable!

After the first Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 6.1, which was held on April 27th 2018, we’re glad to announce the Second Bug Hunting Session on May 28th – this time being held on a Monday.

In order to find, report and triage bugs, the tests during the Second Bug Hunting Session will be performed on the first Beta version of LibreOffice 6.1, which will be available on the pre-releases server on the day of the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), macOS and Windows, and can be run in parallel with the production version – so you can test without affecting your existing stable installation.

Mentors will be available on May 28th 2018, from 8AM UTC to 8PM UTC for questions or help in the IRC channel: #libreoffice-qa and its Telegram bridge. Of course, hunting bugs will be possible also on other days, as the builds of this particular Beta release (LibreOffice 6.1.0 Beta1) will be available until the beginning of July.

During the day there will be two dedicated sessions focus on two of the tenders implemented in LibreOffice 6.1: The first to test the improvements on the image handling between 10AM UTC and 12AM UTC, and the second to test the HSQLDB import filter for firebird between 14PM UTC and 16PM UTC.

What happened during the first Bug Hunting Session ?

Since LibreOffice 6.1 Alpha 1 was released on week 17 of 2018, 91 bugs have been reported against Alpha 1 by more than 30 people, of which 26 have been already closed.

In total, 8 of these bugs have been categorized as critical, and 4 already fixed by the development team.

Base and Writer are the components with more reports, both having 18 each.

Many thanks to the top 5 reporters: Drew Jensen, Emil Tanev, Xisco Faulí, Telesto and Pander.

So join us on Monday, and we look forward to – and appreciate – your help!

TDF announces LibreOffice 5.4.7

Berlin, May 17, 2018 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.4.7, the last minor release of the LibreOffice 5.4 family, currently targeted at mainstream users and enterprises.

TDF suggests deploying LibreOffice in production environments with the backing of certified developers, migrators and trainers (an updated list is available at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). This is extremely important for the growth of the LibreOffice ecosystem.

LibreOffice 5.4.7 includes almost 60 bug and regression fixes. Technical details about the release can be found in the change logs: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.7/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.7/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.4.7 is immediately available for download at the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and fund the presence of volunteers at events like LibreOffice Conference, where they can meet with free software advocates coming from all over the world.

Several companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) provide either value-added LTS versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

Recap: Free Software and Linux Days 2018 in Istanbul

Native-language projects around the world help to promote LibreOffice by translating the software, building communities, and attending events. Muhammet Kara reports on a recent event in his home country of Turkey…


I am back at home after the Free Software and Linux Days 2018 in İstanbul. It was a small and cozy event. The number of attendees was lower than the previous years, but on the plus side, we had more time for each visitor. It was also a good opportunity to break the ice between different segments of the Turkish Free Software community.

We had a nice booth, jointly run by LibreOffice Turkey and GNOME Turkey community members, next to the Pardus booth. We gave out stickers to the visitors, answered their questions about LibreOffice, GNOME, and Free/Libre Software in general. Community members also had a lot of time to chat, and to discuss the current situation and the future of our community in Turkey.

We also had three LibreOffice related presentation/seminar sessions:

  • LibreOffice Geliştiricisi Olmak (Being a LibreOffice Developer), by Muhammet Kara
  • LibreOffice Sertifikasyonu (LibreOffice Certifications), by Muhammet Kara
  • Açık Belge Biçimi (The Open Document Format), Nurcan Tür

And we now have all materials to set up a complete LibreOffice booth in any upcoming event in Turkey, thanks to The Document Foundation for funding the booth stuff, and the travel costs of the booth staff.

Please see the wiki page for more details, photos, and links to related tweets.


Many thanks to Muhammet and the other attendees and organisers! If you use LibreOffice and want to help promote it in your local region, join our marketing community and we can help you with ideas, presentations and materials.

LibreOffice and VolunteerMatch: Welcoming new contributors

Free and open source software, such as LibreOffice, is all about community. Anyone can get involved, and many people join the LibreOffice community because they want to improve something in the software – features, compatibility, translations, documentation, marketing and more. As we’ve seen in the ongoing Month of LibreOffice, we have hundreds of volunteers active in making the software better.

But new volunteers are always welcome! And we try to reach out to as many people as possible. So we’ve set up a page on VolunteerMatch, a US-based non-profit organisation that “connects millions of people with a great place to volunteer”. Our page currently shows six opportunities to get involved with LibreOffice, including development, user interface, marketing, documentation and QA (quality assurance).

If you use LibreOffice and want to help improve it, check out the opportunities – or let us know if we should add more. And please help us to spread the word, so that we can continue to grow our community and bring in new volunteers. Thank you!

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(Thanks to Ilmari Lauhakangas for his help.)

Month of LibreOffice, May 2018 – The first week in

On May 1st, we started a new Month of LibreOffice, celebrating contributions all across the project. Everyone who gets involved will be awarded a cool sticker for their work – so how many stickers have been won so far?

So that’s almost 150 community members who’ve helped to improve LibreOffice in the last week alone! Click the number above to see if your name (or username) is on the list. And if you’re not there, now’s the time to get involved! There are many ways you can help the LibreOffice project and claim a sticker – and join our friendly community as well:

How to get a sticker

  • Help to confirm bugs: go to our Bugzilla page and look for new bugs. If you can recreate one, add a comment like “CONFIRMED on Windows 10 and LibreOffice 5.4.6”. (Make sure you’re using the latest version of LibreOffice.)
  • Contribute code: The codebase is big, but there are lots of places to get involved with small jobs. See our Developers page on the website and this page on the wiki to get started. Once you’ve submitted a patch, if it gets merged we’ll send you a sticker!
  • Translate the interface: LibreOffice is available in a wide range of languages, but its interface translations need to be kept up-to-date. Or maybe you want to translate the suite to a whole new language? Get involved here.
  • Write documentation: Another way to earn a badge is to help the LibreOffice documentation team. Whether you want to update the online help or add chapters to the handbooks, here’s where to start.
  • Answer questions from users: Over on Ask LibreOffice there are many users looking for help with the suite. We’re keeping an eye on that site so if you give someone useful advice, you can claim a shiny sticker.
  • Spread the word: Tell everyone about LibreOffice on Twitter! Just say why you love it or what you’re using it for, add the #libreoffice hashtag, and at the end of the month you can claim a sticker. (We have a maximum of 100 stickers for this category, in case the whole internet starts tweeting!)

So join us! We’ll be awarding stickers throughout the whole month, and then posting them in June. See this video for more info:

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