I have super light office requirements these days and those are satisfied with OnlyOffice (https://www.onlyoffice.com/). I do believe it's an Electron app but works quite fast in my personal experience. (Probably faster than LibreOffice if it's still like the last time I used it).
I hadn't looked at the Github page in a while. They seem to have a ton of new features one of which regrettably is a very front end center AI presence.
I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background.
I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box.
I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Excel got rid of 26+ years ago).
Seems to be a dumbed down UI with less customization, but built with shiny new browser tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS)! Also limited macros. No embedded Java
Yes. From the original announcement: “HTML + JavaScript-based front end, powered by your system’s native browser engine (like WebKit, Chromium, etc.)”
From the email-walled “whitepaper” [0]: “If you need tools like the Base database
module (including Java-based
components) or the full Math module,
Collabora Office Classic remains the
right choice - Collabora Office isn’t
trying to replicate those. Collabora
Office will run macros, but for
advanced macro authoring and
debugging you should use Classic. For
extreme Calc workloads (think complex
Solver models or analysis across
hundreds of thousands of rows) Classic
is likely the better fit.”
There has been a conflict building up within the LibreOffice ecosystem, with Collabora publishing a desktop version of their web-focused LO-based suite, while TDF (The Document Foundation) has decided to hire several developers to work on an on-line and potentially mobile version. So, essentially, both "sides" are taking each other on, even though a plurality of LibreOffice commits are made by Collabora employees. There have also been some "beheading" in the form of the expulsion of a few members of the TDF, particularly the former long-time TDF board-of-directors chairperson who is with Collabora (previously Allotropia) and a couple of others - a highly contentious decision which some argue is contrary to the TDF statutes.
This is a no way a complete or a fair summary of everything that has gone on; and it's been simmering for a number of years now.
Due disclosure: I am a TDF trustee.
--------------
About Collabora Office for Desktop itself: Personally, I don't see it as being up to par. The main thing going for it is that its ribbon-ish interface is more polished than LibreOffice's. But - I don't like ribbons; and features are missing; and it feels clunkier than LO itself.
I was also curious. It says this in about the middle of the homepage:
"We love LibreOffice. We are privileged to be the largest code contributors to the codebase, Collabora employs several founders of The Document Foundation, and many of the top committers. We offer a Long Term supported product based on LibreOffice, branded as Collabora Office Classic, and are deeply grateful for and acknowledge many skilled community contributors we work alongside, as well as the incredible range of features that LibreOffice code enables."
* Collabora Online is rebranded, and hosted, LibreOffice Online
* or rather - LibreOffice Online never really existed and it was always Collabora Online Development Edition (I cannot find any LibreOffice Online that's not just Collabora Online Development Edition)
* Collabora Office for Desktop is Collabora Online, packaged as a desktop app
* Collabora Office Classic is just rebranded LibreOffice
* Collabora (the company) is one of the biggest contributors to LibreOffice
On Wikipedia, there is a fairly complicated timeline chart of the various LibreOffice variants [1]. Same article also says
> Ecosystem partner Collabora uses LibreOffice as upstream code to provide a web-based suite branded as Collabora Online, along with apps for platforms not officially supported by LibreOffice, including Android, ChromeOS, iOS and iPadOS.
Hmm. I can't actually find the link to start using it to try it out. ? It offers a Free Demo that is behind some kind of details harvesting form. I don't want a demo. Is this usable enough to move a small (6 people) team away from google sheets ? hard to say since i can't test it and it doesn't say what the cost is. Stop hiding your shit behind hard to navigate/use/privacy invading bullshit. Just let us use the stuff. If you must gimp it, do it in a way that doesn't stop us using it first.
Is your team looking at the cloud version or a local install?
If latter would suggest checking current version of LibreOffice (which is Collabra Office Classic) as a local (i.e. on client computer) install. If former, then I'd imagine you will have to fill the form in to get access.
I briefly tried it : I don't see the point, there is no way to connect it to your online collabora instance or directly to Nextcloud or anything except your local files.
Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances and is not an app bundled inside a browser.
> Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances
I don't think you've ever used LibreOffice if you think it in any way fits the description "performant". It's a great project but I wouldn't exactly call it snappy.
I use regularly both libreoffice and collabora online and I can say the former is snappy compared to the second. It can take a longer time to open thought, mostly on Windows.
I have not tried LibreOffice Online in many years, but it does not look like LibreOffice at all. It has the MSOffice ribbon clone. It is closer to OnlyOffice
I use Collabora online all the time (via Nextcloud) but I don't quite understand why I'd use this over LibreOffice on the desktop, which feels significantly more powerful than the online tool.
The few screenshots they show make this look similar to the existing online tool, which is fine for a lot of work, but like Word Online hits a wall with more complex documents.
Honestly, OnlyOffice works extremely well for my purposes, and I install it on all my friends' PCs. It looks a lot like MS Office and is quite compatible with a variety of documents I've tried, in my experience.
As a devout supporter of Ukraine, I'm not sure it's fair to denounce the FOSS version of the app just because it was built by developers that reside in Russia. We all know that the company outwardly stating "we are against the invasion of Ukraine" wouldn't end well for them, and as long as you're not paying for it, I don't see a huge difference using this vs. your average American software (in which the developers also reside in a country with questionable government leadership). Enlighten me if I'm wrong though
Don't bother, I tried with a disposable email address and they make you subscribe to a mailing list before sending you the download link. When you do eventually get it, it's a 3 page puff marketing PDF.
I converted it to TXT and pulled out the only bit of interest here:
Collabora Office Collabora Office Classic
Fresh, modern UX Classic, established UX
Javascript & CSS UI to match Collabora Online VCL-based classic UI
Simpler settings / streamlined defaults Very extensive options, menus & dialogs
No Java Java used for some features/wizards/DB drivers
No built-in Base app Includes Base UI
Runs macros Full macro editor & advanced BASIC/Python/UNO
Modern web tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS) Custom toolkit (VCL)
Fast to iterate (edit JS, fewer recompiles) Core/C++ changes typically require recompiles
Initial release – Enterprise Support is coming Long term Enterprise Supported
Quick Start Guides and video tutorials Extensive manuals & books
If you don't give an email address, it doesn't even prompt you to ttry again. It just bugs out and redirects to a home page with a broken URL attempting to inject HTML from client side.
That's strange because the only reason for a user to use OpenOffice/Collabra is because they don't want to deal with an annoying company that makes a far superior product. If the inferior product is also run by an annoying company, why bother?
Yeah, I'd say that's the gist of it altogether... I get they want to monetize hosting/support etc.. but they should really try not to gatekeep what should be basic/public information.
I'd still probably put Collabra above Google Docs, but definitely a step below even MS Office Online, err 365, err CoPilot App or whatever the hell they're calling it now... (naming issues not withstanding). Though MS has been enshitifying the offline versions of office a lot, not to mention Outlook in particular.
Aside: Why MS hasn't done a version of "Microsoft Access Online" with a WASM port of VBA in order to lift/shift Access apps into a hosted environment that's backed by Azure SQL under the covers is kind of beyond me. I mean, it shouldn't take too much effort at this point with the level of tooling MS has been capable of.
Access was the distilled VB + Database apps kind of thing that a lot of SOHO really thrived on, and they could totally (re)capture that market with a bit of legacy uplift/support along with a newer model/design. Displacing the winforms models with webforms and a dedicated server/service system. 3 versions to start, a legacy/support, a bridge and a new model where it's TS/JS and monaco for editing instead of VBA/wasm/webforms in a browser/canvas. People are running older versions of Windows in wasm/x86 emulation... making that pretty and wrapping hosted access runtimes should be somewhat reasonable. Shouldn't it?
I don't care about dated looks. I do find MS Office's pressure to use OneDrive frustrating and annoying. Honestly, older UIs for office suite products just feel more direct and responsive than the clever ribbon bars. Excel used to be svelte (25 years ago or more...) Now it feels bloated and clumsy. LibreOffice Calc (same parentage as Collabora Office) feels more like Excel used to feel. Similar complaints about Word.
A lot of open-source doesn't have a process to integrate and follow a design strategy from a designer. A business can mandate that work be done to adapt/follow a given design strategy... for open-source it's often harder to do so... and even then you face the same or more resistance to change.
It took basically a corporate control for Audacity to make its' difficult transition to a better design from its' mediocre one. That said, I'd love to see something modern transformed from The Gimp's core in a similar way. That doesn't even begin to cover what you might want in terms of inter-app collaboration...
KdenLive, Blender, Gimp, Krita, InkScape, Audacity and other tooling, as an example, all use different UI/UX base libraries, and no clean way to cross-integrate features between them if someone wanted to assemble an open-source Adobe alternative. There's no baseline equivalent to even MS/Office's use of COM/DCOM for interoperability.
Good points. Designers need to be first-class citizens whose input is sought early on, not to attempt to make a purse out of the finished pig's ear. RFCs are a venue for this. Designers, for their part, need to share their ready-to-go libraries in all the popular frontend frameworks. The two could also collaborate on developing tools to automate design linting, similar to automated code review programmers use.
I have super light office requirements these days and those are satisfied with OnlyOffice (https://www.onlyoffice.com/). I do believe it's an Electron app but works quite fast in my personal experience. (Probably faster than LibreOffice if it's still like the last time I used it).
It's open source: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/
I hadn't looked at the Github page in a while. They seem to have a ton of new features one of which regrettably is a very front end center AI presence.
I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background.
I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box.
I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Excel got rid of 26+ years ago).
Uninstalled.
If anyone from Collabora Office is looking, there is a weird paragraph with syntax-colored HTML in https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-online-now-av... "*A Note on Early Releases"
Seems to be a dumbed down UI with less customization, but built with shiny new browser tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS)! Also limited macros. No embedded Java
Yes. From the original announcement: “HTML + JavaScript-based front end, powered by your system’s native browser engine (like WebKit, Chromium, etc.)”
From the email-walled “whitepaper” [0]: “If you need tools like the Base database module (including Java-based components) or the full Math module, Collabora Office Classic remains the right choice - Collabora Office isn’t trying to replicate those. Collabora Office will run macros, but for advanced macro authoring and debugging you should use Classic. For extreme Calc workloads (think complex Solver models or analysis across hundreds of thousands of rows) Classic is likely the better fit.”
[0] https://paste.c-net.org/FuriousWhistler
> No embedded Java
This is a great feature!
Download button takes me to windows store. That doesn't work on my machine. On Linux got as a flatpak.
There has been a conflict building up within the LibreOffice ecosystem, with Collabora publishing a desktop version of their web-focused LO-based suite, while TDF (The Document Foundation) has decided to hire several developers to work on an on-line and potentially mobile version. So, essentially, both "sides" are taking each other on, even though a plurality of LibreOffice commits are made by Collabora employees. There have also been some "beheading" in the form of the expulsion of a few members of the TDF, particularly the former long-time TDF board-of-directors chairperson who is with Collabora (previously Allotropia) and a couple of others - a highly contentious decision which some argue is contrary to the TDF statutes.
This is a no way a complete or a fair summary of everything that has gone on; and it's been simmering for a number of years now.
Due disclosure: I am a TDF trustee.
--------------
About Collabora Office for Desktop itself: Personally, I don't see it as being up to par. The main thing going for it is that its ribbon-ish interface is more polished than LibreOffice's. But - I don't like ribbons; and features are missing; and it feels clunkier than LO itself.
Collabora vs LibreOffice branding is always quite confusing to me.
How is this project related to LibreOffice and also to what used to be called LibreOffice Online? (And Collabora Office Classic. And Collabora Online)
I was also curious. It says this in about the middle of the homepage:
"We love LibreOffice. We are privileged to be the largest code contributors to the codebase, Collabora employs several founders of The Document Foundation, and many of the top committers. We offer a Long Term supported product based on LibreOffice, branded as Collabora Office Classic, and are deeply grateful for and acknowledge many skilled community contributors we work alongside, as well as the incredible range of features that LibreOffice code enables."
I think - not sure - that
* Collabora Online is rebranded, and hosted, LibreOffice Online
* or rather - LibreOffice Online never really existed and it was always Collabora Online Development Edition (I cannot find any LibreOffice Online that's not just Collabora Online Development Edition)
* Collabora Office for Desktop is Collabora Online, packaged as a desktop app
* Collabora Office Classic is just rebranded LibreOffice
* Collabora (the company) is one of the biggest contributors to LibreOffice
On Wikipedia, there is a fairly complicated timeline chart of the various LibreOffice variants [1]. Same article also says
> Ecosystem partner Collabora uses LibreOffice as upstream code to provide a web-based suite branded as Collabora Online, along with apps for platforms not officially supported by LibreOffice, including Android, ChromeOS, iOS and iPadOS.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History
Hmm. I can't actually find the link to start using it to try it out. ? It offers a Free Demo that is behind some kind of details harvesting form. I don't want a demo. Is this usable enough to move a small (6 people) team away from google sheets ? hard to say since i can't test it and it doesn't say what the cost is. Stop hiding your shit behind hard to navigate/use/privacy invading bullshit. Just let us use the stuff. If you must gimp it, do it in a way that doesn't stop us using it first.
On my screen, the words "Download Now" are the biggest on the page.
Is your team looking at the cloud version or a local install?
If latter would suggest checking current version of LibreOffice (which is Collabra Office Classic) as a local (i.e. on client computer) install. If former, then I'd imagine you will have to fill the form in to get access.
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901100 Another commenter has summarised the differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic (aka LibreOffice) for us
Nice, does it have Excel for Windows hotkeys?
You can customize them: https://help.collaboraoffice.com/latest/en-GB/text/scalc/04/...
This is help for the classic LibreOffice app, not the new web thing (which appears to have no settings?)
I briefly tried it : I don't see the point, there is no way to connect it to your online collabora instance or directly to Nextcloud or anything except your local files.
Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances and is not an app bundled inside a browser.
> Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances
I don't think you've ever used LibreOffice if you think it in any way fits the description "performant". It's a great project but I wouldn't exactly call it snappy.
I use regularly both libreoffice and collabora online and I can say the former is snappy compared to the second. It can take a longer time to open thought, mostly on Windows.
Is it based on some open source core? Like the original Collabora Office?
looks like LibreOffice
I have not tried LibreOffice Online in many years, but it does not look like LibreOffice at all. It has the MSOffice ribbon clone. It is closer to OnlyOffice
LibreOffice has had a ribbon for a while.
It is LibreOffice at its heart, but wrapped with a web-techs UI, AFAIK.
I use Collabora online all the time (via Nextcloud) but I don't quite understand why I'd use this over LibreOffice on the desktop, which feels significantly more powerful than the online tool.
The few screenshots they show make this look similar to the existing online tool, which is fine for a lot of work, but like Word Online hits a wall with more complex documents.
Honestly, OnlyOffice works extremely well for my purposes, and I install it on all my friends' PCs. It looks a lot like MS Office and is quite compatible with a variety of documents I've tried, in my experience.
OnlyOffice is nice if you ignore the Russian background of it. I wouldn't trust it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7zlf2/onlyoffi...
As a devout supporter of Ukraine, I'm not sure it's fair to denounce the FOSS version of the app just because it was built by developers that reside in Russia. We all know that the company outwardly stating "we are against the invasion of Ukraine" wouldn't end well for them, and as long as you're not paying for it, I don't see a huge difference using this vs. your average American software (in which the developers also reside in a country with questionable government leadership). Enlighten me if I'm wrong though
This is honestly news to me. I had no idea.
Why is 'Differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic' document gated behind a email-wall? Nothing but enshittification.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/differences-bet...
Don't bother, I tried with a disposable email address and they make you subscribe to a mailing list before sending you the download link. When you do eventually get it, it's a 3 page puff marketing PDF.
I converted it to TXT and pulled out the only bit of interest here:
But how will we spam you if you don't give us email?
Even funnier when you try that from the "freedom" whitepage download https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/opendesk/
If you don't give an email address, it doesn't even prompt you to ttry again. It just bugs out and redirects to a home page with a broken URL attempting to inject HTML from client side.
That's strange because the only reason for a user to use OpenOffice/Collabra is because they don't want to deal with an annoying company that makes a far superior product. If the inferior product is also run by an annoying company, why bother?
Yeah, I'd say that's the gist of it altogether... I get they want to monetize hosting/support etc.. but they should really try not to gatekeep what should be basic/public information.
I'd still probably put Collabra above Google Docs, but definitely a step below even MS Office Online, err 365, err CoPilot App or whatever the hell they're calling it now... (naming issues not withstanding). Though MS has been enshitifying the offline versions of office a lot, not to mention Outlook in particular.
Aside: Why MS hasn't done a version of "Microsoft Access Online" with a WASM port of VBA in order to lift/shift Access apps into a hosted environment that's backed by Azure SQL under the covers is kind of beyond me. I mean, it shouldn't take too much effort at this point with the level of tooling MS has been capable of.
Access was the distilled VB + Database apps kind of thing that a lot of SOHO really thrived on, and they could totally (re)capture that market with a bit of legacy uplift/support along with a newer model/design. Displacing the winforms models with webforms and a dedicated server/service system. 3 versions to start, a legacy/support, a bridge and a new model where it's TS/JS and monaco for editing instead of VBA/wasm/webforms in a browser/canvas. People are running older versions of Windows in wasm/x86 emulation... making that pretty and wrapping hosted access runtimes should be somewhat reasonable. Shouldn't it?
Why doesn't Amazon adopt libreoffice?
"Get a quote"
Okay, so what does it cost?
That's a "I may afford you, but I don't have people budget for those dumb calls" button for me.
This is probably great software. But the design, both of the site and the office software, looks so dated, it doesn’t even tempt me to try it
I don't care about dated looks. I do find MS Office's pressure to use OneDrive frustrating and annoying. Honestly, older UIs for office suite products just feel more direct and responsive than the clever ribbon bars. Excel used to be svelte (25 years ago or more...) Now it feels bloated and clumsy. LibreOffice Calc (same parentage as Collabora Office) feels more like Excel used to feel. Similar complaints about Word.
The open source world needs more designers.
A lot of open-source doesn't have a process to integrate and follow a design strategy from a designer. A business can mandate that work be done to adapt/follow a given design strategy... for open-source it's often harder to do so... and even then you face the same or more resistance to change.
It took basically a corporate control for Audacity to make its' difficult transition to a better design from its' mediocre one. That said, I'd love to see something modern transformed from The Gimp's core in a similar way. That doesn't even begin to cover what you might want in terms of inter-app collaboration...
KdenLive, Blender, Gimp, Krita, InkScape, Audacity and other tooling, as an example, all use different UI/UX base libraries, and no clean way to cross-integrate features between them if someone wanted to assemble an open-source Adobe alternative. There's no baseline equivalent to even MS/Office's use of COM/DCOM for interoperability.
Good points. Designers need to be first-class citizens whose input is sought early on, not to attempt to make a purse out of the finished pig's ear. RFCs are a venue for this. Designers, for their part, need to share their ready-to-go libraries in all the popular frontend frameworks. The two could also collaborate on developing tools to automate design linting, similar to automated code review programmers use.
Looking at what they did to commercial software that used to have excellent, high density UIs, maybe they should stay where they are.
It is actually very, very janky and behaves like someone tried to reimplement ~15 years old Office UI in JavaScript. Not in a good way.
I really, really want them to be successful, but I cannot pretend it's a pleasure to use at all.
When I tried it last, it was painfully slow. Have there been any improvements on the performance front lately?
Typing in a word processor should not have input lag in 2025. It wasn't just a little lag, but the type and watch it catch up kind of lag.
Could you be more specific?
Working with data I need to be objective, and while thinking objectively I prefer brutal/minimal ist UIs
It looks like MS Office, what's so bad about it?
It looks like a 2015 wordpress template