LibreOffice

Long-term owners

LibreOffice has to be feature-per-feature, bug-per-bug compatible with a poorly-documented office suite that's been around for 35 years

Oct 2026 · comment

What hackers pick instead

• Microsoft OfficeThe default business office suite, hard to replace for Excel macros and enterprise governance, though critics dislike the Copilot push, the ribbon, weak Linux support and the limited web version.256recommend
• Microsoft 365Recommended as an integrated bundle of Office, email, Teams, storage and security that businesses find cheap and easy to run, though critics cite confusing admin, tiers and lock-in.151recommend
• Google WorkspaceRecommended for custom-domain Gmail, easy collaboration and low-admin IT, and widely used by companies; critics cite account lockouts, hard-to-reach human support and fewer enterprise features than Microsoft.107recommend
• OnlyOfficeFree office suite with an interface close to Microsoft Office and strong compatibility with Office files, recommended as an alternative to MS Office. Common caveats are its Russian ties and license restrictions.58recommend
• La Suite numériqueFree, open source French government office suite praised for polished interface and reuse of existing open source projects. Critics say it is more collaboration tool than true office suite.25recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 657 comments. Each links to the original.

1. switching away from office is significantly more realistic than migrating away from windows altogether, and something that every business can and should absolutely consider doing soon

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2. LibreOffice did a great job of transitioning to an alternative UX and went further to implement not just ribbons but different combinations classic menu with ribbons.

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3. If people want the freedom to use their own fonts in their own presentation, and don't want to pay handsomely for the privilege, LibreOffice is freely downloadable.

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4. I finished a whole dissertation, do all my regular spreadsheet work (that isn't done via R), and have created plenty of visual mockups with LibreOffice.

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5. While LibreOffice may not have complete excel functionality, the vast majority of functionality can be replicated in web apps/libreoffice.

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6. the products deteriorating from all the AI and H1B spaghetti code to the point where LibreOffice appears quite competent by comparison

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7. LibreOffice is way easier to understand as a child, since all the functionality is available and discoverable as a menu/tree structure

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8. She loves it. Her needs aren't fancy, though, and she can create her own or open others' documents and spreadsheets just fine.

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9. seems to be missing a lot of content; I suspect this is a LibreOffice problem or even a my-installation-of-LibreOffice problem

   Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Steganographic Language Output Process Encoding”

10. I've never used anything but OpenOffice / LibreOffice for writing academic texts in the humanities and never missed anything.

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11. Libre is generally ok, but they deal with lots of documents from different ppl/orgs that just need to have similar rendering

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12. I don't know the current state of compatibility between MS Office and LibreOffice, but I recall layouts breaking regularly.

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13. Unless you need precise formatting because you will send someone nontrivial slides to present, libreoffice should be fine.

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14. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features”

15. For heavy lifting, like getting an md file into our Corporate Design, I still use libreoffice combned with our template.

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16. I've installed Linux+LibreOffice on a spare machine at work that I use occasionally, to keep from tearing my hair out.

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17. offers me the choice of a ribbon or not and many other choices rather than enforcing a single opinionated interface

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18. I couldn't find anything else that I could just drop it and feel confident it'll just read anything I give it.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice”

19. It's the obvious all-encompassing free office document processing suite and LLMs know how to utilize it well.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “LibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features”

20. libreoffice provides full keyboard shortcut customization, which I find very easy and intuitive to work with

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21. I'll admit I don't like the UI in LibreOffice, but I didn't like it very much when I first tried using it

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “LibreOffice blasts OnlyOffice for working with Microsoft to lock users in”

22. The Document Foundation, now ~controlled by its non-programmer staff just ejected its main core code contributors based on complicated and apparently contrived reasons.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “The Document Foundation ejects its core developers”

23. I like OnlyOffice a lot better and switched away from LibreOffice. I like that it just looks more like a modern program and overall feels less clunky.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “TDF ejects its core developers”

24. Having poor MS Office compatibility isn't just a footnote, it's a showstopper issue that will make these people's jobs harder every single day.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: How would you set up a child’s first Linux computer?”

25. The productivity with LibreOffice is ruined at the very moment you have to do anything but typing a text or spreadsheet cell content.

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26. the self upgrade option just didn't work well (large download, wouldn't complete or something, would end up reinstalling instead)

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27. LibreOffice suffers from an extreme inferiority complex, which is why they overreact and get overly defensive about _everything_.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “LibreOffice and the Art of Overreacting”

28. In Libre office it's 15 at least, multiple fights with pages suddenly breaking, cells and rows refusing to stick to my dimensions

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29. The real issue with LibreOffice isn’t new features. It’s the subtle rending and parsing quirks when working on OOXML documents.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too”

30. LibreOffice is catastrophically bad. It is slow, buggy, and everything it does is either pointlessly emulating a bad product

    Criticizes · Feb 2026 · in “Microsoft's Pivotal AI Product Is Running into Big Problems”

31. whether it's a zombie on life support after the professional community management class kicked all the actual developers out

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Show HN: Microsoft Office running with Wine on Linux with no virtualization”

32. Until a non-technical user can open my PowerPoint presentation in LibreOffice and not have to apologize for the formatting

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great”

33. LibreOffice is in a worse position than it should be with respect to filling this hole because of its failure to embrace the actual multi-/cross-platform and ease-of-access benefits

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “The New Collabora Office for Desktop”

34. this is the Document Foundation that we're talking about. Unless I missed something massive, they have never once done anything like this

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “LibreOffice and the Art of Overreacting”

35. I say this as someone who uses LibreOffice daily both for work and my personal uses, someone who really hopes LibreOffice will succeed.

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36. LibreOffice has to be feature-per-feature, bug-per-bug compatible with a poorly-documented office suite that's been around for 35 years

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37. Can you imagine the insane pace LibreOffice would improve at if a few billion € in support contracts was paid to Collabora each year?

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38. LibreOffice should be preferred as most OpenOffice contributors moved to LibreOffice following the acquisition of Sun by Oracle.

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39. Someone commented in the past few days that the most impressive demo they saw in a conference was LibreOffice running on Fil-C

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40. I am already donating the rough equivalent of the cheapest Microsoft 365 subscription to The Document Foundation each year

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “LibreOffice and the Art of Overreacting”