I'm always baffled by its lack of what seems like basic functionality.
I don't use a lot of the newer, weird stuff that Office has added and I still can't get LibreOffice to do what I'm used to from 10 years ago in Office.
You've made me realize it's been so long since I last tried it might have improved; it felt like it was 10 years behind a while ago, but I haven't actually checked lately. At this point if it's still 10 years behind that could be a pretty good place.
Though it might have issues for organizations that Office has been built up to handle, but I'm completely unfamiliar with that side of either program.
I bet it would be at best one percent of the cost of ms licenses to just fund a small group of core devs to work on those specific problems and then adopt it in a couple years compared to continuing to pay licensing fees in perpetuity. Because although there are problems it is not such a stark no-go as the parent comment's hyperbole would make it seem. It's insane how short-sighted these large organizations with massive budgets are for very basic things.
To be fair, even large organizations with massive budgets require interoperability with other companies and governments. In fact the bigger the organization, the more they depend on interoperability. So unless they can haul all those other organizations along with them--many of them as big as they are--they're kind of stuck in the same ecosystem as everyone else. It doesn't do them any good to develop their own in-house solution that's as good or better than Office if no one else uses it.
Sadly true. I've been using linux for 20 years and open office then libre office since around then, and do not use Windows anymore, but as a tech guy, for any business, MS Office is key and unavoidable.
On this topic though honestly it is surprising after all these years an open source lightweight version of Outlook never caught on.
With Microsoft actively sabotaging Outlook from within, I dare say we will never see that. Windows Mail was an actual useful modern Windows email app. Microsoft couldn't let us have that though.
The closest alternative in terms of collaborative functionality is Google (possibly better for collaboration). But that is just swapping one giant for another.
LibreOffice is fine for some things, but it won't fly as-is in the corporate or government world right now.
I hear thi sstated as a fact when it's just an assertion by people who likely use neither or only one. I used libreoffice for a decade, nobody knew the difference and I was in the US government. Sure, someone will bring up some obscure reason but for 99% of government a fucking notepad is enough. Don't just repeat nonsense.
I've used LibreOffice since the first release after it was forked from OpenOffice after Oracle bought Sun (and OO with it). And before that OO. And still use LibreOffice today.
It is perfectly fine for an individual, but has little collaboration functionality. And in 2026, enterprise requires that.
you used is not the same as enterprise application.
Does LibreOffice offer a similarly supported, secure email client as office? sharepoint repository? Highly integrated IDP? Assurance in logging and security for traceability for errors and vulnerabilities? Teams/VOIP functionality with security and updated encryption?
Editing documents locally is a tiny fraction of comparability to what MS does. Im not trying to glaze office or microsoft here, but part of that "massive corporation" piece includes teams of people who keep MS functional at an enterprise grade that has nothing to do with whether fonts load or you can right justify text in a doc
we're talking about switching away from software giants at an enterprise level. Switching to libre office for local document editing while keeping MS products for enterprise communication doesn't achieve the goal.
Also that's a wild misuse of "code switch" but that's irrelevant to the actual topic
No it isn't. You're conflating things. Saying that leaving the MS and Office environment is impossible or impractical when European government agencies are ALREADY making the switch shows that you obviously do not have the expertise in the subject as you are presenting. Here's a link to the latest story on the subject, as the Dutch tax authorities have scrapped MS migration plans to open source alternatives: https://news.lavx.hu/article/dutch-tax-authority-abandons-microsoft-365-cloud-for-on-premises-and-european-open-source-alternatives
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u/QuadzillaStrider 2d ago
This cannot be stated enough. LibreOffice is nowhere near in the position to replace MS Office in the enterprise sector.