Open Ballot: Time to dump OpenOffice.org?

Maybe

Clarious (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 12:49pm

Now that Sun has been bought buy Oracle, the future of OO.o doesn't look very bright. That is one of the reasons we should start switching to another free, open source Office Suite.

And yes, OpenOffice is slow, highly complex and (somewhat) poorly documented. I have just recently tried to playing with extension development in OO.o, but most of the documents are outdated, the API seem buggy and slow.

But I think we still have to stick with it for a while, most other office suite isn't ready yet (though I think Koffice is pretty good).

I am bored Of OO3

Jacki (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 1:03pm

I am used to use OO
But Now
I am really bored Of OO3, Its too slow to run. Should it lighter then current.

Also hate KOffice is not an attractive interface.

Interoperability

Seetee (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 1:05pm

The main question is how well the office-suite functions in a work environment. How well it supports macros and other such advanced aspects of office use. The foremost example being how well they read the Microsoft Office format, of course.

I would not mind switching to another FOSS-solution, if there was a better alternative. Right now I believe OO.o to be the best choice, despite the fact that it is a bit slow and hard to maintain due to the (partly unnecessary) complex codebase.

So my vote is; No, I will keep using OO.o until there is something better, as with all software.

Versus this and that

Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér (mjjzf) (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 1:18pm

There is also Go-oo to take into consideration - it has some backing independent of Sun.
Personally, I dumped OOo a long time ago, but I rarely use anything but the Writer application - and I think that is a relevant thing; I keep Koffice around to use Krita and had OOo to user Writer. That is not very efficient (and it clutters up my menus) - whereas I have enjoyed using Abiword a lot. That application is really a power package compared to the size.
With the right templates, that application could easily do the work in most the departments of the city administration where I work. If they made an improved template management system, I would say Abiword is ready for business.
Maybe I am prejudiced, because I am a member of the Abiword translation team; but then again, I am there because it is good!
It is too bad that there is no presentation package in the same weight class as Abiword and Gnumeric. That would be nice - then the package was complete.

I think people just like complaining about it.

Dave the Rave (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 1:34pm

Admittedly I don't use a word processor very much but is it really that slow? I think every version gets a bit quicker and every year our hardware is faster so performance wise we are in a much better position than a few years ago.
Having said that I have heard that the code base is a mess and it's very difficult to improve the performance and it really needs to be re-written in a more modular fashion. But I'm not a programmer so I don't know whether it's true.
Anyway it seems to run fast enough on my netbook let alone my main pc.

Yes

Dan Dart (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 1:43pm

We're moving over to the cloud anyway so we should ditch bloated apps like those. I use Google Docs anyway...

Don't throw the ooo baby out with the bathwater...

Ray Woods (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 1:56pm

When I'm not on my Linux desktop I have my wife's Windows (was Vista but now runs XP) Sony Vaio laptop to use. I have just dumped MS Office 2000 from that computer in favour of ooo3 because ooo3 can do anything I would have needed MS Office to do. No other single OSS application comes close to this. I also note that when starting anything in Windows, application start up is exceedingly slow compared to Linux! Just try the comparison yourselves, so, is ooo on Linux really that slow?

If we decide ooo is too slow, maybe that is the main corrective objective for version 4? (Assuming Oracle continue their support for the application and, if they don't, perhaps someone else will pick up this mantle?)

Don't throw the ooo baby out with the bathwater...
...at least, not until there is a viable single application oss alternative.

no

headlessspider (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 2:08pm

its still useful

I wish I could

Javier el Pingüíno Anónimo (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 2:22pm

Maybe it's time to dump OOo.The only problem is that it's the only alternative nowadays.

Light office suites could be a good alternative to some users but for many of us they are not. In my case, I need to include in my documents math formulas, graphs, tables, cross references, calculations from spreadsheets, automatic indexes... I have to produce presentations too. And I need a good compatibility with MS Office. No other suite lets me do all I need to do.

I know that OOo is slow and the interface is far from perfect. In fact, I hate pretty much OOo and I try to use it as less as possible. But, it's the only option for Linux users.

Maybe Google Docs is the future but now it's too simplistic for my needs, and for the needs of many users. Maybe it's good if you only write letters or documents with a low level of complexity. But if you need to produce rich documents, it's not an option. And, well, Firefox and Google Docs is not exactly a fast combination either.

OOo.oOO

Markske (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 2:28pm

I realy like OO, it fits good to my needs

Not that I use daily OO (I'm a root-vim user)
But when I need to create a spreadsheet or a presentation I will grab OO

Open Office needs to stay

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 2:54pm

Sun's product is StarOffice. StarOffice may die, but OpenOffice is a different "distro" and can't be killed by Sun. OpenOffice is based on the core of StarOffice, but the code is GPL'ed and can be used legally.

OpenOffice is not as slow as the critics make it out to be. It is compatible with MS Office and more other formats than MS Office can handle. In fact, Open Office can fix corrupt Word files that Word won't even open!

Maybe the next release should be confined to optimization, rather than features. Then those critics will have nothing left to cry about. there is no other comparable suite close to what OpenOffice can do, so I will continue to use it exclusively.

Get other to open source their code?

Nacnude (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 3:07pm

I really loved ThinkFree Office, if they would opensource it, I think it would beat the pants off of OpenOffice.

Not by default

dazfuller - April 27, 2009 @ 4:18pm

I think that OpenOffice should stay as the default choice for general purpose/newbie friendly distro's like Ubuntu or Fedora as a number of people still use and like it (my wife included). Personally I haven't used OOo for well over a year instead preferring Google Docs and Abiword, but if I got rid of OpenOffice.org then I'd be in for a severe beating.

Something like a meta-package to install a suite of lighter alternatives would be really useful though!

No

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 5:19pm

If think of functionality OO is far better than alternatives. The development progress is also better.

I do agree that it is a bit slow with old pc's with RAM less than 1GB, but for those who enjoys the better hardware I do not see the reason (there is even the positive side, alternative office suit developers could concentrate on slower computers and hold their niche there).

Oracle-Sun deal caused a lot of discussion about the future of OO but IMHO oracle is not going to kill this project since it has been quiet successful (even though it is not their direct business).

geekyBodhi: So what were Sun

Sslaxx (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 5:31pm

geekyBodhi: So what were Sun Microsystems then, a co-operative? OpenOffice.org has ALWAYS been "influenced by a company" - it was born from StarOffice 5.x, remember?

NO! I have been using OOo

mark (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 6:05pm

NO!
I have been using OOo for sometime (since ver 1.0). It has come a long way. If you need an office suite which will be able to use a large amount of the macro and home made vb code from MS then you'll find OOo is probably the only choice. It does take a few seconds to start up but once going it works well. I use mostly writer and calc and can interchange data with MS office.

At the moment I use both

John Hudson (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 6:49pm

I use KWord 1.6 as my everyday wordprocessor for routine tasks but I use OO for:

multi-lingual documents
converting files, often those created in KWord, into doc format
converting old WordPerfect files (as the KWord filter no longer works)

Though KWord has some nifty features for multi-lingual documents, I find OO has better support for the languages I mainly use. However, OO does not support the entire Unicode sequence. In which case, I create the text in KWord and then import it in OO.

No

person-b (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 7:46pm

It's not really that slow, has the best support for Microsoft Office (which is important to most people) and no other Free office suite comes near to its feature level (not counting its own forks, such as go-oo). It's also a relatively good example of how open-source can work, and be recognised widely, not just because it is open source, but because it is *good*! It will need to quicken its pace a bit soon, so that we don't hang on to it because "we have to", but because we want to.

Cant!

DaveS (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 9:06pm

Need a decent gui driven database app for building company accounts program. Base is the only option I have found so far. I really wish there was an alternative.

No!!!

fraxinus (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 9:45pm

I have to interwork with MS Word users every day, and OOo is the only viable option for me in this context. And it is not that bad. It is cumbersome and unattractive, but I don't find it especially slow. I mainly use PCLinuxOS and the version from their repositories loads VERY fast on my old Athlon 2600. The version that ships with Linux Mint 6 seems very snappy too.

I work as an editor and need the heavy-duty tools in a good word-processor, so stripped-down, lightweight Word clones will never be any use to me.

Need the Notes2

scroobious (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 10:19pm

In the latest OO.org, they've finally included a functional notes feature that's compatible with Microsoft Word's notes feature.

I'm a grad student and teach college. My students don't run OpenOffice, they run Word. They submit papers electronically as word docs, I need a way to make comments on their papers such that they can read them -- and that's Notes2. My notes/comments pop up as comments in the margin of their papers.

Abiword can't come close to this, and KOffice... meh. Clunky, unintuitive -- it forces a user to relearn how to use a fairly standardized user interface. If I had to do that, I'd rather use Office 2007.

OOo No!

Tuxedo (not verified) - April 27, 2009 @ 11:24pm

I use OpenOffice regularly and apart for the slow startup it's fine by me. It works and it works well. Very well, I might add.
People complain for the sake of it. I didn't hear them whining when OpenOffice came up. I guess it's not so bad as people now want us to think.

OOo No! #2

redhatman - April 28, 2009 @ 12:28am

I agree with Tuxedo.
I can't say that the load time issue bothers me that much to be honest.

Maybe text editor.

A Known Penguin (not verified) - April 28, 2009 @ 2:14am

What I have longed to see in OO is a way to dumb down the writer often into a simple text editor. e.g. allow default assumption if opening text file, that you want it to stay a text file in simple, fast system. Also in that case, reduce the eye candy unless asked for it to make into other document...no need to "format" screen text for former, etc.

Depending on how they do it might make it lot faster (e.g. the formatting stuff goes away)?

So can use it quickly on majority of my files (text) but still have a mircosoft like interface when needed. I use these so little that I do not want to learn different systems for word-like and excel-like things.

Also useful when drafting documents. Also might be useful in formatting master documents that could be made of many smaller text documents.

Then, there is always LYX... ah sweet LYX.

start using koffice 2.0

mariuz (not verified) - April 28, 2009 @ 9:19am

in my jaunty box i can install it by sudo apt-get install koffice-kde4

also you can try the abiword and gnumeric they are very nice on lowend machines

Cloud versus drive

Morten Juhl-Johansen Zölde-Fejér (mjjzf) (not verified) - April 28, 2009 @ 10:18am

As for the installed versus cloud options, they are quite complementary and will remain so. If only the cloud versions existed, the possibility to use an installed offline version would be a very useful innovation.
Even if I have a mobile broadband connection with fairly good coverage, I find it useful to be able to work offline most of the time.

Yes

Prometheus (not verified) - April 28, 2009 @ 11:07am

I prefer using abiword and gnumeric because OO is too slow.

@Sslaxx: Not exactly co-operative

geekyBodhi - April 28, 2009 @ 3:35pm

What I meant was Sun had no direct influence over the direction of OOo, and the number of developers who don't get a Sun signed paycheck outweigh the ones that do, by many times.

--
Mayank Sharma
geekybodhi.net

@gekyBodhi: Clearly that's

Sslaxx (not verified) - April 28, 2009 @ 6:32pm

@gekyBodhi: Clearly that's not the case otherwise there wouldn't be this hoo-ha over this, would there?

I like OOo

crabstampede (not verified) - April 28, 2009 @ 8:55pm

I don't use it too often now that I'm done college, but what I do know is that it is still WAY BETTER than MS Office. Far easier to use, more predictable and intuitive, and F11 solves all formatting problems.

Best so far. . .

Oitur (not verified) - April 29, 2009 @ 7:18am

I'm one to admit that OOO is big and bloated and slow (to start at least), but the alternatives are Koffice and Wine plus MS Office(can we say: two steps back. . .?). Koffice is the only alternative that I've seen that offers the variety of applications the OOO offers. Koffice has one major (read deal killer) issue: it does MS documents poorly, if at all. OOO manages to display MS docs pretty close to original formatting. Other alternatives involve just docs and spreadsheets or online SAS type applications. Lotus Symphony offers presentations as well, but no dbase, image editing, formula editing, etc. Koffice offers theses, but even 2.0 still bites when it comes to MS docs (love it or not, we still need to read and write 'em).
So I'm a no, at least until the alternative mature a little.

OpenOffice Writer opens for

raducu (not verified) - April 29, 2009 @ 11:04am

OpenOffice Writer opens for me in 10 seconds (under Ubuntu 9.04, 2 Giga Ram, AMD Dual Core TL-62). Maybe it is a bit slower, but no other alternative has its features.
I don't care too much because I am used to write my texts in gedit. And as backup/storing I prefer the PDF extension.
Sure I'd like an office suite faster and with more features. But I don't think if it's time to "dump" OpenOffice.
I'd be more happy if Microsoft Office will stop to exist. With all its proprietary formats and forms and formating. I'd be more happy if we'll return to simplicity. Like the one from gedit or typewriters.

No functionally competent alternative to Open Office

shriramrs (not verified) - April 29, 2009 @ 2:05pm

I use Open Office both in windows and linux and also use Microsoft Office in some of my other systems. I can safely say, Open Office is functionally competent to excel and word, at the least till middle level complex applications.

Abiword, KOffice and GNumeric does not provide equal functionalities to that of MSOffice.

So for me OpenOffice is a really nice alternative to Ms Office inspite of its bloatedness.

With the latest hardware, its really not that big a deal with open office.

I am also against google docs as it is no way comparable in functionalities to either MS office or Open Office. Also it has its own messed up privacy policy issues with evil google's policies. Google docs is no way a FOSS alternative.

Untill there is a viable FOSS alternative to MS Office, Open Office will never be left hanging as lots of businesses use it for their day to day needs without any problems. Which i think will be quite some time unfortunately.

Do Not Abandon Open Office

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 30, 2009 @ 10:27am

I think Open Office should be supported, but maybe you should give users the choice of which applications they wish to install rather than install the whole suite if they do not wish to. This way more apps such as Open Project, of more functionality could be built in for users who want them, without alienating users who only want a minimal suite on their computer

NOOo

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 30, 2009 @ 6:36pm

I say no -- I like OOo and will continue to use it for all my business and office needs...it might be a tad sluggish but it does what I need and does it well

ooo needs to (at last) grow up...

AnonymousPenguin.org (not verified) - May 2, 2009 @ 6:13pm

i don't mind the initial loading time in ooo; i do mind that:
1) it is sluggish while typing
2) it imposes stupid defaults, clutters the style menu with too many obscure default styles
3) forces several behaviours on the users, as if everyone cares about knowing the details
4) when i do need to fiddle with the details (smart eq. numbers, table formatting/ borders, eq. alignments etc) it doesn't let me/ makes me go through hell
5) ui requires too much hide/seek (no, besting the lame MS 2007 menus is not enough!)
6) despite good features, still feels rough and unprofessional
7) embedded picture manipulation needs to grow up
8) and i haven't yet touched the spreadsheet and presentation apps!
off-topic: who had the quaint idea to name a programme like a site (complete with extension?)

by the way, i fully support ooo, mostly because of its open standards adherence (i'd readily support any suite that supports said standards, in fact). i use ooo for serious weight-lifting: large scientific documents+ spreadsheets +presentations. i even encourage my students to use it. but it has to grow up! sometime soon, hopefully.
and making a lean codebase out of the patchwork monstrosity that i'm guessing belies its current state is probably a good start.

OOo needs streamlining

bluecat (not verified) - May 3, 2009 @ 11:55pm

NO.
I use OOo on all 3 formats Linux, Mac and Windows. no prizes for guessing which I prefer, Installing Open Office on Windows XP is what first got me interested in Linux in the first place and I am sure I am not the only one.
While I think OOo needs a lot of streamlining as achieving even quite simple things can be complicated. All the needed functionality is there but finding it is time consuming for those who do not use it every day. I still think it is a good application and getting better all the time. As for what effect Oracle might have on the situation lets wait and see.
As for Cloud computing / Google docs etc, Am I the only person in the world who finds the idea of having my data and the applications I use hosted on some huge corporations server among thousands of other's in a great converted aircraft hanger somewhere in East Anglia, considering that service could be withdrawn at any time, the host company might go bust or be taken over and have its operation's "Rationalized" deeply unattractive.
Regards to all, George.

No

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 10, 2009 @ 11:23am

The reason I fully purged my Windows partition was due to installing OOo. For the past 2-4 years Linux has seen a massive increase in popularity with Ubuntu at the forefront. People that are in the situation I was in need to be able to find the alternatives to the MS based applications that they are fond of in order to make the switch/jump. For me, OOo was central to me doing that.

Of course, it is too simplistic for me to say that OOo is the sole reason I switched to Linux -it wasn't- but perhaps one of OOo's purposes is being a catalyst for MS users to make those changes in how they use OS software.

For me it was anyway.

What does Open Office offer over other software?

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - May 13, 2009 @ 1:35pm

I just haven't had a need or desire to run OpenOffice, it seemed a bit slow and buggy the last time I used it. TeXLive (with XeTeX and fontspec), Gimp, Scribus, Inkscape with my text editor of choice seem to do everything I need, from presentations to professionally typeset documents. For viewing of M$Office docs I usually use google docs. Gnumeric a few times for spreadsheets. I don't think OpenOffice was very compatible the last time I tried with an Access database.

The only things I really see OpenOffice offering is a large support community with templates and a generic all-in-one solution. But as for any given specific task, I can't think of a specific task where it would be my preferred app of choice . . . maybe to edit specific odt / odf / etc files?

Keep on using Softmaker Office

Marcus (not verified) - June 4, 2009 @ 8:15am

It was in the time, when I used an old WIN98 machine, that I dropped OpenOff for Softmaker Office. It was all about performance, as Softmaker was a very light, easy to understand, very compatible Office suit with some very decent DTP capablilities. I've stayed with it until I changed from Windows to Ubuntu, and I still keep on using Softmaker, although it has some drawbacks here. But might I say, one of the main reasons is, that it feels, I've finished working with it, while OO ist still loading.It gives me the freedom to create appealing layouts and comes with a very snappy behaviour.

From a user's experience I would always prefer Softmaker over OpenOffice on both, Windows and Linux. When you're not in an OpenSource rally, but just looking for competitive alternatives, it's just for you.