Rant alert! LibreOffice fails me yet again.

English Open Chat
1

I love Linux. Been using it for 7 years now. It’s great for my coding work and pretty much everything else I do. But the one thing that has single-handedly managed to ruin my experience throughout these years is LibreOffice with its consistently unreliable behaviour.

It works alright for small things, but every time I have needed it for something important: my Master’s thesis, PhD work, a presentation, it just fails horribly. For the text documents LaTeX came to the rescue, but using Beamer for presentations just took too much time so I never got the hang of it. So for presentations, back to M$Office.

I can’t understand why it must suck so much. References within the text are all mixed up every time I open the document. In presentations pictures and text boxes disappear randomly. Frequent crashes. And after every document recovery after the crash, tiny glitches are visible in alignment of objects. Beautiful images from my simulations look pixelated once pasted into Impress.

Earlier I used to report bugs diligently but about 2 years ago I stopped. I figured nobody was reading them or doing anything about them.

Ok, end rant. Going to reboot into Windows after posting this, so I can finally get some work done.

2

Well adhishm, sorry to hear about your experiences. Since I’ve worked with Linux in a University for some years now and
have looked after many PhD students, I can tell you your problems are easily resolved. There’s nothing wrong with a
rant! But you’re going to have be patient if you really want to work with Linux the way you want and in the long run
that patience will pay off considerably! Let’s deal with each of your points:

On 2013-04-30, adhishm <adhishm@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> I love Linux. Been using it for 7 years now. It’s great for my coding
> work and pretty much everything else I do. But the one thing that has
> single-handedly managed to ruin my experience throughout these years is
> LibreOffice with its consistently unreliable behaviour.

I don’t use LibreOffice. I strongly advise you not to beyond a casual letter. Remember you can install MS Office in
openSUSE using 32-bit Wine. You’re University should provide you with the suitable installation file/media.

> It works alright for small things, but every time I have needed it for
> something important: my Master’s thesis, PhD work, a presentation, it
> just fails horribly.

Scientific theses are best written in LaTeX. If you want to struggle with LibreOffice/MS Office, you’re welcome to do
so, but don’t complain when all the equations and references look wrong and the figures get placed in random locations.
Presentations are another matter. I use beamer (for presentations) and beamer-poster (for posters) but you have to walk
before you can run. If you’re not yet proficient with LaTeX, then use PowerPoint.

> For the text documents LaTeX came to the rescue,
> but using Beamer for presentations just took too much time so I never
> got the hang of it. So for presentations, back to M$Office.

No problem. Also remember like MSOffice can work in Linux, TeX can also install inside Windows (you need MikTeX and an
editor - I suspect you might like Kile although personally I don’t use it).

> I can’t understand why it must suck so much. References within the text
> are all mixed up every time I open the document. In presentations
> pictures and text boxes disappear randomly. Frequent crashes. And after
> every document recovery after the crash, tiny glitches are visible in
> alignment of objects. Beautiful images from my simulations look
> pixelated once pasted into Impress.

I’ve never tried Impress. Use PowerPoint in Linux or in Windows. To produce figures, I use Asymptote which works
wonderfully in Linux (although apparently it can also be installed in Windows). You need to be familiar with C/C++
syntax to use it easily however.

> Earlier I used to report bugs diligently but about 2 years ago I
> stopped. I figured nobody was reading them or doing anything about them.
> Ok, end rant. Going to reboot into Windows after posting this, so I can
> finally get some work done.

Use what works. The operating system is not that important. Both MSOffice and LaTeX work happily in both. If you are
running simulations, hopefully whatever programming environment you use works on both operating systems. I use Python.
scientific Python in 64-bit on Windows unfortunately sucks, so that leaves me Linux. If you’re using MATLAB however,
Windows is fine. Just notice the difference in cost.

3

Thanks for your reply.

I don’t mind using LaTeX. In fact, my personal journal and all creative writing are done in .tex files that go into a master file. My PhD and Master’s theses were both in LaTeX. It’s just that Beamer always seemed less intuitive to me and also seemed to take too much time so I never got to using it. Perhaps I whould start practising more with Beamer.

For my work, I like my workflow in Linux (KDE) and I am never as comfortable on Windows. I do a lot of C++ coding these days, and I am on the terminal nearly all the time for that.

Regarding the use of Wine, this too has been a bumpy ride for me right from the first time I tried it. As far as I know, I have followed every instruction to the letter but Notepad is probably the only Windows program that ran under Wine for me. :stuck_out_tongue: I have tried using MS Office with Wine and it crashed frequently. Another option is using Windows on a VM running within Linux. I will probably do this when I get the monster machine they have promised me at work. :slight_smile:

My rant was mainly about how bad the LibreOffice product is. Sure it has come a long way. Sure they don’t have the kind of finances Microsoft pours into MSOffice. But that does not change the fact the product is extremely buggy and in general unusable for anything serious. I am not asking for glitter but for basic things that are required for normal office work. If that’s too much to ask then they should probably axe the project and do something useful with their time and talent.

4

On 2013-04-30 16:56, adhishm wrote:
> My rant was mainly about how bad the LibreOffice product is. Sure it
> has come a long way. Sure they don’t have the kind of finances Microsoft
> pours into MSOffice. But that does not change the fact the product is
> extremely buggy and in general unusable for anything serious. I am not
> asking for glitter but for basic things that are required for normal
> office work. If that’s too much to ask then they should probably axe the
> project and do something useful with their time and talent.

I don’t know about you, but it does serve my needs. I have printed books
using it, for instance. I prefer LyX, but when you want to customize LyX
beyond certain point, LO is just easier.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

5

You did? Wow. I wish I knew what I am doing wrong that makes my experience so lousy.

6

On 2013-04-30, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> On 2013-04-30 16:56, adhishm wrote:
> I don’t know about you, but it does serve my needs. I have printed books
> using it, for instance. I prefer LyX, but when you want to customize LyX
> beyond certain point, LO is just easier.

I don’t use (or even know) LyX but if it supports beamer, you might improve your experience of constructing
presentations? Or thinking outside the box, is there Linux support in Prezzi?

As for LO, I can’t say I ever found it unstable or buggy. I do find it slow, and unreliable when handling MSOffice
files, and I know others who use it routinely without any problem.

7

I don’t even try using MSOffice formats anymore. All the crashes I have been referring to have been with Open Document formats like odt and odp.

Prezi is cool, and I did use it once but it was a little disconcerting for some of the older members of the audience. And no, as of now there is no Linux client for the Prezi desktop application. I made mine on the web.

I have a colleague who uses LibreOffice without any trouble. Maybe I should make him use my computers for a few days and then see if he manages to crash as often as I do. Perhaps this will show me where I am going wrong.

8

LO is 1000 times better than “ribbon” office

9

Another consideration. Scribus.

10

Am 30.04.2013 20:23, schrieb GofBorg:
> Another consideration. Scribus.
>
yet another option: the calligra suite

–
PC: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.10.2 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.10.2 | HD 3000
HannsBook: oS 12.3 x86_64 | SU4100@1.3GHz | 2GB | KDE 4.10.2 | GMA4500

11

On 05/01/2013 01:25 AM, flymail wrote:
> On 2013-04-30, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>> On 2013-04-30 16:56, adhishm wrote:
>> I don’t know about you, but it does serve my needs. I have printed books
>> using it, for instance. I prefer LyX, but when you want to customize LyX
>> beyond certain point, LO is just easier.
> I don’t use (or even know) LyX but if it supports beamer, you might improve your experience of constructing
> presentations? Or thinking outside the box, is there Linux support in Prezzi?
>
> As for LO, I can’t say I ever found it unstable or buggy. I do find it slow, and unreliable when handling MSOffice
> files, and I know others who use it routinely without any problem.
>
>
I use LO all the time now, and have almost entirely migrated over from
MS Office. The only problems I find with it are any MS Office
documentsthat have fancy formatting don’t tend to import very well. I
haven’t tried to import very many fancy spreadsheets with lots of
macros, but I figured I would just have to learn the new macro script
for LO.

Power points don’t import very well either, since they are usually very
visually oriented, but I have made some presentations using Impress,and
they came out fine.

I only have an older copyof MS Office 2007, and don’t intend to upgrade
again unless I have to, as it seems to serve all my needs during those
times that I have to use it.

If I have to run MS Office, I have chosen to do so invirtual machine
(virtual box) on a windows xp platform, and that is about the only time
I start up the virtual machine.

As I look at your original post, it occurs to me that what you said
about pictures and text boxes disappearing randomly does happen to me as
well. I have done several newsletters that I emailed out, and I had to
keep tweaking the location of pictures here and there to get them to be
in just the right spot on the page before finally getting them to work.
But my work so far has been small - 1 or 2 page documents at a time.
Nothing very lengthy. It is manageable to fix 5 or 6 pictures on a 2
page document, and then export the file to pdf format and be done with
it. However, a 40 page document that has errors like that on graphics
that are supposed tobe on every page, which have to be fixed every time
you open the document, would really be a major headache.

So I have to echo your sentiments that some of those issues with
graphics messing things up should be fixed. I wonder what would be the
best way to go about that, because I would really like to see LO become
just as high quality as MS Office, and break our dependence on the MS
stranglehold over productivity. If many of us make a concerted effort to
document the crashes and problems like that, where is the best place to
send bug reports? I expect that those sorts of problems with graphics
should be reported to the LO development team, and not to Novell.

–
G.O.
Box #1: 12.3 | KDE 4.10 | AMD Phenom IIX4 | 64 | 16GB
Box #2: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.2 | AMD Athlon X3 | 64 | 4GB
Laptop: 12.3 | KDE 4.10 | Core i7-2620M | 64 | 8GB
learning openSUSE and loving it

12

On 2013-05-01 05:13, golson765 wrote:
> On 05/01/2013 01:25 AM, flymail wrote:

> As I look at your original post, it occurs to me that what you said
> about pictures and text boxes disappearing randomly does happen to me as
> well. I have done several newsletters that I emailed out, and I had to
> keep tweaking the location of pictures here and there to get them to be
> in just the right spot on the page before finally getting them to work.

Picture placement with LO is an art. You either know how to do it right,
or you don’t. Sometimes it can be frustrating.

But the same applies to MS office!

The tricks are different, but it can make me mad when there are several
images to place. If you are used to MS office, you get it done.

It is just knowing your bag of tricks…

With both suites, you add a new photo and weird thing can happen, like
half a page empty, or a photo on top of another… It is frustrating, I
know. I have used both suites and have banged my head on the wall with both.

Getting consistent results with Lyx (or tex, if you know it) is easier.
What is difficult is to to customize to your exact preferences.

> But my work so far has been small - 1 or 2 page documents at a time.
> Nothing very lengthy. It is manageable to fix 5 or 6 pictures on a 2
> page document, and then export the file to pdf format and be done with
> it. However, a 40 page document that has errors like that on graphics
> that are supposed tobe on every page, which have to be fixed every time
> you open the document, would really be a major headache.

There are tricks, or things to know. You have to rely on styles and
automated formatting, not manual placement.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)

13

On 2013-05-01, Carlos E. R. <robin_listas@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> With both suites, you add a new photo and weird thing can happen, like
> half a page empty, or a photo on top of another… It is frustrating, I
> know. I have used both suites and have banged my head on the wall with both.
>
> Getting consistent results with Lyx (or tex, if you know it) is easier.
> What is difficult is to to customize to your exact preferences.

I think that hits the nail on the head. But I think the OP is in no doubt of the use of TeX/LaTeX for writing
thesis/papers. There are only two hurdles with this approach. The first is submitting to Word-only' journals. The second is collaborating with authors who no nothing about LaTeX and know only word. Fortunately two commands are your friend here (htlatex filename.tex’ and `mk4ht oolatex filename.tex’) that will convert any LaTeX document into an
OpenOffice document.

Since the OP is conversant with C++, I strongly suggest looking at Asymptote because nothing else comes close in
producing publication-quality academic figures. It appears for the OP that the real difficulty is with presentations.
For academic work, the ideal package is beamer. If one of my students complains about the syntax, my usual response of
“just persist and accept there’s a learning curve” usually results in the creation of wonderful presentations. Only in a
few cases when they want to do everything the `PowerPoint’ way, I say “fine, just use PowerPoint”…

@GofBorg: I know Scribus is good for posters - does it also do presentations?
@martin_helm: I haven’t tried Calligra because I found its predecessor (KOffice) very buggy. Is it any good?

>> But my work so far has been small - 1 or 2 page documents at a time.
>> Nothing very lengthy. It is manageable to fix 5 or 6 pictures on a 2
>> page document, and then export the file to pdf format and be done with
>> it. However, a 40 page document that has errors like that on graphics
>> that are supposed tobe on every page, which have to be fixed every time
>> you open the document, would really be a major headache.
>
> There are tricks, or things to know. You have to rely on styles and
> automated formatting, not manual placement.

That’s the key also in LaTeX. For consistent formatting of fancier layouts (e.g. presentations/posters) you have to be
willing to play about with style files. Whereas for documents the whole idea of LaTeX is that you really shouldn’t care
the figures end up because the `float’ handling of LaTeX is superb (unless you have ridiculously large/long/wide figure
that would’t fit any page) leaving you to concentrate on the content of the document rather than the formatting.

14

Am 01.05.2013 11:18, schrieb flymail:
> @martin_helm: I haven’t tried Calligra because I found its predecessor (KOffice) very buggy. Is it any good?

In the company I work for I often receive MS Office documents (no macros
inside). I suffered from sometimes bad imports into LO (that means
documents looked screwed or even some elements like diagrams were just
invisible). Just because I read an article about calligra last year I
installed that a few months ago and tried the same documents (word docx
and some PP presentations) with it and they were shown much better.

I have not much experience with calligra in everyday use until now for
creating text docs (but I started using it for that) and presentations,
I use it more for MS docs I receive.

So far it does work much better than the previous koffice (I gave that
several tries in the past some years ago, but I also ran into too many
bugs which stopped me).

So if you want to know how it works for complex documents or
presentations you write yourself from scratch I am afraid I cannot
really answer right now, maybe in a month or so when I have more
experience with its pros and cons and what bugs and culprits it has.

Esp. Impress was always and still is a nightmare for me (makes no
difference if the one from LO or OO).

–
PC: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.10.2 | GTX 650 Ti
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.3 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.10.2 | HD 3000
HannsBook: oS 12.3 x86_64 | SU4100@1.3GHz | 2GB | KDE 4.10.2 | GMA4500

15

Thank you all for your inputs.

It’s true that my main issue is with Impress. The images that disappeared were some of the logos of the companies that sponsored the work I was presenting. The text boxes that disappeared were at the bottom, usually references to articles in the literature. The worst part was that it all worked fine up until when I was presenting. Fortunately I had exported it to PDF, so I switched quickly.

It seems that I should indeed look into Asymptote and Beamer for figures and presentations respectively. Spending a few hours for a few weekends should make me pretty comfortable.

Lastly, I would like to echo what golson756 said. This post is a rant but I don’t hate LibreOffice. I sincerely want it to be a world class product to rival anything any proprietary software like MS Office can do. This is why I feel frustrated when it fails like this even after the considerable amount of time and effort put into its development by some very talented people.

16

On 2013-05-02, adhishm <adhishm@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
> Thank you all for your inputs.

Pleasure.

> It’s true that my main issue is with Impress. The images that
> disappeared were some of the logos of the companies that sponsored the
> work I was presenting. The text boxes that disappeared were at the
> bottom, usually references to articles in the literature. The worst part
> was that it all worked fine up until when I was presenting. Fortunately
> I had exported it to PDF, so I switched quickly.

\footnote and \logo are your friends.

> It seems that I should indeed look into Asymptote and Beamer for
> figures and presentations respectively. Spending a few hours for a few
> weekends should make me pretty comfortable.

Should only need an hour each. For openSUSE 12.3, the binary install of Asymptote from the texlive repo fails so you’ll
have to compile from source (there’s a simple make installer inside the src.tgz archive).