LibreOffice

I am really happy with Libre, I used openoffice for a few years, but my brother who knows Linux and does programming for them here in SA, suggested I try Libre, and I must admit, Libre is better, OpenOffice was great but there were a couple of issues I had with it, nothing major, just personal preferences, Libre makes it possible to apply my own personal preferences they way I like it. It also does a better job at saving in MS office format so that hubby that uses that one (it's a work related thing, otherwise he'd change too) can open my docs as I had set them up. I prefer to download from here though, another personal preferance thing, I'm not very fond of torrent, not that torrent is a problem either, it's really just a personal preference, and on their own site (Libre's), the only option to download it is through torrent. But I get most of my software from here anyway, so it works great for me to just get it here. I think it's great that Sourceforge has mirrors here for opensource software that aren't hosted here, it's a fantastic idea and a really a great help. 90% of my software I get from here, the other 10% are absolute windows must-haves, that I can not do without, and Linux hasn't been able to rectify YET, but I do believe that soon, it will be completely interchangable, and I'd be able to use an opensource version of my windows must-haves, and finally I'll be able to wave windows goodbye for good. You guys and gals that do this are absolutely amazing people, I don't need to meet you to know that, you have something that windows will never have, passion and purpose, that alone makes opensource a by far better product and by that alone, I absolutely without a doubt know, that one day soon, windows will become completely obsolete, because you all are constantly at it and bettering your software, you work together as well. Windows just wants to bring us new buggy versions and never fix the previous bugs, ugh! You all, are my hero's, thank you!

I have both the latest MSOffice (the university supplies it to faculty, and I have used versions of office since Excel first appears on the Mac. I have used StarOffice briefly, OpenOffice a great deal and moved to LibreOffice over its last couple releases, since it seemed more actively under development. [I also have Wordstar 3.x (several versions, under CP/M and DOS) and WordPerfect experience, and have mucked around with other advanced word processing software that has come and gone.] I >use< LibreOffice. I use it for document creation, both standard word processing and web pages. I use the spreadsheet. I constantly use the presentation graphics software -- mostly for very large slide sets used for teaching management and marketing (some originally developed in PowerPoint -- no compatibility problems). I use it on both my Windows machines and my Linux machine. I think, then, I am entitled to an opinion based on long familiarity with the product and its genre. I find the software stable. I find the learning curve from older versions of MSOffice to OpenOffice/LibreOffice to have been shorter than the learning curve from older versions of MSOfiice to newer versions of MSOffice (which is part of the reason I have not moved back). BUT: Whichever d--mned fool re-did the box for selecting templates should be taken to the local woodshed and soundly thrashed. I have >several dozen< templates just for word-processing documents; scrolling through loosely spaced thumbnail images is just plain slow. This shows a want of sound judgment. If there is an easy way to revert to the older display, I'm buggered if I can find it. One major flaw, but enough to make me think I should be running some other software.

Parab�ns

Great app

Works, very small, no complaints.