LibreOffice 5.4.4 available for download

Berlin, December 20, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.4.4, the fourth minor release of LibreOffice 5.4 family, one month before the major announcement of LibreOffice 6.0. Although it still represents the bleeding edge in term of features, conservative users and enterprises can start the update process from their current LibreOffice 5.3 implementation.

TDF suggests to conservative users and enterprises to deploy LibreOffice 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 5.4.4 includes over 80 bug and regression fixes. Technical details about the release can be found in the change logs: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.4/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.4/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.4.4 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 FOSDEM, where they can meet with free software advocates coming from all of Europe.

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.

LibreOffice contributor interview: Gautam Prajapati

Gautam has been working on the LibreOffice Viewer for Android, as part of the Google Summer of Code. We caught up with him at our recent conference in Rome, to talk about progress in the Android app, his experiences of joining the community, and how others can get involved.

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Month of LibreOffice, November 2017: The results!

The Month of LibreOffice, November 2017 has finished – and what a great month it has been. There have been contributions all across the project, including source code patches, bug report confirmations, user interface translations and documentation updates. Not to mention user support on Ask LibreOffice, along with LibreOffice promotion on Twitter! Here’s how many stickers have been awarded:

Click the number for the full details. And if you see your name (or username) on that page, claim your sticker for your laptop, PC or other devices! Simply email mike.saunders@documentfoundation.org with your name (or username) from the wiki page, and “Sticker claim” in the subject line, along with your postal address. We’ll send you a sticker in the next couple of weeks – and it’ll look like this:

(Note that your postal address will only be used for posting the sticker to you, and not be stored afterwards or used otherwise.) Enjoy showing off your sticker, and thanks again for your contribution!

Going into detail

So what happened over the month? Let’s go through the sections on the stickers page. The first, code patches, shows source code contributions from community members. It has been great to get fixes, updates and new features from the community – and note that this list doesn’t include people who are paid to work on the code on a daily basis! See here for a full list of recent development activity.

Next up we have bug report confirmations. This is an important job, and our QA community works hard to categorise and check new bug reports as they come in. It’s also a way for anyone to get involved, even if you’re not a developer: just find a new report on our bug tracker, see if it affects you as well (with the latest LibreOffice version), and confirm it if so. This helps our QA team to narrow down the cause of a bug.

Then we had translations of the LibreOffice interface – lots of fantastic work there! One of the goals of LibreOffice is to make the software accessible to everyone, regardless of location or language, so it’s great to see so many contributions here. Next we give credit to people who help other users on Ask LibreOffice, which isn’t always an easy task, but the answers can be very useful for other people in the future.

Finally, we had documentation contributions and people spreading the word on Twitter. A huge thanks once again to everyone who took part, and don’t forget to claim your sticker! We’ll run another Month of LibreOffice next year – but you can get involved at any time. Join our friendly community, help make LibreOffice even better, and we look forward to your contributions!

Final week of the Month of LibreOffice, November 2017!

Yes, we’re into the final week of this Month of LibreOffice, which gives thanks (and stickers) to our great worldwide community for all their hard work! Here’s how many stickers have been awarded so far:

256

Click the number to see if your (user)name is on the list – and if so, you’ll soon be able to get a shiny sticker for your computer kit! Here they are, waiting to be claimed:

But if you’re not yet on the list, you still have time to get involved with LibreOffice, help make the software better for millions of users around the world, and grab a sticker from us as thanks for your work. Plus, you build up experience of working in a friendly and well-known open source project! Read on to see ways you can help…

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 5.4.2”. (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!)

Second Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 6.0

After the first Bug Hunting Session for LibreOffice 6.0, which was held on October 20th 2017, we’re glad to announce the Second Bug Hunting Session on November 27th – this time being held on a Monday, for the first time!

LibreOffice 6.0 will be announced at the end of January 2018, and so far, almost 800 bugs have been fixed in this version, with more than 700 people reporting, triaging or fixing those bugs. More info can be found here. Besides that, a large number of new features, which are summarized in the release notes, have been added.

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 6.0, which will be available on the pre-releases server a few days before the event. Builds will be available for Linux (DEB and RPM), macOS and Windows, and will run in parallel with the production version.

Mentors will be available on November 27th 2017, from 8AM UTC to 10PM UTC for questions or help in the IRC channel: #libreoffice-qa (connect via webchat). Of course, hunting bugs will be possible also on other days, as the builds of this particular Beta release (LibreOffice 6.0.0 Beta1) will be available until mid December.

And it’s still the Month of LibreOffice!

Throughout November we’ve been running a Month of LibreOffice, awarding cool stickers to contributors across the project. The Bug Hunting Session is your chance to get a sticker for your laptop or PC – so get involved and help us make LibreOffice 6.0 the best release yet! See here for more about the Month of LibreOffice.

And there’s more information about how to hunt bugs in LibreOffice 6.0 Beta1 in this wiki page.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.4.3

Berlin, November 9, 2017 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 5.4.3, the third minor release of LibreOffice 5.4 family. LibreOffice 5.4.3 continues to represent the bleeding edge in term of features, and as such is targeted at technology enthusiasts and early adopters.

TDF suggests to conservative users and enterprises to deploy LibreOffice 5.3.7 with the backing of certified professionals (an updated list is available at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

LibreOffice 5.4.3 includes approximately 50 bug and regression fixes. Technical details about the release can be found in the changelogs here: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.3/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/5.4.3/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 5.4.3 is immediately available for download from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/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 organise events such as the Month of LibreOffice, which has last week and will be active until the end of November (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/).

Several companies sitting on 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.