Why I Choose LibreOffice
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So this isn't meant to be "why you should choose" LibreOffice, just an explanation as to what factors we feel make it the right choice for us at @ntg where we've used both over the years. Because in other discussions I see a lot of "this is why MS Office would save you money" points, but they really never apply to us, or honestly most of our customers. So here goes.
First, some background, we're an IT firm that does IT work. We are not a VAR and we don't do bids. Our first office suite for the company, back in 1999 was StarOffice. Through all our difference business incarnations and changes, we've never had a strong need for MS Office. And really, any office suite is very lightly used. As we are IT, we tend to have very light use cases for an office suite, mostly just small spreadsheets.
Over the years we moved from StarOffice to OpenOffice. Then for a few years probably around 2012 - 2017 we use MS Office. MS Office worked fine, but so did OpenOffice. Both totally met our needs at the time. Both would meet them now. MS Office had one really notable problem, however, which was the inability to deploy it universally because we traditionally had always been a mixed environment and Linux installations are always problematic, if available at all, and Mac deployments are sometimes incompatible and once in a while, not even available.
In 2017 we dropped O365 and when we did made an intentional move to LibreOffice for our core office suite officially across the company. We also moved off of Windows, all but entirely. We have an official OS now, Ubuntu. making MS Office much less desirable.
So where are we today? Still on LibreOffice and very happy. We've certainly considered alternatives like OnlyOffice and Zoho Docs, for example. There are many good office suites out there these days. G Suite and MS Office, plus the three mentions... plus WPS Office is out there, too.
So what are the key factors for LibreOffice for us as we stand today...
- It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
- It's totally free. This is a bigger deal than it seems because it means no time spent dealing with licenses, or counting deployments or deciding which people qualify for tools or not. We just deploy across the board, automatically.
- The above point means that any customers interested in it "just get it" too. Sure, most customers already have MS Office. But some want LO. And some have nothing because it's a trivial need, but this means that they get something instead of nothing.
- Also from the above, all of our staff can freely have LO on their own machines, as well. There's no place where people can't use it.
- We effectively never get documents from outside companies in any office format. Most everything from vendors is text, CSV, or PDF. On the rare occasion that we get an MS Office document, it's almost always Excel and translates flawlessly. Word documents are limited almost entirely to CVs, and exact format doesn't matter.
- If we really needed MSO compatibility suddenly, we can just install OnlyOffice or WPS, again for free, and voila, problem solved in those isolated situations for essentially zero effort. We never do this, as it never comes up, but it's a backup plan, just in case it ever did.
- In reality, LO handles MSO formatting pretty well. Far better than people give it credit for. Even if we were in a situation where we needed to do it, it would likely not matter.
- LO has online editing with Colabora which isn't the best but works quite well for us. This gives us mobile editing, as well. Since we use NextCloud as our corporate storage this is really handy.
- LO has automatic hooks to NextCloud and other online storage options (but NC is what we use) so that you can use the desktop tools to edit files directly on NC. This is the primary way that many of us work and it is really simple and effective.
- No account management. Hooks to online accounts are additional steps to manage that we are very glad that we can avoid.
- We never run into "if only it did..." problems. I'm under no delusions that LO does all the things that MSO does. It doesn't. But we never even begin to use the features that it does have as it is. We don't come close at all to needing it to do anything that it doesn't.
- We use web mail or vendor supplied email apps.
- Works on Raspberry Pi and our terminal servers transparently. No special effort needed at all.
I think that that is most of it. Basically, the things that LO shines at (cost, ease of management, licensing, platform compatibility) affect us a lot. And the things that LO is poor at (extensive features, desktop email app, compatibility with partners) don't affect us much, or at all. And the one big "wish list" item I have is for a better web-based experience (but LO7 should improve that soon.)
LO completely meets our needs and comes really close on our wants. The one thing that I truly wish it had was a Zoho level online editor (which I find better than either MSO or G Suite.) The platform options and zero acquisition cost and effectively zero support cost are the killer features. We have zero tickets, today or historically, for issues with it. It has consistently "just worked" for our needs. So it saves us a lot of money every month in licensing, and some money every so often in support. And as we grow, the percentage of our staff that even has a use for an office suite shrinks, while the cost to have it available for them increases. We are nearly to the point where the licensing cost of MS Office alone would be enough to hire a support person instead! For us, it costs less and makes us more efficient.
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@scottalanmiller I am sure that a large percentage of organizations that use MS office would get by peachy without it. It might just be a culture thing to expect MS office in a business because no one really evaluates things. I know there are always exceptions.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's totally free. This is a bigger deal than it seems because it means no time spent dealing with licenses, or counting deployments or deciding which people qualify for tools or not. We just deploy across the board, automatically.
This is a huge deal. Why isn't this more important to everyone? I mean I know LibreOffice and Zoho docs do not have all the features that MS office does, but everyone knows those features are never used, by anyone. Certainly no one with my users. So we and many other organizations are paying for features that are never touched. That is a lot of money paid for nothing year after year.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
We effectively never get documents from outside companies in any office format. Most everything from vendors is text, CSV, or PDF. On the rare occasion that we get an MS Office document, it's almost always Excel and translates flawlessly. Word documents are limited almost entirely to CVs, and exact format doesn't matter.
We get a few office formats but its all just communication stuff. It is things that would just as easily work in LibreOffice or Zoho docs. 90% of our important documents are pdf and pictures. They are things like transcripts and grades. We get very little Excel stuff. Our reporting department just uses PowerBi which is free so I don't care about that.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
In reality, LO handles MSO formatting pretty well. Far better than people give it credit for. Even if we were in a situation where we needed to do it, it would likely not matter.
I use a combination of Zoho and LibreOffice myself. More Zoho to be honest. It's like 60-40. I could use either exclusively though. I can't remember the last time, if ever, that I had trouble with formatting so I totally agree with this as well based on my experiences. There are always exceptions of course as there will be some user that has trouble. However, I have never had an Excel sheet or anything else that LibreOffice did not handle. I see no speed difference either. So maybe in cases where people have trouble there are other circumstances not mentioned or things happening they are not aware of.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
No account management. Hooks to online accounts are additional steps to manage that we are very glad that we can avoid.
I think this is huge. My sys admin spends so much time dealing with account issues for one product after another. Management wants everything tied into AD. I understand their reasons but I think it causes them a lot of trouble they just don't admit to. There are constant account level issues that have to be dealt with and some that never go away. This is a huge waste of time that could be spent doing more productive tasks.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
I think that that is most of it. Basically, the things that LO shines at (cost, ease of management, licensing, platform compatibility) affect us a lot. And the things that LO is poor at (extensive features, desktop email app, compatibility with partners) don't affect us much, or at all. And the one big "wish list" item I have is for a better web-based experience (but LO7 should improve that soon.)
I think a lot of organizations could just drop MS office and move to something else and be better for it. I don't think it is just your company. Those things you list that LibreOffice is poor at, are things that most companies probably have little need for themselves if they were really honest with themselves. Think of the money they could be saving. They could pay their people a little better and get better talent because they pay better. Their company would be more efficient as a result. I really just dislike MS office for many of the reasons you suggested. When I voice it as responses I have realized how much I dislike it and why.
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@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.
That’s a lot of reinstalls. Something must messing with the office apps? Antivirus?
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@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller I am sure that a large percentage of organizations that use MS office would get by peachy without it. It might just be a culture thing to expect MS office in a business because no one really evaluates things. I know there are always exceptions.
Once upon a time, it was a running joke to move people to StarOffice and see if they noticed. I knew someone whose clients didn't realize, at all. And another that thought that it was just a standard upgrade. And that was around 2000!
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@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.
Same here for customers on MS Office. Reinstalling Office and/or Windows + Office is a major time sink. Especially when customers are small and can't do imaging options.
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@black3dynamite said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.
That’s a lot of reinstalls. Something must messing with the office apps? Antivirus?
Yeah I totally agree but not sure what the problem is. My boss handles such things as antivirus. We run Forefront.
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@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
In reality, LO handles MSO formatting pretty well. Far better than people give it credit for. Even if we were in a situation where we needed to do it, it would likely not matter.
I use a combination of Zoho and LibreOffice myself. More Zoho to be honest. It's like 60-40. I could use either exclusively though. I can't remember the last time, if ever, that I had trouble with formatting so I totally agree with this as well based on my experiences. There are always exceptions of course as there will be some user that has trouble. However, I have never had an Excel sheet or anything else that LibreOffice did not handle. I see no speed difference either. So maybe in cases where people have trouble there are other circumstances not mentioned or things happening they are not aware of.
Same here, I use Zoho for some things (historical reasoning) and LO for almost everything else. I have no access to MSO. I get files, once in a while, in MSO, but I can't remember the last time that there was a formatting problem. I'd guess not for ten years or more. Not to say that it is exact, but it's a Word doc, it's not meant to be exact, it's a collaboration format.
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@black3dynamite said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.
That’s a lot of reinstalls. Something must messing with the office apps? Antivirus?
I can see where AV can cause issues,.. but some times I wonder if it's not all the layers and layers of security. MS, with Azure and hybrid configurations with SSO and 2FA or MFA adds quite a bit of additional steps.
My office; the State; using SSO for a number of things - which is great - and very much NOT. Damn near every aspect of access is attached to the AD account. I believe there are a total of five different NON MS based systems that use AD - the only one that doesn't - Mainframe - and well - it's Mainframe.
To make matter worse is the password / time policy that restricts the type of passwords you can have. And - the additional kick ( which many have when you have in office and WFH staff ) de-sync of the passwords from the device and the domain.
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@black3dynamite said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.
That’s a lot of reinstalls. Something must messing with the office apps? Antivirus?
We have the same issues and primarily use Defender.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller I am sure that a large percentage of organizations that use MS office would get by peachy without it. It might just be a culture thing to expect MS office in a business because no one really evaluates things. I know there are always exceptions.
Once upon a time, it was a running joke to move people to StarOffice and see if they noticed. I knew someone whose clients didn't realize, at all. And another that thought that it was just a standard upgrade. And that was around 2000!
Yeah not surprising at all. 95% of users in my experience use nothing but absolute basics of its capability. When that is the case, it does not make sense to pay for it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
It's native to, and built into Ubuntu Linux which is our official platform. This means essentially zero IT support needed, it's even in the default install. Even employees opting for Fedora, Pop_OS, Raspberry Pi OS get it by default, too. And our one MacOS user gets it. And anyone playing with Windows gets it from Chocolatey.
This is a very valid point. I do all the installs at our campuses. I spend so much time installing and re-installing because it develops problems for us. While I have mitigated a lot of the install time by putting it in my user image, I still have to reinstall on a regular basis. We have close to 300 non-IT users and it breaks a lot. Too much in my opinion. I have to do 2-3 re-installs a week on average to fix issues it gets on its on.
Same here for customers on MS Office. Reinstalling Office and/or Windows + Office is a major time sink. Especially when customers are small and can't do imaging options.
Exactly. Since I am the only one that does all this for us, it uses time I could be spent on clearing work tickets.
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Just edited the original list to mention that LO runs on two of our platforms where MSO is a problem. One is Raspberry Pi because we use those, a little, but more and more. And more and more customers are moving to them (from basically zero, so it's not a lot, but a lot more than six months ago.) But we are right on the cusp of making the RP our official internal platforms. In fact I'm posting from one. So our use of it just keeps increasing especially as two of our key partner companies use it primarily, and a third is about to.
The other being our terminal server. Yes, you can put MSO on a TS, but it's a pain. We have customers doing this and it's a licensing headache. LO, just works.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@jmoore said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
@scottalanmiller said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
In reality, LO handles MSO formatting pretty well. Far better than people give it credit for. Even if we were in a situation where we needed to do it, it would likely not matter.
I use a combination of Zoho and LibreOffice myself. More Zoho to be honest. It's like 60-40. I could use either exclusively though. I can't remember the last time, if ever, that I had trouble with formatting so I totally agree with this as well based on my experiences. There are always exceptions of course as there will be some user that has trouble. However, I have never had an Excel sheet or anything else that LibreOffice did not handle. I see no speed difference either. So maybe in cases where people have trouble there are other circumstances not mentioned or things happening they are not aware of.
Same here, I use Zoho for some things (historical reasoning) and LO for almost everything else. I have no access to MSO. I get files, once in a while, in MSO, but I can't remember the last time that there was a formatting problem. I'd guess not for ten years or more. Not to say that it is exact, but it's a Word doc, it's not meant to be exact, it's a collaboration format.
I have mso installed and keep up with how to use it adequately because I have to know it well enough to support it.
Nothing will keep formatting exact but I don't see that as a problem anyway. -
@gjacobse said in Why I Choose LibreOffice:
I can see where AV can cause issues,.. but some times I wonder if it's not all the layers and layers of security. MS, with Azure and hybrid configurations with SSO and 2FA or MFA adds quite a bit of additional steps.
That could certainly be an issue. Just no way to prove or disprove it in our situation.
