Do you ever use OpenOffice.org?

Submitted by libervisco on Fri, 2007-02-02 11:47.

Posts: 3856
Joined: 2006-05-04

I have a confession to make. I rarely use OpenOffice.org. I only currently use it for the table of advertisers for Libervis and occasionally for some print jobs and special docs that I don't open often. Besides the fact that AbiWord and Gnumeric, a much lighter alternatives, suit most purposes just fine, I often find plain text editors to be enough.

It seems like the only people who can really make heavy use of OOo are guys whose work is *all about* the office stuff. The book keepers, secretaries and what not. For home users it is a thing good to have available, but rarely used.

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Fri, 2007-02-02 13:38 For simple printouts, OOo

free-zombie

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For simple printouts, OOo is the tool of choice, for complex articled LaTeX is better suited, but due to the learning curve the not ill-suited OOo is often used.

Print is dead.

Alas, MS .doc files are not.

Thomas Jollans
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Fri, 2007-02-02 13:48 I have a variety of tools

tbuitenh

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I have a variety of tools to throw ms-format files at (catdoc, antiword, abiword, OOo). For my own text documents I use (pdf)latex or html. I don't use spreadsheets, if I need to calculate stuff I'll use python or gforth, or grab the olde programmable casio.

CAN I HAS FIXD CAPSLOK KEE PLZ?

Fri, 2007-02-02 14:14 I use OpenOffice pretty

reptiler

Posts: 762
Joined: 2006-03-28

I use OpenOffice pretty much. In the office I mostly refuse to work with MS Office and use OpenOffice instead. At home I sometimes also use KOffice, but as I see it Word-export in OO seems to be better than in KOffice. And sometimes I need that because I'm the only one in the office using alternative Office-suites and also when I send applications they sometimes ask for Word-documents instead of PDFs.

Recently I was playing around with Scribus, but it's no option if you need to export to Word or OpenOffice. But it's really nice for page-layout and writing manuals to export to PDF.

Fri, 2007-02-02 14:47 I use AbiWord on the Mac,

AndrewB

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I use AbiWord on the Mac, and I use OpenOffice on GNU/Linux. Dunno why, just habbit.

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Fri, 2007-02-02 16:13 sometimes

a thing

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For school stuff I switch off between KWord and OOo Writer (which I can do with standards Smiling ).

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Fri, 2007-02-02 16:20 OO.o for spreadsheets. I

dylunio

Posts: 549
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OO.o for spreadsheets. I rarely write documents, if I do so it depends on my mood what I use (Abiword, LaTeX, gEdit).

Yn falch o ddefnyddio Linux a FLOSS!

Fri, 2007-02-02 18:25 Nope, I do not use

onlinebacon

Posts: 368
Joined: 2005-12-20

Nope, I do not use OpenOffice. I use abiword, and gnumeric when I need to use a spreadsheet. I think that abiword is a lot lighter resource-wise. And it is not from Sun Smiling

There's more to FOSS than GNU Eye-wink

Fri, 2007-04-13 04:00 OpenOffice is default in

10cents

Posts: 36
Joined: 2007-04-10

OpenOffice is default in Ubuntu so I use it. I even have it in my XP together with MSoffice. I think it'll become my primary office suite since I'm not upgrading to 2007. However, I'm looking at lighter WP and spreadsheets that are available in Linux like Abi and Gnumeric.

Fri, 2007-04-13 05:00 KOffice

a thing

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Also take a look at KOffice. It should get more attention than it does.

Disclaimer: My posts may change (dramatically) within the first 15 minutes they're posted.

Sat, 2007-04-14 01:09 I think you're right about

libervisco

Posts: 3856
Joined: 2006-05-04

I think you're right about that. KOffice was talked about in the kubuntu presentation on the Ubuntu conference I was at a couple of weeks ago and it caught my attention. It even has a much more broad set of applications than OpenOffice.org AFAIK. I also think it's a bit faster and lighter than OOo.

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Sat, 2007-04-14 01:34 Those are true.

a thing

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KOffice has more applications than I think any other office suite, not just OOo. It is much faster and lighter than OOo.

Disclaimer: My posts may change (dramatically) within the first 15 minutes they're posted.

Sun, 2007-04-15 10:33 OpenOffice can't compare to

cesc

Posts: 25
Joined: 2007-04-14

OpenOffice can't compare to Microsoft Office...I know that you might try to defend it but it's a fact...I have Microsoft Office 2007 and it's ahead of KOffice and OpenOffice by leaps and bounds...the depth between them is huge...

Sun, 2007-04-15 11:36 So - what are the benefits.

free-zombie

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So - what are the benefits. I haven't used recent MS Office versions... (I don't particularly like the whole concept anyway - I prefer plain text and LaTeX)

So, What does MS Office do that OpenOffice doesn't ? What does it do better ? Why ?

Thomas Jollans
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Sun, 2007-04-15 12:56 I... can't... resist...

tbuitenh

Posts: 1059
Joined: 2005-12-21

free-zombie wrote:

So, What does MS Office do that OpenOffice doesn't ?

It has a proprietary license. And it has eaten my files a few times.

Quote:

What does it do better ?

Making money for microsoft.

Quote:

Why ?

It was made by giant vampire lizards.

CAN I HAS FIXD CAPSLOK KEE PLZ?

Sun, 2007-04-15 14:12 true that. Just today I

free-zombie

Posts: 805
Joined: 2006-03-08

true that.

Just today I listened to an interview with some Linux migration manager in Vienna on RadioTux (German podcast); apparently, migrating from MS Office to OpenOffice saves far more than the whole jump to GNU/Linux and is a lot easier. Here we have employees of the city of Vienna migrating the OpenOffice willfully (as a departement...) Laughing out loud

Thomas Jollans
GnuPG key: 1024D/A6B5 9461 B60F 2C80 2399 6B1E 2698 A70E F421 434B

Sun, 2007-04-15 23:38 Very apt indeed! @cesc; If

libervisco

Posts: 3856
Joined: 2006-05-04

Very apt indeed! Laughing out loud

@cesc; If you like MS Office personally more that's fine, of course. The thing is, if you ask me, even if it has more features, looks better and whatnot, it's code is closed, it pushes a closed file format and it is not free the way OpenOffice.org is. OpenOffice.org can organically continue to grow due to community input, supporting fully open standards while MS Office will always be susceptible to serving MS's whims.

This is why governments are switching to OpenOffice.org. They want independance too, while technically OpenOffice.org does just fine.

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Mon, 2007-04-16 01:28 Just a little story for

reptiler

Posts: 762
Joined: 2006-03-28

Just a little story for your amusement:

Last week our IT-manager was on holiday, so I was in charge of IT-operations here in the office.
And of course exactly in that week a guy from Microsoft called and started telling me about all their cool new software, like Office 2007, and if we had any outstanding project we recently did with MS-software. Well, I decided not to mention that our two biggest projects don't have anything to do with MS at all, one running on a Sun and the other on a Linux-box. But I could not resist to ask him if Office 2007 now finally supports the OpenDocument standard.
And guess what: He didn't know! Alt Smile
He asked me "that's these OpenOffice-files, right?" and I replied "not only OpenOffice, it's an ISO-certified standard". Well, then he told me he'd have to check and will get back to me about that, and changed the topic to server-related software. Wink alt

Mon, 2007-04-16 03:08 2007 may not make it

10cents

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Joined: 2007-04-10

reptiler wrote:

And guess what: He didn't know! Alt Smile
He asked me "that's these OpenOffice-files, right?" and I replied "not only OpenOffice, it's an ISO-certified standard". Well, then he told me he'd have to check and will get back to me about that, and changed the topic to server-related software. Wink alt

Amusing indeed, seems like I knew more about him than Open Doc standard and Office Open XML (I was searching for translators that could open docx in oOo and vice versa). It might surprise MS Office 2007 die-hards that 2003 users doesn't like the new interface (in my colleagues case, at least). I'm the only one dogging it out for compatibility-testing purposes.

The change could provide opportunities for competing office suites like Corel's WordPerfect to grab some market share. Although I don't understand why one would pay for it when something just as good is available for free.

Wed, 2007-10-03 14:46 This is what we use in the

nuxi08

Posts: 6
Joined: 2007-10-03

This is what we use in the office. Go open source!

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