TDF Community Blog

Video tutorial: File management with LibreOffice on Windows 10

2020-04-172020-04-17

Running LibreOffice on Windows 10? Need help with file management? Check out this video for beginners, created by volunteers in our documentation community… (Thanks to Harald Berger)

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LibreOffice 6.4.3 available for download

2020-04-16

Berlin, April 16, 2020 – The Document Foundation announces the availability of LibreOffice 6.4.3, the 3rd minor release of the LibreOffice 6.4 family, targeted at technology enthusiasts and power users. LibreOffice 6.4.3 includes several bug fixes and improvements to document compatibility.

LibreOffice 6.4.3 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for open source office suites, and as such is not optimized for enterprise class deployments, where features are less important than robustness. Users wanting a more mature version can download LibreOffice 6.3.5, which includes some months of back-ported fixes.

LibreOffice 6.4.3’s change log pages are available on TDF’s wiki: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.4.3/RC1 (changed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.4.3/RC2 (changed in RC2).

LibreOffice’s individual users are helped by a global community of volunteers: https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/community-support/. On the website and the wiki there are guides, manuals, tutorials and HowTos. Donations help us to make all of these resources available.

LibreOffice in business

For enterprise class deployments, TDF strongly recommend sourcing LibreOffice from one of the ecosystem partners to get long-term supported releases, dedicated assistance, custom new features and other benefits, including Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Also, the work done by ecosystem partners flows back into the LibreOffice project, benefiting everyone.

Also, support for migrations and trainings should be sourced from certified professionals who provide value-added services which extend the reach of the community to the corporate world and offer CIOs and IT managers a solution in line with proprietary offerings.

In fact, LibreOffice – thanks to its mature codebase, rich feature set, strong support for open standards, excellent compatibility and long-term support options from certified partners – represents the ideal solution for businesses that want to regain control of their data and free themselves from vendor lock-in.

Availability of LibreOffice 6.4.3

LibreOffice 6.4.3 is immediately available from the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/. Minimum requirements are specified on the download page. TDF builds of the latest LibreOffice Online source code are available as Docker images: https://hub.docker.com/r/libreoffice/online/.

LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server-based platform, and should be installed and configured by adding cloud storage and an SSL certificate. It might be considered an enabling technology for the cloud services offered by ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations.

All versions of LibreOffice are built with document conversion libraries from the Document Liberation Project: https://www.documentliberation.org.

Support LibreOffice

LibreOffice users are invited to join the community at https://ask.libreoffice.org, where they can get and provide user-to-user support. People willing to contribute their time and professional skills to the project can visit the dedicated website at https://whatcanidoforlibreoffice.org.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can provide financial support to The Document Foundation with a donation via PayPal, credit card or other tools at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

Open Badges for top wiki contributors!

2020-04-142020-04-14

Open Badges are special images that we’re awarding to super-active contributors in the LibreOffice project. They contain metadata describing the contributor’s work, which can be verified using an external service. Open Badges are used by other free software projects, such as Fedora.

Last month, we announced Open Badges for Ask LibreOffice contributors, and today we’re awarding some more – this time for the most active editors on The Document Foundation’s wiki (in the last 12 months).

So, congratulations to the following users – we’ll send you your badge in the next couple of days. Feel free to proudly show it off on your wiki user page, website, blog or social media. And with the metadata inside, you can prove your history of contributors to other FOSS projects (or indeed potential employers)!

Akurery

Blue.painting

Filmsi

Fito

Hibagonsan

Hrbrgr (second badge!)

Kolarkater

Kompilainenn

Kü

LibreOfficiant

Manuelf

Nogajun

Pierre-yves samyn

PlateauWolf

Prcek

Raal

So

SteenRønnow

Stevefanning

Suokunlong

More Open Badges are still to come – stay tuned to the blog for details!

Status of LibreOffice for Android and iOS

2020-04-132020-04-17

Here’s a quick status update on LibreOffice for Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad).

LibreOffice is an application for desktop platforms, including Linux, macOS and Windows. The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice, is currently focused on delivering the best experience on the desktop. (There is also LibreOffice Online, a cloud-based version of the suite, for use in web browsers.)

While The Document Foundation doesn’t currently offer an Android or iOS version of LibreOffice, there is a LibreOffice-based product in app stores from Collabora, one of our certified developers and ecosystem members:

Collabora Office for Android and iOS

(More apps will be added to this list as they are developed and released.)

For more technically-oriented users: our developer community has been working on a mobile app, LibreOffice Viewer for Android, which also includes experimental editing support. This is not yet ready for widespread usage, but work is ongoing. (Binary builds are also available on F-Droid, but may not represent the latest state of the code.) If you’re familiar with Android app development, we’d appreciate your contributions!

Enjoy the Easter Game !

2020-04-11

Thanks to Franklin Weng, who has launched the idea, coordinated the project and provided the Chinese localization, and to the Japanese localization of Naruhiko Ogasawara, the Spanish localization of Daniel Armando Rodriguez and the Italian localization of Italo Vignoli, we offer a small Easter Game to play around the concept of Software and Document Freedom, and the Open Document Format. Of course, with billions of people confined in their houses because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is nothing to celebrate, so this is just a nice and gentle way to stress the importance of open document standards for our community. Click on the eggs to launch the Easter Game.

Improvements in LibreOffice’s PowerPoint presentation support

2020-04-09

LibreOffice’s native file format is OpenDocument, a fully open and standardised format that’s great for sharing documents and long-term data storage. Of course, LibreOffice does its best to open files made by other office software as well, even if they’re stored in pseudo-“standards” with cryptic and obfuscated contents. Compatibility with PowerPoint PPT(X) presentations is therefore a challenge, but developers are working hard on improvements…

In September 2019, we announced an initiative to improve the support of PPT and PPTX files in LibreOffice. A summary of achievements was published later that year. Now it is time for another review.

Everyone is invited to participate in the PowerPoint support initiative, either in development or testing. If you are interested in joining, please send an email to ilmari.lauhakangas@libreoffice.org.