LibreOffice 4.2 released

The Document Foundation has now come out with the latest version of LibreOffice, the popular open source office suite. LibreOffice 4.2 comes with a set of new and improved features for power and enterprise users. It will be shipped as part of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS later this year.

"LibreOffice 4.2 features a large number of performance and interoperability improvements targeted at users of all kinds, but particularly appealing for power and enterprise users," the developers claim. The update has gone through what is supposedly the ‘largest' code refactoring ever, claims the Foundation. This gives it a major performance boost for big data. An optional new formula interpreter enables massively parallel calculation of formula cells using the GPU via OpenCL that works best with a Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA). The update includes improved integration with Windows.

LibreOffice 4.2 offers round-trip interoperability with Microsoft OOXML (particularly for DOCX and legacy RTF). It comes with a simplified custom install dialogue box to avoid potential mistakes. Users can now centrally manage and lock-down the configuration with Group Policy Objects via Active Directory. It also comes with a new Start screen, and a much cleaner layout.