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Posts tagged as “LibreOffice”

LQ Poll Results Expected and Unexpected

By Larry Cafiero on February 7, 2015 |

Browsers, Desktops, Distros, News, Operating Systems, Reviews and Software

LQ Poll Results Expected and UnexpectedLinux's Tux

Linux Questions — the place you go where you really need a Linux or FOSS question answered because, well, most of the smart FOSS folks are there answering them — released the results of its Members Choice Awards for 2015.

So when the membership of LQ speaks — or at least votes on FOSS programs — you should probably listen. Don’t take my word for it: Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols thinks so, too.

There were some expected results: For example, LibreOffice wins the Office Suite category by a ton, garnering 86 percent of the vote. To break this down, that’s nearly 9 in 10 folks favoring LibreOffice to the second-place finisher, Apache OpenOffice, and the others.

Same with categories like Browser of the Year — Firefox, need we say more? — with the blazing vulpini taking 57 percent in a crowded field. Same for Android, the Mobile Distribution of the Year which finished 40 percentage points ahead of the second-place finisher. Even vim, at 30 percent in a crowded field, heads up the Text Editor category with three times the votes of Emacs.

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Seigo Throws Flame, Office Suite Kumbaya & OS Face Off

Seigo Throws Flame, Office Suite Kumbaya & OS Face Off

By Larry Cafiero on September 19, 2014 |

Browsers, Community, Operating Systems and Software

FOSS Week in Review

Flamethrowers and a kumbaya that will probably never happen: Yep, that’s the kind of week it was this week in the land of free/open source software.

Wearing your fireproof underwear? KDE’s Aaron Seigo – never one to shy away from saying what he thinks – lit into community managers in a Google+ post on Monday, calling the community manager role in free/open source software projects “a fraud and a farce.”

Aaron Seigo KDE
Aaron Seigo, shown here in 2011, is never one to shy away from a good discussion or debate.
Credit: Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 8038433@N06’s photostream
“Communities (real ones) have facilitators and leaders of various forms and stripes,” Seigo writes. “It’s OK if they get paid so they are able to spend the time and energy facilitating and leading, but they damn sure are not ‘managers of the community.’ They are accountable to the community, selected by the community, derive their influence from community consensus and can be replaced by the community at the community’s behest.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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What a Layperson Can Gain From an Enterprise Open Source Conference

By Christine Hall on March 26, 2014 |

Business, Media and Software

Here at FOSS Force we’re very proud to be an official media partner for the Great Wide Open conference that’ll be held in Atlanta next week. Because this is an enterprise conference, I don’t think I need to explain to those who work in IT the benefits of attending such an event. However, those of you who are primarily home users may think there’s nothing for you at a conference focused on professionals.

This isn’t true.

Any open source user, whether a professional or not, will benefit from attending an enterprise conference. Remember, the user is considered just as important to any open source project as those who develop and distribute the product. In other words, an enterprise conference is just as much about the user as the developer — even if the user is never likely to call Red Hat on the phone to order service contracts for the RHEL stack on a hundred servers.

Here are just a few reasons for a living room Linux user to attend an enterprise conference such as Great Wide Open:

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

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Breaking Microsoft’s Chains by Moving to LibreOfficeItalo Vignol with LibreOffice

Breaking Microsoft’s Chains by Moving to LibreOffice

By Christine Hall on March 11, 2014 |

Business and Software

Sometimes it’s necessary to let go of the past, even if that’s somewhat painful.

Anyone still using MS Office should consider the advantages of moving to LibreOffice. For most single computer users, the move can be made with ease. When multiple computers and users are involved, as would be the case with most businesses, migration must be handled with care. However, any effort in this direction would quickly pay for itself in reduced licensing fees to Microsoft.

Italo Vignol with LibreOffice
Italo Vignol, board member at The Document Foundation
There are other reasons besides saving money to move to LibreOffice. For one, since the program is platform independent, its use will make easier a later migration to another operating system, such as Linux, should that ever be wanted or needed. Also, LibreOffice defaults to the open standard Open Document Format or ODF, meaning that once this move is made, data once held hostage by Microsoft can be easily opened and edited on just about any office productivity suite. And because LibreOffice is quite handy at opening and saving files using Microsoft’s proprietary format, that function will remain available for those few incidences when it’s needed.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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Rollapp’s Online LibreOffice Nearly Ready for Prime Time – But Not YetRollapp - Scribus

Rollapp’s Online LibreOffice Nearly Ready for Prime Time – But Not Yet

By Christine Hall on January 7, 2014 |

Browsers, Internet and Web Apps

I wanted to be able to tell you that despite rollApp being in beta it’s pretty much ready to go. Unfortunately, I can’t, because it isn’t. There are some limitations that make using the site a deal breaker for most users. When the developers get those worked out, however, rollApp will be ready to be a major player in the world of online apps.

For those who don’t know, rollApp is a startup that intends to offer in-the-browser online versions of many favorite applications. Already they have an impressive roster of apps up and running–such as the entire LibreOffice suite, Gedit, Scribus, Inkscape and Darktable. Except for some limitations, they work great–you’d hardly know you weren’t using an application that’s sitting on your own hard drive.

However, the limitations, until fixed, render the online apps unusable for most real-life purposes.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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Cloud Based LibreOffice, Facebook Reads PMs & More…Linus Torvalds

Cloud Based LibreOffice, Facebook Reads PMs & More…

By FOSS Force on January 3, 2014 |

Business, Hardware, Internet, News, Politics, Security, Site News and Web Apps

FOSS Week in Review

In 2013, Linux hits grand slam

Now that companies are closing-out their books on the old year, it’s becoming evident that Linux devices were a big hit in 2013.

On Friday, CNET’s Brooke Crothers reported that Chromebooks, those nifty laptops running Google’s Chrome OS that let the cloud do the heavy lifting, accounted for 21% of all laptop sales last year. As impressive as that may be, the numbers get even better when Android tablets are added to the mix. According to market research company NPD Group, January to November saw 1.76 million Chromebooks and Android tablets sold, up from only 400,000 during all of 2012.

The OEMs, of course, are paying attention and are readying new Linux devices for the market.

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Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part Three

Newbies Guide to Debian 7 – Part Three

By Gustav Fridell on September 19, 2013 |

Distros, Software and Tutorial

Getting started with applications on your new Debian system

So here you are with your new Debian system. Now you might be wondering, “Which programs do I use?”

First you might want to get the “minimize, maximize and close” windows-buttons which aren’t default in Debian 7–only the close window-button is there. From the desktop go to Activities menu to the top left and select Programs >System Tools and the “dconf-editor.” There are a lot of menus here to open so look carefully. Click Org >Gnome >Shell >Overrides. To your left you’ll find the “button layout” row. Type “:minimize,maximize,close” without quotation marks and then hit enter.

Evolution screenshot
Evolution–the default email client in Debian
Flash player is a must these days so let’s get that next.

Gustav Fridell

Gustav Fridell is a self-described “hard working family man” who resides in Stockholm, Sweden. He has been using Linux since August, 2010 and enjoys testing different distros.

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FOSS’s Response to Office Rumor

By Christine Hall on February 12, 2013 |

Media and Software


Depending on who you talk to, Microsoft may or may not port their Office productivity suite to Linux. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet seems to be the biggest naysayer at the moment. You can count me in his camp. He’s right; at present we don’t represent a big enough potential market for the Redmond folks to entertain any thoughts of putting high dollar coders to work doing the porting work. I’m sure the Microsoft bean counters would estimate it would take decades for them to earn their investment back. For that reason alone, it ain’t going to happen.

But the big story here is that this isn’t the big story here.

The big story is in how we, the FOSS community, have reacted to this rumor in a way that shows how much we’ve grown and matured in the last four or five years. We’ve reacted to this rumor like responsible grown-ups and I, for one, feel like a proud parent.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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Some Prominent Open Source Forks

By Christine Hall on August 8, 2012 |

Desktops, Distros and Software

Penguinistas used to worry about the dreaded fork, especially of Linux. “What if Linux forks and becomes like Unix?” was a question often being posed in the open source media. Linus Torvalds would do his best to put those fears to rest, explaining that under the GPL forks are usually to be welcomed.

He was of the opinion that if a fork improves a product and is liked by the users, those changes will almost certainly be rolled back into the originating application. If not, and the fork is indeed a marked improvement on the original, then the fork becomes the standard bearer at the expense of the original application.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

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Can Penguins Dance on a Dell, Will Reiser File Again, Are Samsung and Intel Going to the Prom?

By Christine Hall on September 30, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Hardware, Mobile, News, Patents, Security and Software

Friday FOSS Week in Review

The biggest news this week has centered around fears that Linux may become uninstallable on Wintel machines from the big OEM’s. But there’s been more. Some fun stuff. Some silly stuff. Some stuff that might eventually develop into something important…

Secure Boot Has Penguinistas Buzzing

Last week on FWIR I mentioned there was a storm beginning to brew around Windows 8 and secure boot, which could potentially keep Linux from being installed on some computers once they’re implemented. Well, it’s not just brewing anymore, it’s a full fledged storm with hurricane force winds.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingCan Penguins Dance on a Dell, Will Reiser File Again, Are Samsung and Intel Going to the Prom?