When it comes to "Office for free" there are two names that come to mind, OpenOffice and Libreoffice, two open source suites of office programs with Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Since one might think that one is the evolution of the other or, it can be interesting to understand what the differences are between these two programs, to avoid confusion and to know which of the two is the best and the most suitable to replace Microsoft Office which, remember, you have to pay.
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To understand why there are two distinct open-source suites but based on the same code as the original Openoffice.org it is necessary to make a small historical excursus .
Sun Microsystems acquired the StarOffice office suite in 1999 and then released the code of this program known as OpenOffice.org as open source.
Its development then continued thanks to volunteer Sun developers, who offered the OpenOffice.org suite free of charge to everyone, even Linux users.
OpenOffice was previously the only open-source suite with programs similar to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
Openoffice was immediately a success because it allowed users who did not want to pay Microsoft to still be able to work with a computer for commercial purposes.
It is therefore clear that Microsoft was not very calm about it if he also published a video, in 2010, to denigrate it.
Unfortunately, however, the Openoffice.org project did not last long.
In 2011, the good Sun Microsystems was acquired by the wild database giant Oracle who first renamed the " Oracle OpenOffice " program, then made the code closed and no longer "open-source" and stopped its development.
Most of the nonprofit developers at Openoffice.org abandoned Oracle and created LibreOffice, built on the original OpenOffice.org code.
Most Linux distributions, including the most popular Ubuntu, contain LibreOffice as the default office program.
When OpenOffice.org seemed now defunct, to Oracle, which was not interested in working on a free program, there was a start of dignity and instead of killing that project forever, it gave Apache software foundation the trademarks and the original code of Oepnoffice.org.
Apache OpenOffice is today the name of the old Openoffice.org, still alive and developed under Apache.
It is possible to download for free today both LibreOffice and OpenOffice in Italian for Windows, Linux or Mac .
Both office suites have the same applications for writing text as with Word, for making calculations with spreadsheets, for creating presentations and databases.
These two programs have almost the same programming code, interface and similar characteristics.
For the downloads of the two programs and the description, refer to these pages:
- OpenOffice to use Microsoft Office programs for free
- LibreOffice with Word, Excel and Powerpoint for free for Windows, Mac and Linux
These two programs are not entirely identical .
Aside from the different default theme, there is a sidebar in OpenOffice that is hidden in LibreOffice.
This sidebar was designed for widescreen displays.
The sidebar can however be activated in LibreOffice from the menu Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice -> Advanced -> Activate experimental features .
Restart LibreOffice and then click on View -> Sidebar.
With the sidebar enabled, the two programs seem almost identical in their interface even if there are small differences.
For example, the LibreOffice status bar at the bottom of the window shows the word count which in OpenOffice is visible only from the menu Tools -> Counting .
LibreOffice also has support for embedding fonts in documents.
This can be done from the menu File -> Properties, in the Character tab. Incorporating a font into a document ensures that that document, if sent via email, looks the same on any computer, even if it doesn't have that font installed.
OpenOffice does not have this function instead.
In general, however, most people will not find decisive differences between LibreOffice and OpenOffice.
Both programs are free and open-source even though they have different licenses .
Apache OpenOffice uses the Apache license, while LibreOffice uses an LGPLv3 / MPL license.
The practical result is that LibreOffice can use the OpenOffice code without problems while the opposite is not true, that is, that Openoffice uses the Libreoffice code.
This means that improvements to the OpenOffice program can be incorporated into LibreOffice, while that found in LibreOffice cannot be brought into OpenOffice.
LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice are equally good choices for replacing Microsoft Office for free and there aren't many visible differences.
To choose which is better, you must consider the advantage of using LibreOffice, both because it can incorporate more functions and improvements (thanks to the different license), and because it is developed more quickly with new versions released much more frequently than in Apache OpenOffice.
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