Positivity [LWN.net]

Positivity

Posted Mar 27, 2008 20:15 UTC (Thu) by wrh2 (guest, #4254)
Parent article: OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

Since most of the posted comments thus far have primarily pointed out shortcomings in OO.org,
I just wanted to add a note to say that I'm really happy with the software.  After installing
it for the first time I was impressed that all of the major features I was used to in MS
Office were still available, that my MS Office documents opened and displayed without serious
issues, and that the usability compared favorably with Office (similar menus, etc).  Along
with Firefox, OO.org is one of the few software packages that I'm willing to install on my
parent's computer without having to worry about frequent calls from them asking for help.

There is always room for improvement in any software, and others have listed their wishlists
already (+1 for better performance!) but overall it's an impressive piece of software, and one
that I'm very glad exists.  Many thanks to the developers, who might not always hear from
those who appreciate their work.

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Positivity

Posted Mar 28, 2008 3:50 UTC (Fri) by graydon (subscriber, #5009) [Link]

Likewise! I had not expected to find myself fond of an office package, but it's actually turned out to be a program I use at least in some capacity every few days, and it is generally essential when I do.

Not just for viewing content from others either; particularly the drawing and presentation modules are quite good for when I need to cook up clean diagrams or explanations of technical material. It takes less time and produces much better-looking output (esp. the PDFs) than what I can crank out with any alternatives.

It's an exemplary piece of free sw. Congratulations and kudos to the team.

Positivity

Posted Mar 28, 2008 17:54 UTC (Fri) by jkowing (subscriber, #5172) [Link]

I too totally agree with these sentiments!  Thank goodness for the OO developers!  It is a
life-saver package for those of us using Linux in the office place and I also enjoy using it
at home.  Just the task of getting OO to work so well with Microsoft Office formats must be
quite daunting and a never-ending job and I am amazed at how successful they have been.

Positivity

Posted Mar 28, 2008 20:43 UTC (Fri) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

Hear, hear!

I set up OOo on my daughter's home XP system, and she uses it exclusively to exchange documents, and hand in assignments to classmates and teachers, (almost?) all of whom use MSW. And she evangelizes them to switch! (And this has less than nothing to do with her father's Free Software fixation.)