Is libreoffice online a viable alternative to gdocs?

[rlvesco7]

https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/

The only thing keeping me with google is gdocs. But I'd rather not keep my private data with them. Libre office online does not appear in google search an an alternative and hn has mostly ignored it. Is it not ready for prime time?

[cetra3]

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

[akkat]

FYI they do not support RTL languages yet https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/19

[rlvesco7]

Never heard of OnlyOffice! They had a good comparison between them and libreoffice/collabora: https://medium.com/onlyoffice/onlyoffice-vs-collabora-a-crit...

[JackPoach]

OnlyOffice is pretty good.

[blendergeek]

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.

[elmigranto]

"Viable alternative" with its "unacceptable latency" amounts to being just a viewer, which are dime a dozen, including most phones doing that out of the box, countless JS libraries and browser extensions, and every storage service like Dropbox having, if not basic editor, then at least very competent viewer.

I guess it's a start…

[newsat13]

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

[acct1771]

Heh, isn't this where Sandstorm was introduced...?

[LibraMelody]

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

[ams6110]

> what's the issue with just running LibreOffice on your computer

The key advantage to Google Docs, an otherwise ordinary if not fairly lightweight word processer, is the ease of sharing (even if only with yourself on multiple devices) and collaborating with others.

I've never heard of LibreOffice online, but depending how well it does those things, it might or might not be viable.

As a word processor alone, Google Docs is nothing special and LibreOffice probably has more features.

[askvictor]

When I search Google for "collaborative online word processor" Google Docs doesn't appear on the first page; it's mostly sites with comparisons of available systems, along with Zoho, Etherpad and Office.

[nikosmme]

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

[askvictor]

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.

[hpcjoe]

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).

[walrus01]

Gsheets is utterly useless for importing and browsing a several MB size CSV file. Where the same file imported into native x64 libreoffice is totally smooth.

[muzani]

Gdocs also slows down massively when opening something past a dozen MB.

[kqr]

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.

[joelchrist]

This is assuming that the people you're collaborating with know how to use git ... That's a big assumption to make

[zakk]

Your comment implies that there are other editors, besides Emacs, supporting Org mode...

Could you please elaborate on this?

[midgetjones]

(I'm not looking, but) I would work for you in a flash if that's how you do things. I'm the only Org user in my team, and I wish they'd see the light!

[sandGorgon]

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

[pbreit]

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.

[saagarjha]

What? The only thing I like about Google Docs is the sharing part. The rest of it is a slow, bloated web app that is limited in the number of features it has.

[miaklesp]

The best pieces of software is Office 365. GDocs just free but vendor-locked.

[philliphaydon]

Maybe if you’re a chrome user. But using Firefox I hate Google docs.

[zeth___]

Or just need a good spread sheet program.

[krptos]

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.

[known]

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

[davidgerard]

It's had considerable development in the past two years.

[hennsen]

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...

[tinus_hn]

This is intentional:

How do I make a link in a question?

You can't. This is to prevent people from submitting a link with their comments in a privileged position at the top of the page. If you want to submit a link with comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment.

[illlogic2]

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

[juliangoldsmith]

OP's use case for Google Docs seems to be editing. Encrypting your document would mean that you wouldn't be able to edit it using Google Docs.

[captainbland]

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

[jdanielricher]

just use graphitedocs.com

[nkkollaw]

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.