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The New Collabora Office for Desktop
- karel-3d 7mo agoCollabora 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)
- aaron_oxenrider 7mo agoI 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."
- karel-3d 7mo agoI 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
- chris_wot 7mo agoAll of that is true. Collabora has put a lot of time and money into LibreOffice.
- abdullahkhalids 7mo agoOn 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History
- mickelsen 7mo agoAlso didn’t these guys buy Zetaoffice?
- CalicoUK 7mo agoYes, you're talking about Thorsten Behrens, one of the founders of The Document Foundation. His German company, Allotropia, merged with Collabora Productivity in 2025.
- HexDecOctBin 7mo agoWhy 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-between-collabora-office-and-collabora-office-classic/ https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/differences-bet...
- eviks 7mo agoBut how will we spam you if you don't give us email?
- gowld 7mo agoEven funnier when you try that from the "freedom" whitepage download https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/opendesk/ 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?
- tracker1 7mo agoYeah, 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?
- nico 7mo agoThis 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
- boobsbr 7mo agoIt looks like MS Office, what's so bad about it?
- PxldLtd 7mo agoIt looks like a 2015 wordpress template
- karel-3d 7mo agoIt 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.
- mixmastamyk 7mo agoCould you be more specific?
- doubled112 7mo agoWhen 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.
- karel-3d 7mo agoIt's laggy on MacBook Pro M4 Max. I have no idea what is it doing.
- nritchie 7mo agoI 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.
- eviks 7mo agoSeems 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
- ronsor 7mo ago> No embedded Java This is a great feature!
- layer8 7mo agoYes. 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 https://paste.c-net.org/FuriousWhistler
- Squarex 7mo agoIs it based on some open source core? Like the original Collabora Office?
- thedudeabides5 7mo agoNice, does it have Excel for Windows hotkeys?
- guimi 7mo agoDownload button takes me to windows store. That doesn't work on my machine. On Linux got as a flatpak.
- yeah879846 7mo agowindows store was a huge red flag
- Marsymars 7mo agoConceptually I like the Windows Store for certain things (i.e. those where I want automatic updates) - I can manage my apps from it via the winget CLI and winget.config files, and get automatic updates. However, the LTSC edition of Windows doesn't have Windows Store support, and the non-LTSC editions of Windows have become untenable to me.
- jaffa2 7mo agoHmm. 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.
- browningstreet 7mo agoOn my screen, the words "Download Now" are the biggest on the page.
- jaffa2 7mo agoI see the link now. But there's a hell of a lot of stuff on that page that does not help to be clear, rather the opposite.
- 2b3a51 7mo agoIs 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901100 Another commenter has summarised the differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic (aka LibreOffice) for us
- tiahura 7mo agoWhy doesn't Amazon adopt libreoffice?
- drzaiusx11 7mo agoFrom my understanding Amazon at least internally uses Salesforce's Quip product which is closer to Google docs than office (live collab). There's still MS office use as well depending on org. Just curious, were you suggesting libreoffice as a cost savings measure or are you just sick of Quip?
- bigfatkitten 7mo agoHaving the entire software ecosystem concentrated in Amazon, Google and Microsoft is not at all a desirable state of affairs.
- TheAmazingRace 7mo agoHonestly, 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.
- tomtomistaken 7mo agoOnlyOffice is nice if you ignore the Russian background of it. I wouldn't trust it. https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7zlf2/onlyoffice_is_obfuscating_its_russian_ownership/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7zlf2/onlyoffi...
- TheAmazingRace 7mo agoThis is honestly news to me. I had no idea.
- defrim 7mo agoAs 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
- tomtomistaken 7mo agoIt’s about trusting the build. You can’t always know what happened between source and release.
- drzaiusx11 7mo agoI'd trust a Linux distro build of a Russian FOSS product a bit more than a windows binary from their website. So trust here is context dependent, at least for me. I still use Audacity for example and it has similar ownership issues.
- jonathanstrange 7mo ago"Get a quote" Okay, so what does it cost?
- szszrk 7mo agoThat's a "I may afford you, but I don't have people budget for those dumb calls" button for me.
- jonathanstrange 7mo agoThat still doesn't tell me what it costs, though.
- szszrk 7mo agowell that's the whole point. It reveals organizational attitude and their focus on entrenching the product with pre-sales madness, instead of properly proving value of the product. I choose not to participate in that, it's fishy. Others do better.
- scblock 7mo agoI 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.
- eole666 7mo agoI 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.
- jorvi 7mo ago> 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.
- eole666 7mo agoI 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.
- einpoklum 7mo agoThere 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.
- cxr 7mo ago> the charter of projects like LibreOffice are fundamentally broken—they're aiming to replace Microsoft Office by cloning it, but Microsoft Office itself is part of a busted paradigm <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24759573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24759573> > The LibreOffice project's imprimatur should be to stop existing[…] The editing paradigm perpetuated by the legacy of MS Office is a dead end. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795918> I'll amend my previous position and say that the charter should be to (a) as much as possible change the menu and dialog structure to match whatever the last "good" version of the Microsoft Office UI was, but still ultimately focus on (b) doing everything I said in those other comments.
- einpoklum 7mo agoI don't know about paradigms and stuff, but I do know that office productivity apps - document writer, spreadsheet, presentation and the others - put together are the second most used 'app' on a PC/laptop after a browser. And that's probably true for just the document writer alone. I'm a big fan of plaintext (and things like Markdown). But I don't buy the argument that "plain text over the web is the future" or that that combination can or should supplant office. Also remember that LibreOffice started before Microsoft Office even existed: as StarWriter in the mid-1980s. Yes, there has been a lot of borrowing between computer apps in this domain (and let's also not forget WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 etc.); and I am even willing to entertain the possibility that in 40 years' time we will all be doing something completely different. I mean, I still think people will be writing letters and CVs and reports but maybe the apps would be very different. Anyway, until that time, we need a decent office app, with support for the world's many written languages and their quirks, without spying on users, with multi-platform support, with a decent license etc. - and LibreOffice is that.
- Aissen 7mo agoIf anyone from Collabora Office is looking, there is a weird paragraph with syntax-colored HTML in https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-online-now-available-on-desktop/ https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-online-now-av... "*A Note on Early Releases"
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- Kwpolska 7mo agoI 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.
- ack_complete 7mo agoYeah, unfortunately this seems to combine the UI and performance issues of LibreOffice with new issues from the new front end. It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.
- ThePowerOfFuet 7mo agoFile a bug!
- 1718627440 7mo ago> It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement. It doesn't do that on my computer. LibreOffice 7.0.4.2 shipped with GNU/Linux Debian.
- ack_complete 7mo agoStandard LibreOffice Writer doesn't have the issue for me either, only the version shipped in Collabora Office for Desktop.
- 1718627440 7mo ago
- dizhn 7mo agoI have super light office requirements these days and those are satisfied with OnlyOffice (https://www.onlyoffice.com/ 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/ 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.
- honktime 7mo agoI've been using it on my phone for the occasional document and its been quite nice, much quicker/accurate than collabora office
- mastermage 7mo agoImportant note OnlyOffice is basically Russian Software. The Company is majority Russian owned. So fuck them
- czottmann 7mo agoI had to look that up, found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice#Organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice#Organization: > Based in Latvia, OnlyOffice owner Ascensio System SIA was a subsidiary of Russian-based New Communication Technologies. Due to EU economic sanctions targeting Russia, European organizations that used the commercial version of OnlyOffice were prohibited from doing so.
- direwolf20 7mo agoWow. The EU got banned from Microsoft Office because of investigating America's genocide, and it banned itself from OnlyOffice because of Russia's genocide. No wonder they clamor for an EU office product.
- greazy 7mo agoOne day I'd like to see people write the same regarding USA software companies. Not defending Russia but pointing out the hypocrisy.
- hulitu 7mo ago> The New Collabora Office for Desktop > online. Wrong answer. I want offline. There is no reason for an office programm to connect to the internet.
- solarkraft 7mo agoThey could as well have called it Collabora Offline. It’s the web app’s UX but locally.
- 9x39 7mo agoWhat if you work on files with a team?
- solarkraft 7mo agoMan, welcome to the current millenium. Somewhat. I really love FOSS but LibreOffice’s bulky and awkward UI was always too much for me. Happy to see Collabora doing it a bit better.
- realityfactchex 7mo agoFirst of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly. Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps. From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice or Collabora Desktop Classic is that it has a sane UI/menubar visual paradigm. (Which MS obliterated eons ago.) But let's talk about what matters: Collabora (the online document suite) is slow as heck. It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365. That should be the top priority. Full stop. LibreOffice works fine for desktop. But, for Collabora, the web experience needs to be fast. The lag in Collabora is simply unacceptable. People expect online, and they expect collaborative, and they expect nearly instantaneous updates (at least not painful to type and wait for screen to update). Talk about misplaced priorities. In my very humble opinion.
- 0x1ch 7mo agoAt least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design. I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.
- realityfactchex 7mo ago> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better: "...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent variables...results support the conclusion that the user interface of Excel 2007 did change for the worst in comparison with the user interface of the 2003 version." [0] [0] Morales (2010), A COMPARATIVE USABILITY STUDY OF MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 AND MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003, https://scholar7-dev.uprm.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/a03ca140-a7a4-4e5a-a37d-3089dd7ac9d8/content https://scholar7-dev.uprm.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/a03...
- zingerlio 7mo agoFor those who tried it, how good is the Calc (Excel equivalent) and Impress (PowerPoint equivalent)?
- Propelloni 7mo agoI have to use MS products at work and use Collabora (on Linux) at home. Sometimes, I have to edit the same spreadsheet at home and at work and that usually works flawlessly, besides automatic coloring. Now, I also don't try to code in Excel, so that might be one reason. Excel graphs are also nicer. Here is a comparison by the Document Foundation for spreadsheets [1]. I think it speaks for itself. Regarding Powerpoint I can't say. I can't recall when I last used Powerpoint for anything. We have an in-house system where I just select slide type, enter my text and attach pictures in a form and it builds a CI-styled PDF for me. I think its basically a LaTeX front-end, but I never cared. HTH [1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_LibreOffice_-_Microsoft_Office#Desktop_Spreadsheet_applications:_LibreOffice_Calc_vs._Microsoft_Excel https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:_Libr...
- greazy 7mo agoI can fill in my opinion of Impress <-> Powerpoint. It's atrocious primarily due to MS not following open ODF. Everything is out of wack, dot point have different shapes, and spacing is wrong. Impress is also not all that great. It's defaults are generally ugly, its auto sizing breaks and the animation pane is buggy. Calc is much better. Writer is decent compatibility with MS
- seven237 7mo agoI’m right there with you on the desktop side. The main reason I love LibreOffice is specifically because it isn’t bloated. It has a minimal footprint and loads fast, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the resource-heavy alternatives. Keeping that speed and simplicity is exactly why it’s still my go-to.