Debian User Forums

Most folks know the "back story" behind the fork of Open Office (OO) into Libre Office (LO). And when LO was forked, it was a perfectly sensible thing, based on Oracle corp's obvious lack of interest in the project.

Speaking for myself, I found things to actively dislike in both OO and LO in the years that followed. For instance, OO was dog slow to open a file dialog, while LO showed some obvious rough spots when reading/writing files from the "other" Office suite.

Of course, Oracle ultimately ditched OO completely, and development has since moved to the Apache Software Foundation. Just on a lark, I decided to install the most recent version (3.4.1) of Apache Open Office (AOO).

All I can say is: Wow. AOO combines the best of both OO and LO, while simultaneously eliminating most of the pain points present in both products. By comparison to either product, AOO is a joy to use.

YMMV, of course. But if you're among those who find OO or LO a bit cumbersome to work with, it might be worth your while to check out AOO.

Download here: http://www.openoffice.org/download/

Sounds reasonable. I have been using Calligra Words, though if LO or OO etc is better for the average folk it would help for me to test it so I know what to recommend.

LO is far too buggy, and they seem more interested at the moment in the proverbial Shiny New Stuff...

It has pedigree. It took them ten years to fix this. https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=2197 , despite years of people pointing out how stupid it was: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=20878

I jumped ship and started using Latex, never looked back.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that AOO is more reliable. Wondering how long before it gets packaged...?