Although Microsoft Office is the office suite par excellence (most of us ultimately use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other programs), this suite is paid. And not exactly cheap. When there are no alternatives, there is no choice but to go through the hoop. Fortunately, this is not the case. Today we can find a large number of alternatives to the Microsoft suite that allow us to have a word processor, spreadsheets and software for slide shows completely free of charge. Programs that will perfectly serve to replace the Microsoft suite. And two of these alternative office suites are OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
OpenOffice was originally born as a project to offer users an alternative to MS Office . However, after Oracle acquired the suite (with bad practices), and later transferred it to Apache, a group of developers decided to create a new suite based on its original source code. And so LibreOffice was born.
LibreOffice is, broadly speaking, a “fork” or program derived from OpenOffice, which has been evolving and improving over the years. Although some time ago it was basically the same program, since it was broadly the same code, The Document Foundation (organization in charge of its development) has worked hard to improve and differentiate it, especially internally, to the maximum of the Apache suite .
However, do we really know what the differences are between the two suites? Which one can be better adapted to our needs?
Interface
Both suites have their own launcher. When we open them, we can see a summary screen and the different programs that it offers us. So we can launch the program we need according to the moment. OpenOffice still has its characteristic interface, while LibreOffice has a different one, with a side panel. This for tastes.
When we open any program, such as the word processor, we will find that, although both programs continue to be similar, in reality the interface of LibreOffice is much more modern , and is much more careful, than that of OpenOffice. Apache hasn’t renovated his suite at all.
And the same is true, for example, with spreadsheets. OpenOffice is still too much Office 2003, while LibreOffice is much more advanced in this regard.
In addition, LibreOffice allows us to customize the appearance, if we want, so that it resembles the Ribbon, that of Office.
Programs and characteristics
Both programs have the same tools, broadly speaking:
- Word processor.
- Spreadsheets.
- Slide show program.
- Drawing software.
- Database.
- Formulas
Both programs offer templates, an extension engine to add functionality and simple wizards that help us carry out certain tasks. However, LibreOffice wins in this regard since its templates are integrated directly into the program itself and we do not have to download and install them separately.
In addition, internally to the programs, The Document Foundation has done much more to add all kinds of features. Especially functions to operate with spreadsheets. Therefore, thanks to the development of LibreOffice, and its great community, this program is one step ahead of what was once its teacher.
Supported formats
Both programs use the ODF (Open Document Format) formats by default, which allow documents to be saved in an open format compatible with practically any other program. However, LibreOffice is also compatible with Microsoft Office formats, being able to both save and open documents created, for example, with the latest versions of Word.
In the case of OpenOffice, things change. The Apache office suite can also open Office documents in their new format, but it does not allow saving in these formats. It only lets us save in the DOC format of versions 2003 and earlier.
LibreOffice beats OpenOffice in compatibility with Office, since it is able to open documents much better (or, at least, without altering their original appearance) and save them so that they are 100% compatible with Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Consumption and performance
When using an office suite it is very important to measure its consumption. LibreOffice, as we have already said several times, lacks performance when loading the entire suite into memory. This means that, whatever program we use, we have to reserve between 200 and 500 MB in RAM for it. Besides relying on Java.
In the case of OpenOffice, things change. Curiously, the Apache office suite does not load entirely into memory, but only loads the program that we are going to use. This makes its consumption one-tenth the consumption of its rival, working better, especially in older computers.
Download, support and compatibility
Both suites are totally free and open source. We can download them from their respective websites:
- Download LibreOffice. Available for Windows (32 and 64-bit), Linux (64-bit), and macOS (64-bit).
- Download OpenOffice. Available for Windows (32-bit), Linux (32 and 64-bit) and macOS (from 10.4 to 10.15).
As we can see, the operating systems where we are going to be able to use them are the same. But in the case of OpenOffice, we do not have a 64-bit version to use in Windows , while in other operating systems we do. In return, on its website we can find links to additional third-party distributions, outside the Apache Software Foundation, to be able to install it on other systems.
In terms of support, LibreOffice has a much larger and more active community than LibreOffice. Apache appears to have “relaxed” and its office suite is only receiving maintenance updates. However, The Document Foundation suite is constantly improving and evolving. And thanks to this, we can find a rival almost almost equal to Office.
