The Document Foundation has released a new build of the popular cross-platform, open source LibreOffice suite of tools for creating, editing, and viewing spreadsheets, presentations, text, and other documents.
LibreOffice 7.1 Community is now available for download, and it brings several new features including a dialog that lets you set the user interface on first run, an updated extension manager and new features for the Writer, Calc, Impress, and Draw applications. There’s also initial support for building LibreOffice 7.1 as a native Windows on ARM64 application.
The most noteworthy change might be the name though – this is the first version of LibreOffice with the “Community” label.
Last summer The Document Foundation hinted that a name change was coming when pre-release builds of LibreOffice 7.0 were labeled “Personal edition.” Now it looks like the organization has settled on Community rather than Personal.
Does that mean that this is a stripped down version of LibreOffice? Nope. It’s the latest update to the free and open source application folks have been using for years… but it’s developed by a community of volunteers and aimed at personal users.
The Document Foundation notes that there’s nothing stopping business or enterprise customers from using the software, but the foundation “has strongly recommended the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners” such as Collabora, CIB, and Adfinis.
In a nutshell, these are companies that provide enterprise-level services and support including cloud-based installations of LibreOffice that allow users to access the software from a web browser much the way they can with Google Docs or Microsoft Office online.
By choosing one of these enterprise versions of LibreOffice, The Document Foundation notes that business users help support the companies that help support (and contribute code to) LibreOffice development while also freeing up volunteer time and resources that could be better spent on the Community version.
It’s unclear if the new name will have any real impact on enterprise customers. But for users, downloading LibreOffice Community certainly sounds less like you’re getting a stripped down version of the software that LibreOffice Personal would have.
You can read more about new features in LibreOffice 7.1 Community in The Document Foundation’s blog post and in the release notes.
Someone can consider me a very power Excel user (ex M$ Beta Tester) involving its deepest features (20 years). Also I support open source software and if there is any viable alternative I switch. Then I don’t advert M$ Excel here just opinions.
So based on my experiences M$ Excel most needed and used software in every size of businesses. Smalls/mids companies use it as a database software/reporting. Recent additions made Excel (Array Formulas, Spills, PowerQuery-Pivot,Bi, etc.) excellent. So, if there was no Excel, M$ could not have such market.
Then LibreOffice came and 10 years passed already. So what we have?
— We still don’t have a “Excel Table” feature. This is the main reason for companies to use Excel. This was planned feature 8 years ago and still not happened. (You can read feature requests by users on ask.libreoffice.org forums and some awful answers.)
— Still there is no named range expandibility with formulas. (Huh..)
— Still there is no any PowerQuery alternative yet.
— I don’t think LibreOffice core code and objects improvable (C++, Java mix)
No. Nope. I don’t think any company will use LibreOffice in serious business environment. I have really a lot to say on this subject but it’s enough.
I here just look forward for a new FOSS Office Suite that doesn’t follow Excel from very big distance just left it behind.
Maybe someone will try to think out of the box and produce a business database having spreadsheet features.