On Thursday, Feb 22nd we had a look around LibreOffice – here are some links to get you started:
Introduction and Getting Started Guide : https://documentation.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/Documentation/en/GS5.2/HTML/GS5201-IntroducingLibreOffice.html
Download: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/ ; Two versions are available – the latest, but less thoroughly tested (so more likely to crash – for early adopters) and a tried and tested version.
Extensions: https://extensions.libreoffice.org; These are add-ons to expand the capabilities of the office suite.
Comparison with Microsoft Office / 365: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office
LibreOffice does not have its own integrated e-mail client in the way that Microsoft’s Outlook is tied up with contacts and scheduling in MS Office 365 to create a “Personal Information Management Suite”. Users are recommended to use Mozilla Thunderbird. Neither is LibreOffice designed for collaborative document editing online. Some of the tools and settings are difficult to find, though you can make it look a bit like MS Office with a tabbed interface. It is more capable of reading old document file formats than Microsoft Office, it works on Linux and MacOS as well as Windows and has an Android app, and a version which runs off a thumb drive. System requirements are very low: Pentium-compatible PC (Pentium III, Athlon or more recent system recommended) 256 MB RAM (512 MB RAM recommended) Up to 1.5 GB available hard disk space. 1024×768 resolution (higher resolution recommended), with at least 256 colours.
Some reviews: Good: https://www.capterra.com/p/158981/LibreOffice/reviews/ and bad! https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/libreoffice Another alternative to LibreOffice and Microsoft 365 which is more compatible with Microsoft than LibreOffice is: Softmaker Office https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/softmaker-office
It’s free – and unlike MS 365 doesn’t keep nagging you to store all your stuff in the cloud. The file formats and filename extensions are the same as Open Office which was bought by Apache. LibreOffice was developed as an offshoot to continue as an Open Source product and tends to adopt new features more rapidly. Thus a document text file extension is “.odt”, however you can configure LibreOffice to save all its documents in Microsoft “docx” format by default, making files easier to share with people who do not have Open or LibreOffice.