Open Office vs. Libre Office

[Chim]

Depending on what info / feedback I get here, I MIGHT try one of these 2 on my Dell that I set up for my sister recently.

What's the difference between Open Office and Libre Office?
Either one better?  Either one more stable?  Either one more supposedly "MS Office Suite compatible?"

How MS Office Suite compatible ARE they?
In other words ...
CAN one write a Doc in either Open Office or Libre Office ... and perfectly open it up in be it MS Word 2000 or MS Word 2012?
Can one edit that Doc in MS Word?

What about the flip side?
Can one take a Doc written in MS Word 2000 or MS Word 2012 and perfectly open it in Open Office and Libre Office?
CAN that MS Word Doc be edited in Open Office and Libre Office?

Do Open Office and Libre Office actually have an option to save Docs as MS Word Docs?

Or are they really just MS Office Suite wannabes that are more trouble than what they're worth?

[DavidR]

They are essentially one and the same, Open Office as far as I'm aware ceased free development and as a result Libre Office took over that.

They are both compatible with and save to .doc and .xls ( or the new MS document formats .docx, .etc) format, etc. Though there are some that say it isn't 100% compatibility.

[CraigB]

As David said OOO has ceased development, iv installed Libre Office on my fathers computer for a few months now and he seems very happy with it and all the doc's that he had with Microsoft Office and Open Office transfered straight across, simple as uninstalling the old and install the new, you will also require 32 bit Java 6.31 otherwise libre brings up heaps of warnings when installing.

[SpeedyPC]

You mind want to read this http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Apache-says-OpenOffice-3-4-planned-for-early-2012-1398737.html

[davews]

It is unknown what OpenOffice 3.4 will be like when it is released ('early 2012' has passed...), but yes, development has stalled since the Apache takeover. However development of LibreOffice continues at breakneck speed - 3.5.1 was released this week and they promise a new release each month. Until the OpenOffice situation resolves itself LibreOffice is the way to go.

[CraigB]

It would be nice if Libre Office would include a built in updater though, manually downloading 200Mb every month from there site is a bit of a pain

[OrangeCrate]

They are essentially one and the same, Open Office as far as I'm aware ceased free development and as a result Libre Office took over that.

They are both compatible with and save to .doc and .xls ( or the new MS document formats .docx, .etc) format, etc. Though there are some that say it isn't 100% compatibility.

You can set the defaults on both, for MS formats under:

Tools>Options>Load/Save>General>Document type

I've used OOo on Windows, and OOo, and now Libreoffice on Linux, for seven years or so. I haven't experienced any compatibility problems, though your mileage may vary, of course.

[DavidR]

For the most part, people shouldn't have any problems compatibility wise as it is in the more obscure (specialist, less commonly used) features in MS Orifice that may be where the compatibility issue may lie. As they say 80% of the users only use 20% of the features in MS Office. For me that is true and why I still have MS Office 97 (Small Business Edition) on this XP Pro system, I just saw no feature that I required or used worth the cost of upgrade.

I'm not into bells and whistles upgrades that bring little above aesthetics and graphical change rather than anything constructive. As for the MS change to the proprietary docX format (which they tried to get standardised) that was just trying to lock in users to the format as far as I was concerned.

[Chim]

I'll be over at my sister's place in about a week.  I guess I'll give Libre Office a whirl.
From you all's info, it sounds like it could be enough for my sister, her husband and their daughter who's in the 3rd grade.
Unlike me  ... they wouldn't be needing any of the heavy duty, push the envelope Bells & Whistles.
They should be OK with enough stable MS Word compatibility to write, read and print out simplistic MS Word Docs.
And if the PowerPoint equivalent is OK and stable enough to put together simplistic Presentations for a rare occasion here and there when their 3rd grade daughter is assigned one at school, it'll be a bonus.

They wouldn't care for maintaining pace with any Libre Office monthly updates.
As long as I could give them a working, stable App that'll give them simplistic MS Word capability, I think they should be good to go.

For example:  About 2 weeks ago, my sister requested that I make her an Excel Form.
With the Info and format that she wanted, I told her I could make it for her much more quickly as an MS Word Table.
I made it and sent it to her.  Well, as it turned out, apparently there at her work where I sent her the MS Word Attachment, they had just gotten rid of MS Office Suite on her computer and other computers because of license issues.  Therefore, now neither at work nor at home did she have capability to print out a simple MS Word Doc Table.

So, I wound up getting a Screen Cap of the MS Word Doc Table ... saving it as a JPEG and sending her that.  That did the trick.
But, that's the simplistic MS Word capability that they need.  Nothing fancy.

Thanks for the info, David, Craig, Speedy, Dave, OrangeCrate!

[OrangeCrate]

For the most part, people shouldn't have any problems compatibility wise as it is in the more obscure (specialist, less commonly used) features in MS Orifice that may be where the compatibility issue may lie. As they say 80% of the users only use 20% of the features in MS Office. For me that is true and why I still have MS Office 97 (Small Business Edition) on this XP Pro system, I just saw no feature that I required or used worth the cost of upgrade.

I'm not into bells and whistles upgrades that bring little above aesthetics and graphical change rather than anything constructive. As for the MS change to the proprietary docX format (which they tried to get standardised) that was just trying to lock in users to the format as far as I was concerned.

Agreed. My initial draw to OOo was the .pdf on the fly feature. Today, I use Writer extensively, I read a lot of spreadsheets with Calc (though I don't generate a lot of them on my own), and I occasionally build a presentation with Impress. I know nothing about the other programs available in the suite.