from Hacker News

Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

by rlvesco7 on 3/26/18, 9:58 PM with 51 comments

• by cetra3 on 3/27/18, 1:14 AM

  Surprised noone has mentioned OnlyOffice here: https://www.onlyoffice.com/.

  We use it via the integration I wrote for Alfresco: https://github.com/cetra3/onlyoffice-alfresco

• by blendergeek on 3/27/18, 1:43 AM

  LibreOffice Online is a viable alternative in my opinion. It integrates with NextCloud and allows you to easily share and collaborate. You can even get a "share link" for your documents like in Google Docs. There are some caveats though. Latency is unacceptable. Google Docs renders documents client side allowing characters that you type to immediately echo to the screen. LibreOffice renders documents server side with a noticeable lag. LibreOffice has the benefit of better interoperability with MS Word than Google Docs has.

  I would also recommend trying OnlyOffice as some have recommended.

• by newsat13 on 3/27/18, 4:16 AM

  You should ask reddit's /r/selfhosted. HN crowd is not much into self-hosting

• by LibraMelody on 3/27/18, 12:07 AM

  Apparently google search is also what's tying you to google. I say that to say google will have measures to stifle competition (no matter what they say otherwise). Also, what's the issue with just running LibreOffice on your computer? They also have portable versions which you can just put on your thumb drive

• by nikosmme on 3/27/18, 8:30 AM

  A full suite of SaaS open source tools there : https://framasoft.org/

• by askvictor on 3/27/18, 1:01 AM

  Other options include Zoho Writer, Apple Pages (has web-based version), MS Word Online. I seem to remember an OSS effort to make one (other than libreoffice online) but can't remember what it was.

• by hpcjoe on 3/27/18, 3:33 AM

  One specifically negative thing about gdocs ... well ... gsheets ... is that if you create a document with many (e.g. > 5 or so) charts on a single page ... it will slow waaaaaaayyyyy down. Multi second latency/response times for things like scrolling, cell interaction, etc. It becomes effectively unusable.

  Gdocs as a whole are ok, though you are giving Google the right to read your docs as I remember (in their terms of service).

• by kqr on 3/27/18, 6:54 AM

  For Google Docs-like tasks I prefer a combination of Org and git.

  Org is a powerful-but-easy-to-learn document structuring language. You ca write it in any editor, but in an Org-aware editor your document really comes alive. The oldest, most feature-complete implementation is in Emacs. Org documents can be exported to virtually any final format.

  I don't specifically recommend git so much as any distributed VCS, to share changes with collaborators in a controlled and structured way. I find it much easier to catch up on other's work when it comes as a self-contained, clearly labeled commit in the correct branch rather than a jumble of tiny edits here and there.

  If you are working with lazy people who don't want to learn stuff, you may want to consider whether you'd be okay with keeping your private data with GitHub instead. If your Org document lives in a repo there, anyone with commit access can edit it in the GitHub web editor, with a formatted preview available.

• by sandGorgon on 3/27/18, 3:31 AM

  Softmaker Office is pretty good. And works on all platforms (including Linux). http://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office

• by pbreit on 3/27/18, 2:49 AM

  No. GDocs is one of the best pieces of software in existence. Each component is very capable on its own. The sharing turbo charges it past all others. You’d have to really be a google hater to choose not to use it.

• by krptos on 3/27/18, 6:59 AM

  Not sure if anybody mentioned Zoho Writer (https://writer.zoho.com)

  I find it has more formatting features than Google Docs. Best of all: no Ads and document reading bullshit.

• by known on 3/27/18, 7:05 AM

  Discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11563009

• by hennsen on 3/27/18, 9:01 AM

  Why does the title not contain a link as normal hn posts?

  The link below is not clickable, must be copied and pasted manually... no fun on mobile...

• by illlogic2 on 3/27/18, 6:49 PM

  Honest question, can you just run simple symmetric encryption on your data before uploading to gapps?

• by captainbland on 3/27/18, 3:13 PM

  There's also NextCloud, although you'll need to pay for it or host it yourself.

• by jdanielricher on 3/28/18, 11:26 AM

  just use graphitedocs.com

• by nkkollaw on 3/27/18, 7:47 AM

  LibreOffice is one of the software I like the least.

  It's super-ugly, doesn't have hidpi support on Linux, it's slow, it has a confusing UI.

  Google Docs is about 100 times better.