Today I did my first advanced spreadsheet on LibreOffice after switching to Linux, and it handled itself pretty well. I had to search for some features on the web at first, but after I got it down, I felt comfortable using it. Also, LibreOffice’s default menu layout is not pretty, but I can find all of the functions with just a click, unlike MS Office’s ribbon menu where I had to click around to find what I was looking for. Sorry for bad English.
offtopic but your english is great :)
Linux has a bit of a design lacking but the functionality is there.
Depends on the Desktop/Theme your using really.
A lot of what Linux lacks is UI design, and at least 50+% of that is just because of what we got used to using other products.
I do a lot of work with CSV files and LibreCalc is so much better for them. You can actually tell it how to delimit the file and to put quotations around each field.
Some programs actually advise against using excel if you’re going to work on a CSV to upload into the program, which is funny considering it’s meant to be the industry standard.
P. S. For anyone that would like to use LibreOffice at work, download portableapps and get it from there. It’s so portable it can get around IT administration requirements
On behalf of cyber and IT, just ask IT to install the thing, please. They can’t really say no to a free app and bypassing restrictions ends badly for everyone. I had a user do that with video editing software… seriously, what could go wrong? Ransomware. Literally ransomware. Lucky for antivirus it stopped it but yeah, please work with IT.
They can’t really say no to a free app
What? At my workplace there’s a bunch of stuff we aren’t allowed to install that’s free with the reasoning being security concerns.
I am so close to loving libreoffice but trackpad gesture scrolling is broken and it’s kind of not optional on a laptop. With a mouse, I am a big fan.
Gesture scrolling? You mean like making clockwise or anticlockwise circles to scroll up or down? I’d have thought that kind of functionality would be handled by the touchpad driver, not individual programs.
nah just two finger scroll. like going down from page 1 to page 2 with a touchpad
I’ve found that a lot of apps with touch gestures need Touchégg to work correctly, could be worth a shot to give it an install. I use a converted macbook, and for any gestures to work with the apple trackpad at all I have to have touchegg, my partner has it on her converted pixelbook go to make the trackpad not feel awful there too.
i’m on mint cinnamon 22 and have touchegg installed. They have this in built Gestures applet but it doesn’t seem to govern the two finger scroll. Touche (separate app) seems similar - its all about 3 and 4 finger gestures. Seems like the two finger scroll is special somehow.
I’m probably misunderstanding as I rarely use word processing software, so I apologise if you talking about something more than the system’s own handling of touchpad scrolling! here’s the settings applet for XFCE, I think every DE will have similar options (it does even offer circular scrolling, but I know you aren’t looking for that):
Ribbon bar shit, personally I hate the MS ribbon bar. So for me the LO interface is way better. Just depends on what you like and what you learned and know well.
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I recommend giving OnlyOffice a try too. Way better UX/UI than Libre. Compatible with MS Office. No cost.
Look better doesn’t mean it’s functionally better.
And coming fresh from a Russian Company with huge russian Government and Army Contracts
Hm, TIL. I thought they were from the Baltics. For what it’s worth, as far as I can tell the desktop apps never tried to “phone home” from my machine.
“Headquartered” in Latvia. But really it’s Russian.
Yeah, I thought the main devs were Latvian 🤔
it’s not like OnlyOffice is controlled by Putin or something lol
Honest question: who would use a non-collaborative standalone spreadsheet in 2025? I don’t get it.
Not you obviously
I don’t need to share everything, everytime. Do you ?
Context is important:
“in August 2023, OnlyOffice announced a restructuring, placing Ascensio System SIA under the ownership of a British company, which is in turn owned by a Singapore-based holding company”
Its also open source and can be audited still.
I might uninstall because of this though as didnt even know.
My single personal spreadsheet is (uh) a CSV that I edit with
vim. I don’t want to have to fire up a monstrous GUI app just to view a table. But sure, count me as eccentric in this way.Most of the spreadsheets I deal with are for work. For what I consider obvious reasons, they’ve been cloud-hosted for literally decades now.
Yeah, so you do use them, so you get it. Just most people use spreadsheets cause they know it and seem simple to them ! For me, I try to not use online spreadsheets for personal financial stuff. I only use online spreadsheets if the project has meaning in being shared. I quite like grist for this, really handful tool
Your initial response got peoples’ backs up because of its dismissive tone and (it seemed to me, as you hadn’t provided context) apparent advocacy for web-based tools like O365 or GSheets.
Many office application users wouldn’t consider vim as an “office application”, as they have their word processing app, their spreadsheet app, their email app, their chat app, their file explorer/manager, maybe something other than Notepad as a text editor, etc, and don’t really know much beyond some of what each of them can do.
The fact that vim (or Emacs or vim/nvim with plugins, or LazyVim or Doom Emacs) can do all of those things would blow many minds.
But the setup effort and learning curve is still there, and also requires that they have sufficient permissions/policy to be able to install things.
Your initial response got peoples’ backs up because of its dismissive tone and (it seemed to me, as you hadn’t provided context) apparent advocacy for web-based tools like O365 or GSheets.
The pernicious side of social media in microcosm. To say “it’s not collaborative” is somehow understood as shilling for big tech. Always the worst possible interpretation of every remark.
Agreed as to vim.
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Not sure why you got downvoted, it is a fair question. Real time multiuser editing is a powerful feature. That said it is really only needed a small fraction of the time for specific types of collaboration. Also, it can cause problems as well. Libreoffice Calc meets most of my home spreadsheet needs: calculating mortgage rates and future value of investments and such.
You can absolutely collaborate with Collabora Office
Yes, true.
Me, i hate “collaborative” internet connected spying stuff
While libreoffice seems to me like a gazillion features held together by duct tape, it does what I need it to do
