this question is frequently asked ,but i think the answer will be different after the approach of all apps to involve the power of ai tools in it's products, so what is the best alternative now to ms-office in linux?
That's a good question. If you mean a good alternative as in, "it also has AI powered features" then I don't know what that may be. But otherwise, I wouldn't look no further than Libre Office. At least for me, it has worked great and it has excellent compatibility with MS Office products, at least for Word and Excel.
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LibreOffice has a lot of good things in it. I can spellcheck 5 languages in it without Writer getting confused, while Word cannot find out which language to spellcheck if more than 1 language is there.
LibreOffice is missing an email client. Have never found a good email client in Linux. Tried maybe all. Best email client for Windows is eMClient that does let you have all your data on own computer and not asking for any at all. So far not interested in making it available for Linux.
I have to disagree on compatibility. During lockdown I started to use LibreOffice to submit to my workplace, an Integrated Resource at a school where documents had to be modified for low-vision students. The documents just were not showing correctly, even after saving as .docx. Sure they will open but page layout and formatting got lost. The only one for me is SoftMaker Office, that was the onlt Office Suite that truly matched any MS Office product, including Presentations. SoftMaker Office comes with ChatGPT should it be needed but I never use it. And like LibreOffice you can export documents to .epub. Something Microsoft Office still does not offer. In respect of Excel, yes both SoftMaker and LibreOffice can do spreadsheets but SoftMaker can't interpret Macros. Additionally there are some copyrighted things in Excel that others don't have. The one thing LibreOffice does excel at is that it has more language support than any other Office Suite on the planet.
It may not have a 1:1 feature parity with Word, but it still is pretty good overall. There's probably a huge difference in number of users that don't rely on low vision compatibility.
I had MS Office 2010, 2019, 2021 for work, but after 2021 I got enough of MS Office and tried Libre- and Open-Office and ended up with Libre because of the easy handling of languages. The Calc is also sufficient for me. They are the only office programs I use. The lack of a decent email client in Libre Office is no worse than Outlook from MS. It is so bad that Microsoft had to make a tool to fix the data file .pst every time it corrupts, which it does when the file gets big so it was needed to start over and reinstall the mail program.
I made manuals for electronic components in a few languages and before they should be printed I made them .pdf files and never heard a bad word of printing quality. So LibreOffice is still what I use.
Too bad there is no good email client for Linux though, so I use Librewolf to handle mails. Maybe not super secure, but no worse than those I have tried.
Evolution is fine for email and is the libre version of Outlook in appearance.
@zenzen low-vision had nothing to do with it. The layout would get corrupted when opened in Word. My personal favourite is still SoftMaker Office but the full price 5 machine licence, not the monthly NX subscription version.
Is SoftMaker subscription based or a one-time payment? For 5 machines I think that's a good deal if it's the latter.
They offer both. The full price for new users in GBP is/was £79. If you are an existing user the upgrade is less, the last one was £55. When I purchased 2018 I got a real bargain, only £24 and a bit for 5 machines which can be made up of any OS (Linux/MacOS/Windows). Their NX package is a monthly subscription which I will never be interested in. The main difference is that it includes a limited amount of DeepL subscription. The Suite gets updates throughout the life of the paid product, with new releases being every 3 years (next major release). When SoftMaker gets installed it comes with Arial font so no need to install MS Core Fonts. Unlike Word which only allows you to 'cut' a table, you can fully delete a table, arrows are separated from 'lines' in the ribbon which made my life a lot easier. Now one thing I found of great use was using Table selection in Okular and pasting into a student's document the document default font would change to 10 pt Basic Roman Font (similar to Times New Roman), easily resolved by highlighting the whole table then Ctrl+ Space would change the font and size to match the document settings of the document being worked on. One area it had lacked until 2024 was compression of images which it now has. It also now includes a QR template creation tool and an update a few months after release also includes a barcode template creation. One setting I disable is auto-hyphenation and I overwrite the default 'Normal' template as it is geared to German (regarding hyphenation) where the Software comes from. For users who prefer the Office 2003 interface instead of the ribbon can change appearance when setting up for first time. The Windows version even includes an old but full version of MathType which only works on Windows because Linux does not use the same coding for such items. They did run a survey and I did say it would be great if they could devise a GNU/Linux equivalent of MathType. LibreOffice Math is ok but it can be fiddly compared to MathType. It does support other languages but not to the extent that LibreOffice does.
They have a sale on that ends this Sunday. Current price is £109.99 but slashed to £76.99.
They are now offering their FlexiPDF for Windows free which works under WINE but does not compare to pdf Studio Pro.
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Will try it!
Tried it. Did not like it. Very difficult to get rid of again.
eMail clients for Linux in open software does not exist in any reasonable quality.
Collabora Office, in the version developed by MakululuLinux has an integrated AI
Collabora Office is the business version of LibreOffice, you can get it for Android too.
You probably aren't eligible to enter the Lounge area yet - here is what I posted about the latest 6 Gb .iso of Makulu:
"Well it's been a while since I played with Makulu. Downloaded the 6 Gb .iso and ran in virt-manager. Uses Cinnamon DE, has systemd 
, a nauseating A.I. Robot at launch and when testing the A.I. with "What time is it where you are?" got a 'system error'. Asking "What time is it?" got system error again! Also discovered it is attempting to use DeepSeek - not a good idea if you ask me. Yet more spyware.
Avoid at all costs!"
AI is - in the way it is today - not a good thing.
Most of what you get of answers from AI can be called alternative truth.
Most users of AI are young and with little experience, thus not for me.
Another (maybe) bigger problem is that AI is controlled by people that are interested in advancing their own interest be it economical or for personal power.
AI can be used to make weapons that care nothing at all for the wellbeing of living things or the planet we are supposed to leave to our children and their children etc.
Why do we want open-source that can be controlled and investigated if not because we do not trust the ones in power?
You can install Collabora Office by downloading it from their website. No need for Makulu:
Scientists have already noted what the biggest threat of A.I. is - a drain on energy.
Similarly, one of my offspring noted that if everyone on the planet had an electric car we would need the energy of 12 Suns to keep them all charged!
Your offspring must have read this somewhere... and it is one hundred percent false.
Current estimates suggest there are about 1.5–2 billion cars globally. For benefit of the doubt, if we assume 2 Billion cars globally, with each following the average of a Tesla at 0.2 kWh per km against the average yearly driving distance of ~15,000 km... we get 3,000 kWh.
Multiply that by 2 billion vehicles: 6,000 TWh
The Sun produces 3.8 × 10²⁶ joules of energy every second.
If you want to argue that your claim is due to Solar use (because already, the Suns output has utterly blown your claim completely out of the water, do more benefit of the doubt), that is about 174,000 terawatts per second.
Over a year, 1.5 million TWh. Compared to your 6,000 TWh.
That means the total global energy consumption is less than about 1/2 of a percent of just the output of ONE SUN.
Much less 12 of them.
Never parrot.
Do The Math.
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Well I was replying to the author of the post. I was referring exclusively to the implementation of the AI that they have done in Collabora (which does not have it).
P.S. what is the Lounge area?
Very interesting,
Still more than half of the energy used to charging the fine battery powered cars come from fossil fuels. As far as I know pollution does not need visum to spread, so when making batteries with energy from coal powered plants and charging batteries in the beloved cars come mostly from fossil fuel, only small brains (I did not say politicians) can think battery powered cars are helping the environment.
On top of that air-plane traffic is polluting many times more and container ships cannot use battery power to transport around the world if there still should be room for the cargo we think we cannot live without.
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