If you need collaborative editing then Google's office suite is unmatched. Otherwise LibreOffice is perfectly fine as an alternative to keep your personal data off the cloud.

I used OpenOffice, and later LibreOffice, for all of my assignments in grade school and college. If you know how to use one office suite then you essentially already know how to use them all. There are some guides that can help you find certain features in the menus.

Compatibility-wise, if you intend to share documents across systems that may also require editing the documents, avoid saving documents in the Microsoft OOXML formats; use the Open Document Formats instead. You may also want to embed the fonts used in the document in case the person who opens the document doesn't have the same fonts. As a good portion of document layout issues are caused by missing fonts being replaced by substitutes that have different character heights and widths.

Finalized read-only versions of your document should be exported as PDFs. LibreOffice does have the option of generating a hybrid PDF that contains the original ODF source embedded in it. Which you can use to avoid having to maintain two separate files — the rendered PDF and original ODF file.

Although I would recommend Scribus over LibreOffice Draw because it's much easier to snap elements to a precise grid for perfect precision with a printer.

I use LibreOffice! Calc, Draw, and Writer are very user friendly once you get used to where the tools are. Impress is a pretty good replacement for Powerpoint: the stock graphics leave a lot to be desired--but that's a simple fix with a good stock image service. About the only thing LO doesn't do is notes, but I'd check out Xournal++ if you were looking for a way to replace OneNote. Plus, LibreOffice doesn't push OneDrive down your throat. It's been a win-win for me.

Another thing to consider if you really like typesetting is to learn LaTeX: it's a slightly steep learning curve(especially for advanced topics), but it'll do things that your typical WYSIWYG word-processing suite couldn't dream of doing. Plus there are a lot of templates available that you can adapt for your purposes.

I do. I'm never going to pay for Microsoft Office. No need. Libre does fine.

I've been using it for years for all personal office suite uses.

Along with GIMP for photo editing

Yes. I've been using it since the old OpenOffice days. It works well, it's easy to learn, it's well supported, and it's free.

I use nothing else, unless my employer forces me to use MS office, offline. No online documents here, you never know when they sell your data...

I use it for pretty much everything that I would use Microsoft Word for. Essays, signs, résumés, legal documents... lots of uses.

I use libreoffice, draw, and calc.

I lost all my work to Melissa in 1999 and never used MS office again.

I use OnlyOffice. Mainly for the far superior MS office compatibility. Occasionally I'll use LibreOffice for the extra features not available in OnlyOffice.

For me, yes, and not just for personal or academic use. I've created and editted countless business documents with it. I've gotten at least four jobs with the resume I wrote with it.

I use collabora, which is essentially an online webUI implementation of libreoffice that can integrate with nextcloud, which I self-host.

All the benefits of an online office suite, all on my own hardware.

Nothing to learn it's a doddle to use, My 76 year old mother was quite happily using it occasionally on linux box up until she broke her neck two weeks ago - really (4 vertebrae).

I use Calc all the time for work. A lot of our clients send in xlsx files and I can open them and get the information out of them easily. Sometimes I need to build or modify CSV files. It's a powerhouse for that.

I stylized my (for print) resume with Writer. Unless I'm working collaboratively I use writer for any documents to be printed. Any docs that aren't destined for the press are just markdown.

LibreOffice is very appreciated and I'm glad it's a standard on most distros.

I have been using it forever. I love it, and usually install it for friends and family members. Drive is fine, but they are indexing and reading your data, and I prefer to own my software.

I have it deployed at work for my 55 users instead of getting Microsoft Office licenses for all of them. They are not sophisticated users and it suits their needs. I probably field a few more questions for it than MS Office but they would call about that too since they think I am Google.

I personally think that Calc does a better job handling various CSV files than Excel.

If I had to choose only one program it would be OnlyOffice. I like LibreOffice Writer okay but Calc can’t handle my .csv files as they are too big while OnlyOffice does fine with even my largest of datasets.

I use it and it works just fine for my needs. I wouldn't say I'm a heavy user though but it does everything I need it to do and it does it well.

Well, I have a license for MS Office from work that I have never actually installed, because Libre Office is just much simpler to deal with. I'm sure at some point I will need it, but since WFH started there has been no such time.

Honestly, I have no idea how people can stand MS Word. It's a complete piece of shit that barely works. If you want it for a text editor, you will have a much better experience with any other suite. But Excel is good, and Power Point does that thing it does quite well (if that's a good thing, it's up to opinion). Those are harder to replace.

Like everything else it depends on what you're trying to do.

Bugs and operational issues aside a document written in Libra office is not going to be pixel compatible with the word doc. In many cases, The formatting can be pretty far off.

But the same goes for Google docs although they make a pretty solid attempt to make them close they're still not pixel perfect.

If your output is a printer or a PDF I don't really think it matters what you use they're all serviceable within reason.

If you're working with someone on grants or trying to find a job and need to give them an editable document for some reason It's probably best to use Microsoft word.

If you find yourself not able to commit to LibreOffice you can always try OnlyOffice. For people that are used to the Microsoft products, those are quite easy and samey feeling replacement's.

Much of my work is collaborative document creation. I'd love to use LibreOffice but try as I might, I can't work out how to connect it to corporate SharePoint sites etc.

Working with MS Word on anything but trivial documents is miserable. So many bugs and weirdnesses. How is it even possible for Word to let its documents become sour using its own file format!

I say "sour" because the documents are still accessible, so not fully corrupted... but over time, weirdnesses creep in such as tables losing their positioning data, cross-references breaking for no reason etc.

Not having constant internet access, LibreOffice is a valuable tool to me. I kind of dread the day when the development of fundamental desktop applications assumes a constant internet connection.

Yes, I've used it for years both privately and on business machines.

Used LIbreOffice throughout college. I use it when I need to, though I don't use any office productivity apps beyond a spreadsheet these days. When I DO need something like that, I Just use the LibreOffice integrated into Nextcloud.

I sure do. On everything.

Used it extensively while i was doing a degree, zotero is just far superior to word's inbuilt reference manager.

I use it even on windows. I don't think it is good, one of annoyance is to open a document and discover a photo is out of place (even in odf). but there is just no alternative.

Fortunately, for most of my serious writing, I use latex.

I use LibreOffice to fill out important documents and taxes. I don't trust google, or myself for that matter, to hold that kind of data securely in the cloud without encryption.

LibreOffice is eons better than any bullshit microsoft product

I use it even in the once a month time I have to touch Windows, chief.

I used to use it for all my office needs, then Google docs got really good!

I think owncloud/nextcloud use libreoffice code for their collaborative office suites behind the scenes.

Been using it (or OpenOffice) since I was in high school. So probably since shortly after OpenOffice first released in 2002. Then in college I would have switched over to LibreOffice once it forked off in like 2010 or 2011, whichever it was.

I use on Windows, bc It has regex, a huge thing for me.

I do a lot of work in LibreOffice Calc these days - I use it to outline text documents as well as make computations that I can revise. It doesn't need to have tons of features to do what I want it to do, but if you dig into it, it can do some pretty powerful stuff.

Draw is also just fine for making meme text.

I use LibreOffice Calc a lot for work when I'm required to deal with xlsx or csv files from our customers. For most other things, Google Docs has us covered so employees can collaborate. For me it's less about FOSS in this case and more about using the tools that best fit our needs for any given job. If I didn't have something that worked as well as LibreOffice does, I would be forced to use Windows for work.

I do, on Windows (boo-womp). It really does the job well, but I need some more time to get used to it.

I juggle between whatever office suite is installed at the time. I’ve found that they’re all pretty much the same. If you know one, the rest are virtually the same.

I used OpenOffice and then LibreOffice all the way through college. However in the past couple years I moved to a combination of Office 365 and VSCode because I used the OneDrive cloud storage which comes at a pretty solid discount.

I personally used it for writing my thesis and for creating presentations. It fit my needs perfectly as there are also extensions supporting it like LangaugeTool or Zotero. For personal usage, it is perfect. In my former start-up, we used Nextcloud with Collabora (now just called Nextcloud Office) and that worked out perfectly fine as well.

I agree that it can be tricky if you have to collaborate with others that use MS Office, unfortunately. For that I use Office Online or worst case whip up my MacBook and run the normal MS Office suite. But I didn't have to use it for quite long time now.

I use it, I also hate it with a passion. I also hate Microsoft Office, its a little better but not worth installing and registering.

Nowadays if I need to write something I use either plain text, Markdown or LaTeX depending on what I'm doing. For presentations I use LaTeX, Draw.io or Google Slides. For spreadsheets I haven't found anything decent yet so I end up using Calc.

Anyways, the Google alternatives are decent to be honest, I just prefer to avoid Google, otherwise I would use Docs, Slides and whatever their spreadsheet app is called.

I use it. It's rare, because I tend to use emacs+org-mode for private documents, or one of various other formats for interchange, but when I need to work with Microsoft Word or Excel documents, I use it.

Also, abiword theoretically is a lighter-weight editor for RTF documents, but in past years, I've found it to be pretty unstable, so I tend to use LibreOffice to view RTF documents.

I used LibreOffice exclusively in college — it was a lifesaver for my broke ass, since most of my money went to beer and hobbies (DnD, home severs, guitars, more drinking…)

It got the job done, but I wasn’t doing a whole lot of writing fwiw. Once I got over the whole “save it using the correct format or your professors will fail you” hump, it was everything I needed and more.

Don’t do any writing that isn’t markdown now, and I write that in Vscode or Obsidian these days.

I use it mainly for personal use, and mainly when people send me Excel worksheets. I've also used Calc to manipulate data for CSV merges, too. I've worked in small newspaper office that'll have Macs but don't want to buy Office; unlike Pages it interacts with the outside world nicely.

I've been a user so long that I had a StarOffice license in college so I didn't have to reboot to Windows to work on term papers.

There was a time where I'd boot up Libre office for tasks that Google docs wouldn't cover. But it's been so long I don't remember what it was.

Now I just use Docs for all my personal work.

I used OpenOffice then switched to LibreOffice in recent years. I also use Word and occasionally BBEdit but mostly stick with OpenOffice for as I only need simple text editing, basic tables etc Edit: to add that I also use Google Docs and Google Keep when I want something quick and dirty that's going to later be available anywhere I might possibly need to access it

Yes, I've been using it (and Collabora) for years! For the most part, I don't trust Google Docs at all, and while MS Office is the business standard... my use case doesn't require the fluff MS Office adds.

I do use MS at work because I have to, and I used it for collab in grad school... but other than that? Libre all the way.

I use it several times a week, mostly for spreadsheets. At work I'm forced to use microsoft office365 but off the clock I do a lot of sidegig data management (open source and game related) using libreoffice.

Some of said data is being ordered before being put in a large unwieldy database - its easier to do the edits in libra than in the actual database, at least till the team cleans up that mess of a database.

I use it occasionally. Usually for reports or essays for college and working on CV/ Resumes for me and my family.

Sometimes also for other random stuff like writing speeches etc.

It has everything I need and I am used to it at this stage. Plus I like that it is open source and free.

Yes, I do. It's fine, not a great UI but it gets the job done. I don't work in a ton of Office documents, but for something like basic spreadsheets it meets my needs.

For basic word processing and excel like items I’ve used it and recommend it for others. Especially when I’m on my Linux desktop. I’ve used it for some small businesses as well so they could open and send files for work.

I used it years ago when I had a writing hobby. Whenever I go back to it, I'll probably use it again. Learning it wasn't hard for me because I'm old and it wasn't very different from the word processors I'd grown up with.

@kurosawaa yep. Handy for machines I don’t need a full ms office license on

I used it years ago, but have moved to the cloud for all my document editing needs.

No, I'm on Google docs too, but it's handy to have installed for when there is no internet and for it's other (cli) tools (such as converting docx to doc etc).

I use it, still use it today. Honestly I think it's fine, I mainly have gripes about these:

1. There are some weird compatibility issues if someone else is using Microsoft Word to write on the same document as me
2. The slideshow is a bit clunky in terms of how things work...

Otherwise it's alright!

Sure, used it at a job this past year, writer and calc.

After spending a couple of days to secure a PC to be able to do my job I was not going to spend another week getting them to find me an office license.

Had no issues with sharing documents with colleagues (except excel not parsing a regex from calc) or with the public. Way more issues with people not actually understanding how to use word and excel and do proper formatting. Calc also had a gui method to multi-criteria filtering that the various versions of excel around the office did not.

I also used Impress to edit some PDFs for another older gig. Bit clunky and you must have the fonts used in the original. Just remember a pdf may be a hassle to edit but it is editable and not proof of anything (on it's own).

Yes, on my personal computer. The UI isn't the best but so far I have been able to handle just about anything I throw at it competently. I definitely prefer Microsoft office which is on my work issued PC. Not a fan of Google docs unless im collaborating on something with friends.

i just started using it. admittedly, a rarely do, but it's great

I use it all the time. And I avoid using cloud/fog alternatives since I care way too much about privacy, and especially I do not trust the GAFAM/BigTech mafia with my data. The two main office suits online are actually breaking the European GDPR privacy laws and are already forbidden in some EU countries. Don't know what others are waiting for with outlawing them. So yeah I like to keep my data locally and private as much as possible, so LibreOffice is what I use. And it has much more features compared to online versions, and is working much more faster, and it is also free as in freedom and opensource, which none of those bug online office suits are.

I use it for everything that doesn't explicitly need to be shared or anything that is going to be printed. I needed to print a document as a booklet and LibreOffice had that feature and Drive didn't.

I also keep a baseline suite of apps installed on every machine and that includes LibreOffice.

Office apps sometimes work and sometimes don't. One app loads content while the other doesn't so I use multiple programs and see whichever works for specific document. LibreOffice, WPS Office, OnlyOffice or Microsoft Office.

Tbh, I use a proprietary office with native Linux support. But I plan to switch back to a Foss option soon.

I mostly use plain markdown files, but when I need it formatted to APA, or similar for school, I write the content in markdown, then to LibreOffice for formatting. I've messed around with some semi-heavy budgeting spreadsheets without issue. If I need an office suite, I use LibreOffice.

I use it when I have to, but in fact, all my twists and turns over the years – LaTeX, Obsidian, Zim, etc. – have been caused by deep frustrations with Writer. It seems that when it comes to the handling of direct formatting, styles, typography, each new update has caused even greater problems, for me anyway, to the extent that I can't rely on the program, not even to preserve the contents of my files.

So now I do all my writing in Obsidian and then convert to odt for the final touches.

Whether it's worth learning or not depends on what you're trying to accomplish. The basics are easy enough to pick up and don't deviate much. It's only when you get a bit deeper in that stuff starts diverging.

As for use case: If I was strictly looking for private use, I would absolutely pick LibreOffice over the alternatives (cloud-stored data is, ah... well it's a thing until it's not.) I did not use it extensively when I did try it (Windows and Ubuntu) so I wasn't quite able to get used to some of the differences. Likewise, there was far more information available for the Microsoft Office and Google Docs suites, but that is more a matter of mind share than quality of the software.

Right now I have no need for that kind of editing outside of work, and for work, I just use what's provided. Currently that's Google Docs and has been Microsoft Office in the past. I don't know that I'd steer away from either of those for a decently sized business - something being industry standard means it's something people are used to working with, after all - but for a small outfit, I'd probably go with LibreOffice still.

Only office sheets has a few annoying limitations that libreoffice sheets handles better (automatically updating filter views, more complex advanced options), but only office ended up being a better choice for me as someone trying to move 100% off from google sheets because:

• the UI is closer to google sheets, feels like I'm not in the 90s (this could be a pro or a con)
• The documentbuilder api was actually easier to get going for consistent conversion of spreadsheets to pdf dashboards or other automations than the hacks and macros required for libreoffice sheets.

TL;DR only office closer to google sheets for basic use cases and a little bit of automation

For my workload yes, but the minute I need someone else to look at it, we go to [INSERT COMMON ONLINE ACCOUNT OFFICE SUITE HERE].

I kindiof wish there was integration somehow but men, its office software

I do everything in LibreOffice that I need to print or send as PDF. Only if something has to be compatible with Office at shool or if someone wants the .docx file I use Office in a VM.

All the time! I've been using it for around 10 years (for university and work). Is it worth learning? It depends™

I do, but not professionally. I’ve used it on MacOS, windows, and Pop OS without issue, but mostly for making simple documents or spreadsheets.

I just don't use office software at all. Markdown, org-mode and pandoc then straight into latex. If I need a spreadsheet it's R, Python and Jupyter.

Always used LibreOffice. Rarely have I touched anything else.

I tried to use LibreOffice but couldn't stand the UI coming from Windows and macOS. Honestly as much as it sucks, the either ugly design of the applications or them not being straight up available just had me move back to macOS and Windows.

Why pay Microsoft for an office suite that opens your system up to all kinds of attacks (seriously, MS products are a real security threat) when you can have pretty much the same for free and open source? And who would want all their documents on some corporation servers like Google's cloud? Sure, convenience, but you can become self-reliant and still have convenience for example by setting up your own Nextcloud. So, yes, of course people use LibreOffice.

It's interesting that you state "is it worth learning?" surely the power of libreoffice/open office is that they are drop in replacements for the microsoft suite?

I can appreciate that they're copies of office "pre-ribbon" but that was superior anyway.

Does anyone actually use Google docs?
https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/typical-mind-fallacy
https://www.lesswrong.com/...

Now that that's out of the way...
yes, all the time. It's the best for linux 8) Wish theming was better though tbh

Haven't used MS Office or Google docs for the last 10 years. Only use LibreOffice. Have tried OnlyOffice, it wasn't bad, however it always defaults to US/English, you have to change it to your location for every document. No thanks. Jay from LearnLinuxTV on youtube writes his books using LibreOffice.

I've used it for university. There's some documents that other free software (including Google) can't open. Other than that, I try to do most of my work on LaTeX these days. I've even written my resume and cover letters in it.

My main gripe with LibreOffice is just the UI, but that is partially because I don't use it often (negative reinforcing loop). Late 90's and Early 2000's me would be right at home. However, what I use on a daily basis is Only Office that I have in a docker hosted alongside my NextCloud docker. Only Office integrates well with NextCloud.

I use LibreOffice daily (mostly Writer, but also Calc) to run my small consulting business. I compile reports which can be quite long and complex including front matter sections, table of contents, index of tables and multiple levels of headers. Lots of internal referencing and footnotes as well. I have also used it in windows within a company where everyone else was using Word, without any more issues than the Word users were having. The main problem with Word documents is the build-up of auto-generated "styles" and people's use of direct formatting for everything. This leads to inconsistencies. With LibreOffice, the use of styles is much more integrated at all levels than in Word and learning to use them properly is a game changer. I have found the direct generation of PDF from Libreoffice to produce a better result. I like Calc better than Excel but they use different but similar macro languages so Excel macros are not always directly compatible in Calc.

I installed Linux Mint on my Dad's older computer and he uses the word and excel versions of LibreOffice, since he stores data on a USB, he uses them to modify data, he doesn't like it when google docs makes a copy of your file when you open something from USB.

I use it all the time. Sometimes it can't handle complicated .doc files correctly but I use it mostly for spreadsheets, and its rare that I have any problems.

@kurosawaa I use LibreOffice. It’s a great office suite that’s just as productive as M365.

I use Libre Office for some things, but I didn't make any effort to "learn" it, so I only do simple things with it. I'd like to be better at spreadsheets but haven't gotten around to making the effort. For text formatting, very basic LibreWriter has been good enough for my purposes. For fancier things there is always TeX ;).

I don't need any office program very often but LibreOffice is my go-to if I have a choice. I prefer flatpacks for the quickest updates.

I can get past the jank UI, and use it all the time if my network is too slow to use Drive.

I'd use it if it were faster to open. But honestly a lot of the time I want to be able to access the documents from multiple devices.

I do. I’ve used it for many years - back to when it was OpenOffice and I even dabbled with StarOffice before that. It’s not as good as MS Office but it does the job. I also use Office 365 and G Suite occasionally. It’s definitely a good thing that we have LibreOffice.

I've tried to use it on my personal MacBook before, but the MacOS UI seems clunkier than what I've seen on Windows. Also, I have run into a few compatibility/layout problems with Word Docs and Excel Files. Lastly, the icon is basically just a white rectangle which I find offputting for some reason.

I avoid MS Office like the plague. Absolutely hate it. Libre Office isn't perfect, but at least it's not MS Office.

I also like Libre's Excel program much better than Microsoft's. It doesn't crash constantly, for starters.