Open the office
I’ve been reading Linux Format for a long time. I had the most fun around issue 170 with Ubuntu 12.5, Scientific Linux 7.5 and – my favourite – the awesome blue version of Linux Mint 13. In those days slotting a disc into an IBM laptop was easy and so was making a USB copy (it’s still pretty simple, isn’t
it? – Ed). As there are still 32-bit netbooks about, can you provide an article on which type of Linux is best to keep them going?
At present I am in recovery mode after so slight a mention being given to my favourite office suite in LXF244 – followed by your reply to Malcolm Lang in LXF247, when you could at least have said that
Apache Openoffice is now version 4.1.6.
If we are trying to decide which office suite is best, can you please do another Roundup filling in the details of the missing programs in a future issue? Edingeek
Neil says We’re not going to recommend Openoffice, despite the heroic efforts of the Apache Foundation. The last release of Openoffice was 4.1.6, over eight months ago. The previous version was 12 months before that, and it’s only been receiving maintenance releases for even longer. You have to go back six years to July 2013 for the original 4.0 release. This is all on the back of Oracle buying Sun and thus ownership of the Openoffice source code, which initiated the Libreoffice fork in 2011. Since then Linux Format has recommended that over
Openoffice, as it started off functionally identical but better maintained, and now it’s in a different league at version 10.
As for your other topics, we do have a lightweight 32-bit feature coming up.