In an environment in which software subscriptions are practically everywhere, PC users begin to show their fed up more and more clear about having to pay a monthly fee to use most of them. This has led a Increased interest in alternative office suites offered by the main technological ones. In particular, according to Computerworld, for LibreOfficethat besides being free, is Open Source.
This interest has led to the downloads of this office suite being shot in recent weeks, until they reach practically million per week. It is its highest number of downloads since 2023, and have increased mainly since the suite, which has versions for Windows, Linux and Macos, presented its versions 25.2 and 25.2.1 a few days ago. So much, that it is already the most popular Open Source suite ahead of OpenOffice, whose latest version appeared in 2023.
Mike Saunders, Ombudsman for free and attached to the Board of Directors of the Document Foundationthe entity in charge of the administration of LibreOffice, has commented that they estimate that they have around 200 million users, in addition to highlighting that «It is important to remember that we respect the privacy of users, and that we do not track them«. This makes them also complicated to estimate with certainty how many users have LibreOffice.
According to Saunders, the discharges of the suite have been growing with each new version, and although it has always been my attractive for end users, there is more and more interest in Libreoffice in the world of the company and also enter governments and authorities. In fact, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, located in northern Germany, confirmed last year that 30,000 of its Microsoft Office computers will spend Libreoffice.
Saunders also stressed that most suite users, 85% percent, use the Windows operating system, followed by a lot of distance by those of Macos and Linux. Many desktop Linux distributions have pre -installed LibreOffice, but it is not clear how many users they have. At the moment, although there are online versions of OpenOffice, the LibreOffice are still focused on the development of the desktop suite.
On the other hand, he emphasizes that LibreOffice users want a clear interface, «They do not want subscriptions and do not want AI to help them getting their noses in their work. In fact, he reminds the clippy of past times«. In addition, he has assured that they have «zero plans to integrate the AI in LibreOffice«. However, they recognize that some AI tools have value and encourage developers who want to create extensions that use ia responsible.
