LibreOffice downloads on the rise as users look to avoid subscription costs

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Subscription Fatigue and “Renting Tools”

  • Many participants reject software subscriptions for tools that don’t inherently need servers, preferring perpetual or fallback licenses (e.g., JetBrains model, one-time DAW licenses, Affinity, Lightworks).
  • Complaints that subscriptions usually don’t allow true short-term “rent” (e.g., wanting Lightroom for a few hours vs a full month).
  • Counterargument: ongoing OS and security maintenance costs require ongoing revenue; expecting endless updates from a one-time purchase is seen as unrealistic by some.
  • Others respond that stable platforms, VMs, or simply not upgrading OSs make long-term use of old binaries viable.

LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office

  • Many use LibreOffice for taxes, resumes, legal work, and academic presentations, and find it “good enough,” sometimes faster or less annoying than Office.
  • Motivation to switch: subscription cost, UI and feature regressions in Office, privacy/AI-training concerns, and WordPad removal nudging users to seek an offline doc viewer/editor.
  • Calc is considered acceptable for typical use but criticized as slow on moderately sized sheets; alternatives like Gnumeric are praised for performance and plotting.
  • LibreOffice’s support for old formats (e.g., WordPerfect) is valued. Some wish more people standardized on LO to avoid formatting issues in .docx interchange.
  • Donations to The Document Foundation are reportedly rising, but the project still runs on a small budget, limiting senior dev capacity.

OpenOffice, Security, and Alternatives

  • Strong consensus that Apache OpenOffice is effectively abandonware and risky: security issues remain unfixed for long periods, yet it’s still distributed.
  • Several urge OpenOffice users to migrate to LibreOffice and call on Apache to retire OpenOffice.

Cloud Suites, Collaboration, and Privacy

  • Google Docs/Sheets are viewed as sufficient for most home users, with standout real-time collaboration, but weaker typesetting, imperfect Office compatibility, and problematic for confidential data or offline use.
  • Some report that Docs’ commenting/history model and low information density lead to sloppier engineering documents.
  • Others rely on iWork (Pages/Numbers/Keynote) as a free-with-hardware alternative; praised for layout and simplicity but criticized for performance on large sheets and some quirky behaviors.

Ecosystem: Editing, Video, and “Office-Compatible” Suites

  • Numerous non-subscription tools are recommended:
    • Image: Krita, GIMP (with PS-like keybindings, plugins), mtPaint, Paint.NET/Pinta, Photopea (though it has its own subscription).
    • Video: DaVinci Resolve, Lightworks (with a perpetual option), Kdenlive (debated: good for many, but seen by some as far below pro tools).
  • OnlyOffice is liked for MS-Office-style compatibility and mobile editing, but some raise concerns about its origin, partial closed-source nature, and ties to Russian and Chinese markets (for WPS).