One of the comments on the announcement of LibreOffice 26.8 was a simple question: “So, no AI is now a feature?” LibreOffice does not reject artificial intelligence out of hand, but an office suite used by tens of millions of people – in schools, hospitals, public bodies, law firms and thousands of other organisations – will not add a feature to its default configuration until that feature can be delivered under the conditions defined by the project in accordance with its principles. User-controlled execution. The user must be able to choose where inference takes place: on the local computer, on an infrastructure directly controlled by the user, or on a service chosen independently by the user. A default setting that silently redirects to a single provider is not a choice. No content may leave the computer without authorisation. The content of documents is a user’s asset and, in many implementations, is also legally protected material: medical records, case files, tender documents and student data. Transmission must be the result of a user’s decision and not behaviour carried out in the background by the application. No telemetry of any kind. LibreOffice does not collect usage data, and this must also apply
If you’re familiar with pre-Office365 software then it’ll feel a little intuitive already.
That makes me feel better… I disliked office 365. How does it compare with keyboard shortcuts? I barely use the mouse these days.
As a side note, damn we are an old bunch here.
I wasn’t much of a power user to begin with but the Calc and Impress programs felt almost the same with some minor UI changes that take some getting used to like having to open a pop up settings menu rather than check the tools ribbon.
Oh man. I’ve never considered myself a power user. Mice are uncomfortable for me, trackpads are much better but I learned excel before I got a laptop.