alt Hacker NewsLibreOffice breaks download records after declaring it has no AI features
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I found this graph of LibreOffice downloads https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads
Switching to the monthly view, the downloads are actually mostly flat going back to 2019
I can believe that the downloads record has been broken in the same way that the stock market hits record highs all the time because the long term trend is upward.
I don’t see anything to suggest that LibreOffice is seeing a sudden surge in popularity or that lack of AI features is driving a surge of downloads.
Companies are totally blind to the fact that A.I. is a complete turn-off to many customers. Not having / using A.I. may even become a unique selling point in the future.
This is awesome! I have used LibreOffice (and Open Office) extensively for decades now. It is my real office suite I use for real work and real business accounting tasks. Yes, I am very well aware that Calc is different than Excel but it can get nearly all the same tasks done as long as you are not tied deep into a corporate environment passing Excel-specific files around. I have also made great business uses of it in Docker too, generating perfect PDFS from templates, and normalizing document formats for analysis. I donate a modest $19/month personally to the foundation, much rather pay them than Microsoft!
Could also be due to the fact that every codex install includes a copy of libreoffice
Kind of telling that "We don't have AI" is now a feature. Maybe people just want software that works.
Kind of telling that "We don't have AI" is now a feature. Maybe people just want software that works.
Let's use AI to test the validity of an AI generated clickbait article.
Fable 5.1 was presented with the following prompt to do research.
> https://manualdousuario.net/en/libreoffice-download-record-n... states an interesting causality. Generate an artifact that tests this claim. Is it causal or coincidental. ie if libreoffice downloads have been increasing every release then it's possible to claim any recent feature change is responsible for the download. You need to get access to the download stats and then see what other major features could be responsible
https://funny-taffy-f8d6c0.netlify.app/
Conclusion is that the claim is speculative.
(This post was meat written. The report is AI generated content. )
I don't buy the AI argument. I'd bet on Linux replacing Windows for a good chunk of desktop users. For example, I installed LibreOffice on my parents' PC last month, because I replaced their Windows with Linux Mint.
It's also used as a headless office document editor by openai models so... does that impact their metrics?
I wonder how much of this is also driven by Microsofts current downward trajectory, I and others have switched to linux this year.
Not a fan of pushing LLMs into everything, but this is one of those things where it would be great to have a powerful(or specialized) local llm to help you
Write a formula, make a macros, filter stuff, formatting. I'd rather not to Google it. Especially considering SEO made it impossible to find information how to do stuff in editor X of version Y, at best you'd get thrown with crap for other version and have to figure out how to adapt it for your version
I don't see not having AI as a feature, but I'd prefer for them to take the approach of optional, easy to implement interfaces that increase the ability for the suite to be 'scripted' rather than implement AI directly. My motivation is that the field of AI is moving so fast I think its a better long term plan to make your software something that can be automated with AI than to try to fight the speed of that innovation curve. I get that even that can be difficult because of security concerns, but it seems more straightforward than implementing models directly into your application.
What is the role of tools like libreoffice in the age of ai ? Is it only viewer ?
I was fighting alignment on the doc created manually, after 3 mins struggle I typed in Gemini tab of Google Docs , and it did everything perfectly.
Same with presentations , tools like bento.page generates you perfect html .
I really do not want to go and edit things manually anymore
Can you control it agentically? If so it’s has all the ai features I would want. I typically don’t care for built in ai features.
I do love LibreOffice, but who thought this colouring is a good idea? https://i.imgur.com/cUzW97S.png
If anyone else wants to be rid of it (courtesy of astra): Set NotebookbarColorTransparency to 255. This removes the colored tint while keeping the ribbon.
Go to Extras → Optionen → LibreOffice → Erweitert → Experteneinstellungen. Search for NotebookbarColorTransparency. Double-click the matching row under org.openoffice.Office.Common → Misc. Change 150 to 255. Confirm with OK, close the settings, and restart LibreOffice.
Been using libreoffice for years.
Here's hoping increased usage will lead to improvements in the "table" functionality. Like when you can define a table, and hit tab at the last column will put you at the next row first column. Missed that from MS office.
today I broke my personal age record – it was a tough ride, but with grit and determination, I think maybe, just maybe, I can do it again tomorrow.
Oh, and I also have no AI features.
I've been using Libreoffice to store my diary for years -- IIRC they use blowfish on the crypto side of things? I had a weird issue a while back where I'm not sure if I forgot my diary's password, or the file got corrupted.
I've had that happen a few times, each with a long space in between I keep things on paper.
It's a great project that doesn't get enough love.
Both Codex and Claude (on the web) use LibreOffice to edit docs, so not sure you can really conclude it broke download records because end users didn't want AI in Office and went with LibreOffice instead
Hand rolled code is worth more.
Maybe it's just a secret cabal of rogue agents downloading LibreOffice for no particualr reason whatsoever? I mean there is a precedent already: those fellas hijacked some poor wiki.
The only thing I'd need and want from my office suite for AI are for it to stay in sync with a disk file.
Then I can do stuff to the XLSX with Claude, and work on the spreadsheet in my spreadsheet editor.
What I DONT want is for my office suite to have any limiting AI features built in.
But they support AI features, like LanguageTool. I always bought Softmaker but since they don't offer this feature in their One-time purchase version, I have started using LibreOffice only.
No AI features is the first feature in years that shipped on time and worked on the first try.
Suggested titles (same logic):
LibreOffice breaks download records after GPT-6 Astra is available to the public.
LibreOffice breaks download records after DaVinci Resolve 21.1 is released.
I broke a weight record after decimating a Mars bar. Weight's been about the same for a year.
UNO is for programmatic access. StarOffice ftw.
Why is this website asking me to enable notifications?!?
Hate to say it but it is because of AI, not in spite of it. Codex recently started including the entire libreoffice package for MS office compatibility. https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/
Isn’t OpenOffice called by llms to do tasks?
Clickbait title…
Basic tools don't need AI features, but facilitating AI access from external agents is extremely useful. We used to call these things APIs.
I came here to say that this is extraordinarily uninteresting. But some useful thought came out of it: all "AI" features are moving into the generalized agent harness anyways, and good software often maintains a focus. Take Windows, for example. It has a rather broad job being an OS, but as a product it's a good example of loosening focus. it's losing consistency in its opinions about where updates should happen, how settings should apply, which menus are in charge, and even what the design philosophy is. And that bleeds out into the user surface too. Windows 11 is a scattered mess that's increasingly just a surface for finding new ways to pull your attention into ads.
Maybe software just needs to remain straightforward and focused, and we let the ChatGPT and Claude apps handle the AI part of things.
Do nothing and win
This is the way!
false claim of causality (post hoc, ergo propter hoc).
The last time I tried to use LibreOffice, I made three hours worth of comments on a Word document.
As soon as I saved the document, they all vanished.
Then the developers mocked me for complaining.
Now I just use real MS Office in a snapshotted virtual machine, because it works every time and loads just as fast.
LibreOffice is downloaded by several LLM harnesses like codex so...
Are you sure it wasn't Microsoft doing a rug-pull October 13 on offline Office 2021 pro lifetime license installations for MacOS.
A lot of people are not happy about that stunt. =3
Another reason why it might be hitting records is many companies getting rid of Microsoft 365 downloads for desktop and only allowing use of the web version. And apparently it's the first thing that comes up when you try to download Microsoft 365? People don't try to pirate it anymore, they just download LibreOffice
Offtopic blogging tip: Americans will read dates like "8/9/2026" as "August 9, 2026." I'm pretty sure the author is using the (more sensible) convention of day/month/year but expressing dates as e.g. "08-Sep-2026" removes the ambiguity.
this is temporary marketing towards a direction that they may change their mind on in the future, which would likely anger people who downloaded it because of this preference
not a call I'd make early on, a preference to disable AI features like Firefox added is maybe a more reasonable call
all we know today is that AI is being used in annoying ways, this won't be forever
Strange, when office suites are the one software category most people are anticipating better AI integration for unlike everything else.
Nobody wants AI in browsers, but an AI that can make me the Powerpoint I want without me having to drag cumbersome items by hand? Yes please.
Hopefully LibreOffice is one of the projects that gets free Pro Max accounts from A and O.
Corporations have been trying Star/Open/LibreOffice migrations for literally 30 years at this point. And, at the pace it’s been going, it will probably take another 30 for it to reach Word 95 polish.
enough with this anti ai noise resistance is futile it's getting popular due to improved ui
Very annoying that AI is this new virtue signaling topic. I guess it's a step up from a few years ago when it was about naming branches, but it's annoying.
Libreoffice is free software that's the big point of it. You can mod it and stip what's you dislike. I'd be glad if people developed AI integration with it. One could do that with AI itself. I've successfully modded free software with AI in many ways, adding features to Blender, for example.
This binary pro of pro and anti AI buzz is just annoying. Privacy is important. But AI is treated by some people as if it was some nuclear waste. In fact it's very similar to the anti nuclear green movement. It's an emotional aesthetic response.
The number of weekly downloads has simply been increasing over time, due to growing popularity. Calling each new high "record-breaking" is a bit meaningless.
Unix timestamp counter breaks record after writing this comment.