515
cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/12592
Originally posted on Reddit
I just wish it wasnt so ugly.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
515 points (98.1% liked)
Buy European
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libreoffice is great! onlyoffice is good too if you like more compatability with office and docx, but it's more geared toward online services and subscriptions.
cryptpad.fr if you need a google docs alternative.
Good marketing point: LibreOffice has NO ENSHITTIFICATION! Great!
So... we supposed to be rooting for Homelander now?
For real. I really hate how all the internet has just decided to meme with homelander like he is a good guy. Any meme I see with him I just assume some sort of malevolence behind it because he is so fucking evil.
It's not like Solider Boy is great either lol.
No, certainly not. I'm just pointing out that with context this meme template means something very different to what it says on the surface.
Unless OP's point is that LibreOffice is more functional but much, much worse for society while there are better options just off-screen, in which case fair enough and well played.
I wouldn't over think it. It's just about the line used. The same way people use the Spider-Man template where he sees clearly with his glasses even though in the scene he sees better without them.
I feel like a meme academic lmao. "Well, yes, but the colloquial usage of templates often aren't a one-to-one with what's being shown, in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man,"
No it's just saying libre office kills babies
Is that how it loads so fast?
No, the babies are necessary to parse the .doc format.
Thankfully nobody uses that anymore, praise be
I have a coworker that regularly sends *.xls files. They always function fine, so I really have no reason to complain.
xls files are blocked in our company because they can contain potentially harmful macros
No, it's bloated as shit so it uses techniques from 2000s java to keep a good portion of it in memory at all times from boot to shutdown.
Try loading a portable version of libre office (ie if you have admin rights issues). It's a solid ten second cold load on a 2 year old system.
*eats
I'm not a fan of people applying nationalism to open source software. I get this is a reaction to another country's nationalism but it really undermines what open source software is all about.
Yea, The Document Foundation is based in Germany. But Libre Office is an international collaborative open source project, with contributors in many countries.
Open source projects dont have a nationality. Even the ones with organisations based in the USA. And if people really are concerned about US based legal orgs then we should be looking at forking the software.
Its already under open source licences and belongs to everyone regardless of nationality.
TBH, as a New Zealander, highlighting that it's not based or of the US is a huge win.
I'll say, I feel this. I love FOSS, and I love the BuyEuropean movement as well, but I'm also always scared this will turn nationalistic, which I'm not a big fan of...
Precisely my feelings. I hope it doesn't turn out to in the negative way, but I'm afraid of some of the vitriol I'm seeing already
Uuuh this is about closed source Microsoft Office Vs open source Libre Office which just happen to be from Germany and thus is the reason why this is posted in this community.
Libreoffice is amazing. I had dismissed it ages ago back when I had no reason to boycott the US, but now I tried it again after switching to Linux and it works amazingly good.
There’s no need for MS Office for personal use, though unfortunately for my large corporate employer it probably isn’t going to realistically be considered.
I like using OnlyOffice, too, which is based in Latvia.
Im still not sure if this is true, but I’ve seen a couple people post that OnlyOffice may be Russian owned with a location in Latvia just to avoid association. I really hope not because I do like the UI more. I tried asking Le Chat about it and got this. I’d love to get someone else’s take on this though.
OnlyOffice is owned by Ascensio System SIA, a Latvian-based IT company with headquarters in Riga. The company was founded by Lev Bannov, who is also the CEO of OnlyOffice. The ownership structure has undergone significant changes, with the Singapore holding company ONLYOFFICE Capital Group Pte. Ltd. now being the ultimate owner of Ascensio System SIA through its UK subsidiary, Ascensio System Limited .
OnlyOffice has faced allegations and concerns regarding its ties to Russia. Some sources claim that OnlyOffice is a Russian company that has attempted to mask its origins by using a Latvian company as a front. These allegations suggest that the company has connections to the Russian government and military, and that it has set up shell companies to avoid being associated with Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine .
The company has been accused of using its Latvian headquarters as a way to enter the international market while continuing to operate and develop its products in Russia under the name R7 Office . These concerns have led some companies to sever ties with OnlyOffice due to its alleged support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its failure to condemn the conflict .
Despite these claims, it is important to note that OnlyOffice is officially headquartered in Riga, Latvia, and operates under Ascensio System SIA. The company has a complex ownership structure, with a Singapore holding company owning the UK branch, which in turn owns the Latvian branch .
AI chatbots are not and probably never will be good tools to research information
But wouldn’t they be able to cover way more content (and if trained well) be able to filter out biases? I feel like most people are bad at this already. They either just believe whatever they hear without looking it up, or go to one source and take it as final. For the average person, wouldn’t aggregated results be better?
Oh no, people are using AI slop to generate Lemmy comments
Can you help me understand this better? The response didn’t sound biased and it was all supported with links that confirmed where it inferred that from. I also only asked about this after seeing two different mentions of this in other comments. I do not want to spread false information which is why I put all the sources I got this from and clearly stated where it came from.
Again, not trying to be rude at all, I am genuinely curious
Why are you using AI for research? It's a glorified predictive text.
Maybe I’m not understanding how this works. I just started testing it, but it appears to be running a live web search (as it takes a while and adds a globe icon for each new source it’s reviewing) and summarizes for trends, which is exactly what I would do. If I was doing it myself, I would only skim a few articles anyways to find common themes. I’m not writing a research paper on this, I’m just looking to see if there is a notable trend in source articles.
Now, I have it start a summary and then I check the sources to see if it trust it. Overall, it seems like it reaches the same goal but quicker. Which also makes me more likely to look things up to see if they’re supported with facts or completely made up. I realize AI can also hallucinate and the sources are not comprehensive, but isn’t at least better than nothing?
Pretty much all of the ai tools available now have been shown to hallucinate, even if it started out with an internet search.
I've had ai tools spit out real looking URLs that led to 404 pages, because it had hallucinated those links. It's a place to start your research, to maybe refine your questions, but I wouldn't trust it much with the actual research.
An LLM, a large language model, that an ai tool like Mistral is, doesn't really use knowledge, it predicts what the next logical text is going to be based on information it has been trained on. It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, it just predicts what the next words are likely going to be.
It doesn't even understand text, that's why all of them claimed that there were just 2 Rs in strawberry. It doesn't treat text as text.
You can use it to rewrite a text for you, perhaps even summarize (though there's still the possibility of hallucinations there), but I wouldn't ask it to do research for you.
I'm never quite sure if a document will translate 100% to Word or Excel, but otherwise I've been very happy.
To ensure better compatibility, do a fresh save-as to another format if possible on MS side (docx-doc, doc-docx, -docm, whatever). It forces Office to rebuild the file, i believe, and usually it fixes some display mistakes coming from excessive formatting, trashes the leftovers of previous edits, etc, and the file itself becomes lighter. Some other tricks:
- Have strict formatting rules and only select amount of styles. If you see them mutating, choose to select everything with a style-bastard applied, and then reapply their parent to all affected paragraphs (after what it should disappear);
- Don't use rare fonts as long as possible, and if you do, on different machines too, copy them from Windows fonts folder in advance;
- Overwhelmingly long and complex tables in Word usually break. The most dire offender is how you unite cells and move separate cells' borders, because it breaks their structure. Google has workarounds iand limitations on that in their products. To ensure your table translates right, copy it into Excel and then back after setting all cells in Excel to text data, as it likes to reformat e.g. 18.03.2025 into date format and such.
Some of these problems occured to me between different installations of MS products themselves, and with LO I had it the other way: Excel had a bugged file that wasn't adjustable in how to print it. One column wasn't fitting on the page one, but once I move the guideline over that column, Excel cuts this table into 70+ pages, one cell on each. The only thing that helped is opening this exact file in LO Calc where this problem just can't be reproduced. Since that I use Calc first, and then Google Sheets as I haven't found a fitting online sharing solution for myself and get invited tonedit it by others, and Excel is not an option at all anymore.
Thank you for the tips; I'll try them.
Same. I've had some professional frustrations when spreadsheets don't carry over formatting correctly and dealing with macros is a pain, but it's great to start with or if you aren't collaborating.
LO is good software.
It replaced MSOffice Word for me (and I had been using Word since the early 90s). It also has a few extensions one may want to consider adding. Stuff like extra dictionaries for example, or better (than the default provided) ePub/HTML export tools.
How does it stack to Open Office? Got that years ago & it's been treating me well.
LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice and most developers went to work on LibreOffice instead. You should consider switching to LibreOffice.
OpenOffice is not recommended, I hope you mean OnlyOffice, they get confused sometimes.
Nope! I do believe it's OpenOffice, an older version, idk I downloaded a popular FOSS version a few years back. Pretty insane that Microsoft actually thinks people should pay a subscription to rent this stuff, lol