LibreOffice continues to be the most important alternative to Microsoft Office, thanks to its status as the number one choice in most Linux distributions and a solid user base on Windows. The project has improved with each release, and although a project of this significance is never complete, the new LibreOffice 5.3 brings notable additions.
After almost two years of development, LibreOffice finally incorporates support for running in the cloud, which is critical to deploying its collaborative potential.
Cloud Support and Collaboration
"Working in the cloud" has ceased to be a mere attractive phrase to promote platforms. The idea of several people in different parts of the planet developing a project in real time is wonderful, provided they agree on the type of tool to use. Office 365 and Google Docs are two powerful options, albeit proprietary ones. The former is quite expensive, and the latter requires trusting Google's infrastructure. Throughout all this time, a third player has been missing, and that is LibreOffice. Its maturity is excellent, but "the cloud" was something that remained on the sidelines... until now.
With the debut of LibreOffice 5.3, the office suite gains cloud compatibility and collaborative features that rival its competitors. However, there is a small asterisk: The Document Foundation has prepared LibreOffice to work in a browser, but it is the user who must handle installing a "LibreOffice Online" server to make it accessible to all. In other words, the collaborative mechanism of LibreOffice 5.3 is designed for private clouds. It is not the most convenient, but after almost two years, it is good to see that the foundation has delivered on its promise.
Other Improvements
The rest of the adjustments in the new version include:
- Visible keyboard shortcuts in the context menu
- New items in the help menu
- Optimizations in color palette management
- Better filters for importing and exporting files, especially those created with old versions of Office
- Insertion of PDF documents as images
- A safe mode to detect and fix execution problems
- More consistent text presentation across different LibreOffice builds
It is a good time to download a copy, and if you are already using it, don't forget to update.
