The tenth major release of LibreOffice is now available for download. Open source office suite LibreOffice 5.0 has been released, with a cleaner and "significantly improved user interface," better interoperability with the likes of Microsoft Office and Apple iWork, and improvements to every module of the suite.
The Document Foundation (TDF) says that LibreOffice 5.0 is set to build on the success of the 4.X version of the suite which was installed by over 80 million users. From this new version of the suite TDF says that it will build new mobile clients for Android and Ubuntu Touch, as well as an upcoming cloud version.
Considering first, the new UI, the suite includes new interface icons and improvements to the menus and sidebar. Thanks to the new interface users will be able to save time by previewing style changes before applying them. Screen space is managed more efficiently by the new UI giving your work more room to breathe.
As mentioned in the intro, the fidelity of interoperability offered by the open source office suite has been improved. TDF notes that both the most common Microsoft Office and Apple iWork documents are better handled and there are new and improved filters to handle non-standard formats. Users can now timestamp PDF documents they create.
The spreadsheets module 'Calc' deserves special mention, thanks to the upgrades present in LibreOffice 5.0. Calc fans should be happy with new functions, complex formulae, image cropping, more powerful conditional formatting, table addressing "and much more". TDF boasts that the Calc spreadsheet is an enterprise-ready, heavy duty application.
Rounding things off nicely LibreOffice 5.0 is also said to have benefitted from the long term efforts of the developers towards enhanced stability. Further such optimisations are promised throughout the lifetime of the 5.X versions of the suite.
The new office suite is available now, for free, but TDF would like you to donate to support the community, if you like the software.
