Basic question for new LibreOffice user...

users
#1

Hello! I'm thinking of making the switch from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice,
but I'm not sure which version (3.3.x or 3.4.x) to download. I can't find
any information about the difference between the two; all I saw was
something about the 3.4.x line being better for enterprise users. I also
noted that the latest 3.3.x version is newer than the latest 3.4.x version,
which I found confusing (though it makes sense if these two branches are
being developed independently).

Can anyone point me to a blog post, news article, or FAQ that explains the
two branches of LibreOffice and their purpose? (The FAQ section on the
website didn't have the answer.)

Thanks so much!

#2

Hi,

Hello! I'm thinking of making the switch from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice,
but I'm not sure which version (3.3.x or 3.4.x) to download. I can't find
any information about the difference between the two; all I saw was
something about the 3.4.x line being better for enterprise users. I also
noted that the latest 3.3.x version is newer than the latest 3.4.x version,
which I found confusing (though it makes sense if these two branches are
being developed independently).

Both branches are developed independently. You can read more about
the different branches here: http://www.libreoffice.org/
(there are two blog articles referenced about 3.4.2 and 3.3.4). They
also give the link the the blog a bit below.

I'm not a frequent reader of the blog, but I'm sure that they have
described the difference between those two branches somewhere in
there. :wink: http://blog.documentfoundation.org/

Can anyone point me to a blog post, news article, or FAQ that explains the
two branches of LibreOffice and their purpose? (The FAQ section on the
website didn't have the answer.)

I hope those links answer some of your questions.

Thanks so much!

You're welcome!.

Sigrid

#3

Thanks, Sigrid! I checked the blog and, sure enough, a brief description of
the differences is here:

http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/08/17/libreoffice-3-3-4-is-ready-for-download/
href="http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/08/17/libreoffice-3-3-4-is-ready-for-download/

From that post:

The Document Foundation maintains two editions of LibreOffice: version 3.3.x
caters to conservative users, who wish to stick to a proven release in deep
maintenance mode, with increasingly infrequent updates, while the 3.4 branch
provides a more modern and featurefull release. We therefore strongly
recommend everyone to update to the 3.4 series in the near future.

I always like having the latest and greatest, so I guess I'll go with 3.4!

- Chris

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
Generally the 3.3.x branch seems to be the more stable one with longer-term
support. There is slightly more time between releases presumably to spend more
time making sure everything is as stable as possible. So, it seems to be the
3.3.x that is usually better for corporate environments.

The 3.4.x branch is more like a development branch and seems to have new
releases more often. Development branch doesn't mean unstable and likely to
crash. It just means it has more features that may not have been included for
years and years. One of the extra features the 3.4.x branch has is better
support for the newer MS Office formats, eg .docX, .xlsX and so on. I think the
3.4.3 is aiming to be a stable release with long term support but i am not
completely certain.

If you are using Windows then i think the 3.3.3 is probably the most stable one
to go for right now but there are some instructions to make it possible to
install both side-by-side. In Gnu&Linux i would stick with the one in the repos
if possible.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#5

Thanks as well, Tom!

#6

Personally I used the 3.4 version a while ago, but there were just too
many nasty bugs (and I really mean nasty ones), so I was forced to go
back to 3.3. It was a while, I think 3.4.1, so maybe the nastiest bugs
are corrected by now, but I would go for 3.3 as long as it exists.

I saw a table of LibreOffice versions a while ago but I can't find it
now. The conclusion was however, that if you want to do important
things, use the latest 3.3 version available. Right now 3.3 is
considered to be the ”stable” version and 3.4 is the experimental one,
which is getting more table for every new release. When it's stable
enough, they will go for 3.5 and later skip 3.3. By that time 3.4 is
the stable release and 3.5 is the experimental one. At least that's
how I understand it.

You can install both versions, if I recall correctly.

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
It was the 3.4.0 that was really bad. That is probably the one you tried. The
3.4.1 was ok but the 3.4.2 is much better judging from the comments about it.
It's really stable now i think. I still prefer the 3.3.x tho.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
It was the 3.4.0 that was really bad.  That is probably the one you tried.  The
3.4.1 was ok but the 3.4.2 is much better judging from the comments about it.
It's really stable now i think.  I still prefer the 3.3.x tho.

As I remember it I tried 3.4.0 first and updated to 3.4.1 later. Some
of the bugs were corrected but one or two of the nasty ones were still
there.
Actually I don't remember right now what the bugs were about, but I
think I filed a couple of bug reports, but not all of them were fixed
in 3.4.1.

Of course I realize that I really should at least install 3.4.2 to
test it out and maybe report bugs, keeping 3.3.3 for doing the useful
stuff, but I just didn't do that yet…

And I just realised that 3.3.4 is released, so at least I will install
that one right now, I think… And while I'm there, I guess I should
read the 3.4.2 change log too…

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ

#9

I looked at the 3.4.2 release notes and I couldn't see that the cell
character colour format thing is fixed yet, so I'll stay with 3.3 for
some more time. When you format a cell to view characters in different
colours depending on its value, like ”[>25][RED]# ##0,00;[<0][RED]#
##0,00;[GREEN]# ##0,00” and things like that, that colour information
disappears when saving the file. There is a bug report and it has been
discussed here as well. The bug ”destroyed” a couple of my files, so…

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ

#10

Okay, I accidently happened to enter the same colour twice, but you
know what I mean, don't you…? :stuck_out_tongue:

”[>25][RED]# ##0,00;[<0][BLUE]# ##0,00;[GREEN]# ##0,00”

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ

#11

Hi :slight_smile:
Ouch. I am still on the 3.3.2 quite happily with no problems at all. Is there
some rule about if you do take back-ups you will never need them but the 1 file
you don't back-up is the one that will go horribly wrong at some point? I think
"Murphy's Law" or something? At some point i might try the newer ones but i'm
quite happy waiting for them to appear in the repos/ppa.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#12

Hi :slight_smile:
Ouch.  I am still on the 3.3.2 quite happily with no problems at all.  Is there
some rule about if you do take back-ups you will never need them but the 1 file
you don't back-up is the one that will go horribly wrong at some point?

I don't know, since I take backups every day. However, it's still
possible to destroy files. If you do a lot of work on a file and then,
after saving it and reloading it, you discover that all your automatic
cell character colours are ”gone”, you can choose between reloading
yesterday's backup of that file and do all the changes again OR
reformat all the affected cells. If you are really unlucky you don't
discover the problem until you already backed it up, so the backup is
also affected… (unless you have one backup for each file per day or
something, like MyFile 20110825.ods, MyFile 20110824.ods, MyFile
20110823.ods and so on, but I would need a way bigger drive for
that…).

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ

#13

Found 3.3.3 solved most of my issues that 3.3.2 had.

The rule is if you back up everything, then you will crash when you update the most needed files just before your next schedules back up procedure.

My problem is backing up a 1TB and a 2TB internal drive and a 1TB external drive. The unlimited backup services do not have Linux applications, just Windows and Mac. I run Ubuntu, and its standard backup service would cost too much. Also my upload speed for my Cable modem service would take over a month to upload all my data - about double the max. dial-up upload speed but 10MB+ download speed. So any online backup service is out for my needs.

#14

Found 3.3.3 solved most of my issues that 3.3.2 had.

The rule is if you back up everything, then you will crash when you update
the most needed files just before your next schedules back up procedure.

My problem is backing up a 1TB and a 2TB internal drive and a 1TB external
drive.  The unlimited backup services do not have Linux applications, just
Windows and Mac.  I run Ubuntu, and its standard backup service would cost
too much.  Also my upload speed for my Cable modem service would take over a
month to upload all my data - about double the max. dial-up upload speed but
10MB+ download speed.  So any online backup service is out for my needs.

But you can always backup to external drives, right? You just need to
buy a couple of really big ones…

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ

#15

>
> Found 3.3.3 solved most of my issues that 3.3.2 had.
>
> The rule is if you back up everything, then you will crash when you update
> the most needed files just before your next schedules back up procedure.
>
> My problem is backing up a 1TB and a 2TB internal drive and a 1TB external
> drive. The unlimited backup services do not have Linux applications, just
> Windows and Mac. I run Ubuntu, and its standard backup service would cost
> too much. Also my upload speed for my Cable modem service would take over a
> month to upload all my data - about double the max. dial-up upload speed but
> 10MB+ download speed. So any online backup service is out for my needs.

But you can always backup to external drives, right? You just need to
buy a couple of really big ones…

+1

#16

In news:CADo7T4ehM-8YwizE5SDCP=C=53C22FBksN=F3Rags6Z3n6jcvg@mail.gmail.com,
Johnny Rosenberg <gurus.knugum@gmail.com> typed:

2011/8/25 webmaster for Kracked Press Productions
<webmaster@krackedpress.com>:

Found 3.3.3 solved most of my issues that 3.3.2 had.

The rule is if you back up everything, then you will
crash when you update the most needed files just before
your next schedules back up procedure.

My problem is backing up a 1TB and a 2TB internal drive
and a 1TB external drive. B The unlimited backup
services do not have Linux applications, just Windows
and Mac. B I run Ubuntu, and its standard backup service
would cost too much. B Also my upload speed for my Cable
modem service would take over a month to upload all my
data - about double the max. dial-up upload speed but
10MB+ download speed. B So any online backup service is
out for my needs.

But you can always backup to external drives, right? You
just need to
buy a couple of really big onesb&

Backups are indeed important in that you can re-create your whole computer
drive in a half hour or so depending, instead of two days plus or renstallng
and resetting all the customzations. Wth a good backup, it's a couple
keyclicks & wait a half hour or so per disk.

OR, back up to DVDs every few months or whenever you've make more changes
that you could not re-create manually and they're important to you. Normally
I back up to DVD (DL, actually) every month and if there are new, important
files, back whenever you've created those. Then another person and I trade
backups every couple months just to have something off-site. The DVDs only
come in handy a couple times, but saved a LOT of grief and work. I backup C
by itself, then the data drves by themselves.
   At the same time I do any recovery, I first remove any encryption,
restore, and then re-encrypt and re-export the keys to go with it.

HTH,

Twayne`

#17

Personally I don't use CD/DVD because every time I need them to
recover something, some of the information on them is corrupted
anyway. Maybe it's just me or maybe I don't buy media that is
expensive enough, but that's my experience anyway. But that's me.
Everything is better than not doing any backups at all.

Kind regards

Johnny Rosenberg
ジョニー・ローゼンバーグ

#18

Hi :slight_smile:
Cd & Dvd do seem to suffer unless kept in a very carefully controlled
environment. A couple of years ago someone in DistroWatch was detailing how
their company stored their back-up discs. My neighbour managed to fix one of
his dvds by taking a sanding machine to it! Not something i would recommend but
he was using a very fine grain.

Backing-up seems to be easier in Gnu&Linux. Simple commands such as Rsync or
(GRsync if you want the Gnome gui front-end for it) keep all file permissions
intact and notice which files are newer at which end and can back-up over a
network easily. I'm not sure Rsync would help with encryption. FIle transfers
tend to be faster with Gnu&Linux and can be used to back-up Windows files.

The fastest seems to be to boot into a Gnu&Linux installed on 1 physical
hard-drive and use it to back-up the data from the other drive over the
network. With SSDs it doesn't make much difference but with Sata/Ide-drives it
can help to reduce the amount of movement the read/write heads need. Hence why
it is good to have Swap/Virtual Memory on a different physical drive. In
Gnu&Linux you can have the users data&settings all neatly on one drive while the
Operating System is on another. Dividing things up more than that is just
confusing tho!

Err, are we going off-topic?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: