OpenOffice v LibreOffice? MS Office alternatives

Rather than shell out to upgrade the pensionable MS Office suite on my Mac, I have OpenOffice 3.2. On this forum I've just come across mention of LibreOffice. Anyone have any comments/preferences on either? I find OpenOffice is generally OK but does have a few issues, eg it takes an AGE to open and does tend to lose some formatting when opening a Word file - eg, loses paragraph spaces. Also - I haven't tested this yet - do both these MS Office alternatives allow Windows MS Office users to open files without neeeding to have the programmes installed?

I've only used OO, but why don't you just download and try out LibreOffice and NeoOffice? Both free and similar. Take them for a test drive.

LibreOffice is, as of right now, essentially the same as OpenOffice. LO is based off of OO just as NO is but it's still early in development so it's very similar to OO.

Oracle recently announced that they're ceasing commercial development of OO (source) which may or may not be a good thing. I do know that LibreOffice has managed to garner the support of some big companies including Canonical, Google, Novell and Red Hat so there seems to be a brighter future with LO.

Thankyou MymacRox and vansmith. I shall bear in mind what vansmith says about Oracle recently announcing they are ceasing commercial development of OpenOffice. Presume that means it will be superceded by other similar programmes and then fade quietly away? I'll have a look at LibreOffice in the meantime. One of my main concerns is that it must be a programme that PC users I occasionally work with - who use MS Office - can also open/send files that will be compatible if I'm using something like OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

It is being superseded.

The next upgrade to Ubuntu Linux, out tomorrow, is for example, bundling Libre office instead of Open Office

It can read and write Word docs but won't do so by default so when you save. Follow the instructions here - you'll probably need to replace "Tools > Options" with "LibreOffice > Preferences" (I don't have it installed right now but I'm guessing, like all other Mac apps, this is how you'll get to the preferences).

It may not be perfect with Word formats - this is something you'll want to test beforehand (as you've already found out).

Thanks vansmith! The instructions link looks very useful. I'll download LibreOffice and see how it goes. Louishen's comment also indicates that OpenOffice is being quietly retired, so maybe LibreOffice is the way to go...

It's not so much retired - Oracle has just decided to stop providing support for it and turn over development to the community. It will still likely go on but it sure looks as if LibreOffice is going to supplant it as the premiere open source office suite.

I hadn't heard about LibreOffice until earlier this evening. Was complaining about download speeds for OpenOffice and my brother told me I should check out LibreOffice. It looks pretty good, and since it's more actively developed currently, I'm going with LibreOffice.