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LibreOffice 5.0 released

From:  Italo Vignoli <italo.vignoli-AT-documentfoundation.org>
To:  TDF Announce <announce-AT-documentfoundation.org>
Subject:  LibreOffice 5.0 Announcement
Date:  Wed, 05 Aug 2015 12:02:34 +0200
Message-ID:  <55C1DF3A.6040606@documentfoundation.org>

Windows 10 compatibility and superior interoperability features
Immediately available for Linux, MacOS X and Windows

Berlin, August 5, 2015 - The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice
5.0, the tenth major release since the launch of the project and the
first of the third development cycle. LibreOffice is a full feature open
source office suite which compares head to head with every product in
the same category, while it stands out for superior interoperability
features.

LibreOffice 5.0 builds on the success of the 4.x family, which has been
deployed by over 80 million users (source: TDF estimate, based on users
pinging for updates), including large organizations in Europe and South
America.

LibreOffice 5.0 sports a significantly improved user interface, with a
better management of the screen space and a cleaner look. In addition,
it offers better interoperability with office suites such as Microsoft
Office and Apple iWork, thanks to new and improved filters to handle non
standard formats. Other improvements have been added to every module of
the suite, and Windows 64bit builds (Vista and later) have been added.

LibreOffice 5.0 Highlights

A new version for new endeavours: LibreOffice 5.0 is the cornerstone of
the mobile clients on Android and Ubuntu Touch, as well as the upcoming
cloud version. As such, LibreOffice 5.0 serves as the foundation of
current developments and is a great platform to extend, innovate and
collaborate!

A beautiful office suite designed by a fantastic community: With new
icons and major improvements to menus and sidebar, LibreOffice looks
nicer and helps users in being creative and getting things done the
right way. In addition, style management is now more intuitive thanks to
the visual preview of styles right in the interface.

Spreadsheets that rock: LibreOffice 5.0 ships with an impressive number
of new and enhanced spreadsheet features: complex formulae, new
functions, conditional formatting, image cropping, table addressing and
much more. Calc's blend of performance and features makes it an
enterprise-ready, heavy duty spreadsheet capable of handling all kinds
of workload for an impressive range of use cases.

Better filters for better documents: LibreOffice 5 ships with many
improvements to document import and export filters, for an enhanced
document conversion fidelity all around. In addition, it is now possible
to timestamp PDF files generated with LibreOffice.

A complete list of the most significant new features is available on the
accompanying press release, and has also been published on the website
at the following link: http://www.libreoffice.org/discover/new-features/.

LibreOffice 5.0 has also been improved "under the hood," thanks to the
precious work of hundreds of volunteers. According to Coverity Scan, the
number of defects for 1,000 lines of code is now consistently below
0,001. This translates into an open source office suite which is not
only easier to develop but it's also easier to maintain and debug. In
fact, the amount of solved bugs is now over 25,000, and is increasing
rapidly.

Last, but not least, LibreOffice 5.0 has been improved in terms of
quality and stability thanks to a large number of tests performed on new
builds by going through thousands of documents to spot crashers, bugs
and regressions.

"In 2010, we inherited a rather old source code, which had to be made
cleaner, leaner and smarter before we could reasonably develop the
office suite we were envisioning for the long term," says Michael Meeks,
a Director at TDF and a leading LibreOffice developer. "Since 2010, we
have gone through three different development cycles: the 3.x family, to
clean the code from legacy stuff; the 4.x family, to make the suite more
responsive; and the 5.x family, to make it smarter, also in terms of
user interface."

A summary of what has happened "under the hood" of LibreOffice 5.0 is
available here:
http://users.freedesktop.org/~michael/under-the-hood-5-0.....

"LibreOffice 5.0 is such a good product that people used to legacy open
source office suites feel overwhelmed by the amount of new features and
improvements," adds Thorsten Behrens, TDF Chairman and leading
LibreOffice developer. "Switching from any OOo derivative to LibreOffice
is a giant leap into the future of free office suites."

Availability and enterprise deployments

LibreOffice 5.0 represents the bleeding edge in term of features for
open source office suites, and as such is targeted to technology
enthusiasts, early adopters and power users.

For enterprise class deployments in organizations of any size, TDF
maintains the more mature 4.4.x branch (now at 4.4.5). In any case, TDF
suggests to deploy or migrate to LibreOffice only if the project is
backed by certified professionals providing Level 3 support, migration
consultancy or training courses according to recognized best practices
(http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/).

LibreOffice 5.0 is immediately available from the following link:
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. LibreOffice users, free software
advocates and all community members can support The Document Foundation
with a donation at http://donate.libreoffice.org.

Link to blog post with images: http://blog.documentfoundation.org/?p=3001

-- 
Italo Vignoli - Marketing & PR
email italo.vignoli@documentfoundation.org
mobile +39.348.5653829 - jabber italo@libreoffice.org
hangout italo.vignoli@gmail.com - skype italovignoli
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: http://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint



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to post comments

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 12:44 UTC (Wed) by gb (subscriber, #58328) [Link] (21 responses)

Than I read "new significantly improved user interface" I hold my breath recalling Word interface "improvement", systemd "improvement", gnome 3 "improvement", kde plasma "improvement" which either little bit crazy or just copy of Microsoft ideas. Than I am looking to screenshots and feel great relief. Not this now, not this product, hurrah.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 15:37 UTC (Wed) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (1 responses)

After having had to use Microsoft Word and its "ribbon interface" because of work requirements (sigh ...), I can only concur: Libre Office is at the moment the Office suite with the sanest UI. So kudos to the LO developers!

Rehdon

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 16:36 UTC (Wed) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

In fact it does such a nice job, when an old document is not opened correctly in new a MS Office I recommend using LO! Every release it gets faster and more usable, FOSS at its best.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 16:26 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (6 responses)

From the screenshots of Writer, I can't see how the interface has been changed:

https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/screenshots/

I'm happy with the interface, but out of interest, what are the changes?

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 16:52 UTC (Wed) by shmget (guest, #58347) [Link]

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 16:54 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (4 responses)

The blog entry says: "new icons and major improvements to menus and sidebar".

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 18:05 UTC (Wed) by ebirdie (guest, #512) [Link] (3 responses)

Subjective experience, but LO5 feels a lot snappier. 4.x brought improvements in the snappiness, but clicking around LO5 feels even better. My eyes haven't yet cought any visual changes.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 18:13 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Ok, that sounds like a nice improvement.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 19:29 UTC (Wed) by davidgerard (guest, #100304) [Link]

Michael Meeks' post details work on the VCL event loop, where a lot of gratuitous interrupts and weird timings were fixed.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 6, 2015 13:42 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

I concur. LO 5.0 is great and continues the tradition of smooth, important improvements without jarring and gratuitous changes. Thank you, everyone who contributes to LibreOffice!

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 19:07 UTC (Wed) by davidstrauss (guest, #85867) [Link] (4 responses)

This is the first time I've seen GNOME or systemd accused of trying to copy Microsoft, at least in any substantial way. What, exactly, are they copying from Microsoft that isn't widely present in other systems?

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 19:20 UTC (Wed) by rwhogg (guest, #103069) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't think they were accusing GNOME of copying Microsoft, just of making sweeping UI changes and then being presumptuous in assuming users would appreciate them. (And I know it took some time, but IMO GNOME 3 classic mode plus a few extensions is at least 95% as good as GNOME 2 was, so at least they've responded to criticism).

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 19:21 UTC (Wed) by rwhogg (guest, #103069) [Link] (1 responses)

Never mind, I misread the comment. Sorry...

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 19:26 UTC (Wed) by davidstrauss (guest, #85867) [Link]

My reading may have been a bit broad, though. The comment accused those projects of either doing things a bit crazy *or* copying Microsoft, not specifically the latter.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 23:57 UTC (Wed) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]

I think the idea was that they're copying Microsoft's tendency to replace something familiar and comfortable with something radically new and different. That certainly seems to be the common complaint with all of those things.

Honestly, though, I think this complaint is way overblown. Yes, it's frustrating to have something familiar and comfortable replaced, but doing so is necessary if you want to make a radical improvement. I hated Microsoft's ribbon interface when I first started using it, but after some time adapting, I find that it's actually easier to use than their old menus were. Similarly, I expected to hate GNOME 3, but I've found it to be an improvement, especially with the right extensions installed. We shouldn't let that initial frustration with the unfamiliar blind us to the possibility than the new thing is actually better.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 19:23 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (4 responses)

Cute failure attempt to troll there.

....

Regardless the Office 365 initiative from Microsoft is a major flop. Their cloud offerings are unreliable and confusing to use. Not to mention it locks users into monthly payment fees and makes Office nearly impossible to pirate.

I am serious about this. I've known many people that were 'converted' over to using 365 and it's a usability nightmare. Nobody likes it. It's a disaster of the highest order.

So right now is the time to strike. If the LibreOffice wait for Microsoft to get it's act together then it will be a major lost opportunity.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 5, 2015 19:32 UTC (Wed) by davidgerard (guest, #100304) [Link] (3 responses)

Huh. Is it that bad? At work we moved off Lotus Notes and would either end up with O365 or GApps, we went for Google in the end. And people mostly like it.

The Google word processor and spreadsheet are ... primitive, though. If you want to do anything even slightly complicated - or read a docx reliably - then calling out to LO is needed.

LO 5.1 has work being done on a much nicer interface to GDrive, which works really well (if you're the sort of person who does real work with LO git master, as I am).

That said, outlook.com could take back corporate email just by supplying customer service ... I can confirm that Google treats its paying customers with precisely the same contempt it has for its free ones.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 6, 2015 13:24 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> Huh. Is it that bad?

From what I understand. It's unreliable and confusing. Microsoft does stuff like introduce different places files may end up based on sync'ng features and it's difficult for users to know were their documents are. That sort of thing.

Due to how Microsoft's licensing schemes work the people working in education are going to be the first people hardest hit by the forced upgrades. So if you know somebody that works at a university or community college or something like that it's likely they've already been upgraded to 365 and will give you a first hand account about their experiences with the software.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 6, 2015 15:17 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (1 responses)

I use O365 at work at a higher-ed institution but I don't find it particularly unreliable or confusing but my co-workers seem to have a lot more trouble than I do with it. Maybe because I've used MS Exchange with a lot of clients I'm just more flexible or have learned to avoid flaky parts. I find that having used a wide variety of desktops as my daily work system means that differences don't confuse or bother me so much and I'm not so attached to any particular workflow that I can't effectively use something else. Some people seem to get really dug in to particular tools which seems to cause a lot of pain when they inevitably have to change.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 6, 2015 19:57 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Most people I talk to that mention it are not what you would call very experienced users in any environment, besides maybe web browsing on Windows.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 6, 2015 17:11 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (1 responses)

Windows 10 is even worse than Office. The selection bar colors are washed-out in File Explorer, almost to the point of uselessness, and their "high-contrast" modes are an absolute joke--try using File Explorer in high-contrast mode with ANY customization and you'll see what I mean. In fact, I believe it's safe to say that Windows' user experience has been sorely on the decline since XP, which was, from usability perspective, the best operating system they ever did.

Please, LO, NEVER COPY MICROSOFT UI, EVER!

The nice features and behavior of LO are more indications of why proprietary software stinks, and why I'm hoping to eventually get onto Linux for my mobile needs. Without having to jump through hoops to do it.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 7, 2015 17:25 UTC (Fri) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

This washed-out-ness started from Windows 7, when I no longer could distinguish the active window in the title-bar (it got just a little bit of a gloss!), I remember I tried the high-contrast mode and yes it was a joke. Perhaps in the last decade more students graduated from college with a shiny-is-cool UI school of thought, and with Macbooks in their backpacks.

Luckily for me, I no longer have to deal with any Windows now for more than 2 years.

Congrats to LO 5.0 developers

Posted Aug 6, 2015 19:01 UTC (Thu) by augustz (guest, #37348) [Link] (2 responses)

A big congrats to the LO 5.0 developers.

Especially on Windows machines LO 5.0 appears noticeably "snappier". This in turn makes it much more pleasant to use LO.

Still some import glitches for Word docs but it's getting a LOT nicer!

Congrats to LO 5.0 developers

Posted Aug 9, 2015 6:05 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link] (1 responses)

Report the glitches so they can fix them!

Congrats to LO 5.0 developers

Posted Aug 11, 2015 11:42 UTC (Tue) by davidgerard (guest, #100304) [Link]

Seconded. A reported bug is a fixable bug!

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 11, 2015 15:28 UTC (Tue) by cwatson (guest, #94884) [Link]

Hiding menu items is not an improvement. Tool bars have always been customizable so if you need more screen real-estate removing unused items from the toolbar has always been an option. Major changes to the UI force the users to spend valuable time hunting for icons that used to be right in front of them.

LibreOffice 5.0 released

Posted Aug 13, 2015 20:57 UTC (Thu) by etrusco (guest, #4227) [Link]

Definitely feels snappier on Windows. However, I've experienced a lot of regressions in .doc compatibility and had to switch back to 4.4 :-(


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