As a user, I’m very unhappy with libreoffice, not only its UI is very ancient, but also it has compatibility issues and does not always work as expected with complex formatting in large word documents or powerpoint presentations. I even had to use WPS office to avoid formatting damage in sophisticated ppts.
When Colabora came out this year, I gave it a try and it seems a much better office suite. Seems to have the same engine under the hood, but works better and has more modern UI. I just uninstalled the remains of the libreoffice prepackaged in Fedora 44 KDE, and thought that Colabora has a fit with Fedora as it’s free? It is also much easier to use for those migrating from Windows.
Could you please consider retiring libreoffice and adopting Colabora as the prepackaged office suite for the better Fedora user experience? Of course it can be installed in minutes, but it just seems to be better as the default one already preinstalled. Hopefully worth having a look at.
I guess this and features under paywall that on li re has free so why libre does the job and if dont like they can choose what they use that is the power of
Also github has some and source code is on gerrit, but cant see full sourcw code only commits and changes
there are multiple reasons why libreoffice is here
there are many other alternatives, but there are limitations like if the code is open source, if the tool has a price or needs a subscription, stuff like that
libreoffice interface needs some retouches in its interface for sure, but is made to look like this because the old microsoft office from the 2000 was very similar to this, and it was praised for being like this by power users, instead of the ribbon interface that replaced it that most people dont like now
the odf format that libreoffice uses is also the most popular format outside the format from microsoft and google documents
the compatibility is not guaranteed, because the format used by microsoft was never meant to be compatible with anything and any compatibility on libreoffice was developed by the team, with all the restricitions that the format has
i do like libreoffice, but i sometimes use wps office, always end with libreoffice again
from that picture you share there, it looks like a ribbon clone office suite, it seems to be popular these days, it is not for me, but if you can propose as a replacement, it might get accepted, sure
ODF format is an ISO standard and as such is important for long term document access.
The UK government mandates that any bidder for government contracts support this format.
Microsoft famously attempted to make the .docx a international standard, but acted in bad faith so it is not accepted.
I tend to question the longevity of FLOSS software that also have a paid component[1] (in this case the Online offering). It would also need to be verified how well it complies with Fedora’s expectations for default apps.
Supposing all the boxes are ticked, and the proposal gets considered for Fedora KDE edition, I still don’t see it as default on Workstation, since it’s built as a Qt app IIUC.
Collabora only ships as flatpak, not rpm. This may be an issue, but a Fedora rpm build would be required in any case for it to be the default.
Also note that, Collabora are the single larger contributor to LibreOffice code, and they have been for many years.
However, in the last year there has been conflict between the Document Foundation and Collabora, with the latter deciding to evict all Collabora enployees from board and development positions. The rationale was a non competition clause just added to the DF board statute.
I find this petty, as if the Linux foundation evicted all Red Hat employees, but there may be reasons I’m not aware of.
That said, in practice, I like the Collabora interface and find It snappier than LibreOffice, but it is missing some features. In particular it is missing java which causes most extensions to not work.
thank you for the link!
I was going to fill it but not sure about rpm/flatpak:
I’m using flatpak version of Collabora and it works fine. I try to use flatpak versions of the apps for better isolation and easier upgrades/removal but its a personal preference. I have double-checked and its appears that flatpak apps can be integrated into an Iso distro, so flatpak distribution itself shouldn’t be a problem. Should I suggest this option?
I don’t think any non-atomic Fedora output does this at present.
I don’t think Fedora’s policies would allow a Flatpak from Flathub (or anything built outside Fedora infrastructure) to be preinstalled. Even allowing Flathub to be enabled out of the box (with nothing preinstalled from it) was controversial.
Flatpaks can be built on Fedora infrastructure, but then I’m not sure that would gain you much over just building an RPM on Fedora infra.
Considering most recent comments, looks like it should be RPM then?
or it does nor really matter?
if it will be taken into consideration then the final format will be sorted out later?
Just my judgement, but I think getting this built as an RPM would make sense before raising a change proposal.
The CP would look more compelling if you’re able to demonstrate that the app can be built on Fedora, it works well, updates are released appropriately, etc.
If you raised a CP right now, you’d be starting from something that doesn’t even exist in the repos, and asking for it to be made default.
Before being considered as a default app (i.e. shipped with the desktop ISOs), it should be considered to be packaged/built on Fedora. And that’s missing.
I wanted to point out that libreoffice is quite obsolete and does not match the general avant guarde feel of Fedora that usually has the most modern and advanced tools, and to start a discussion / a review process on whether it can be replaced with a better option (Collabora) that exists already.
But it’s a one-time proposal and I’m not sure I will be able to participate in packaging processes and respective details.
What is the best way to do it? The proposal I certainly can submit.
First of all, you should sign up the “Fedora Project Contributor Agreement” and if possible see, to get into a group, which members can and would support you for what you like to do.
Second figure out how to bring a copr repo out, with that what you like to have in the official Fedora Repository and with the necessary obligations a official package needs.
Just then you will be able to make a change proposal and being responsible as a maintainer for it.
I think Collabora is not in the Fedora repo yet because it is a downstream project of LibreOffice?! And nobody went seriously after it that the community gets a free/opensource version of it. Collabora looks better, because they made a third party project out of it, I guess.
The change proposal is just a small piece of the whole work.
Outdated interface, very inconvenient to use.
Handles large files with complicated formatting poorly.
Sometimes damages formatting.
General look and feel is dull. I appreciate its existence, but it is lagging behind way too much.
I got the point regarding odf, though haven’t seen a single file in this format (it my region) yet and I’m a savvy information worker. Anyway Collabora does seem to support it.
As someone who migrated from Windows/Office2010 to Linux 3 years ago, I found Collabora to match minimal expectations to a modern office suite in 2026, while libreoffice does not. And there’s no hope libreoffice UI will ever improve. I’m sharing personal observations of course.
