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
This is a good reminder to finally dl it and bite the learning curve.
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.