14 DAY TRIAL // A few minutes ago, the Document Foundation company launched the final and the first stable release of the LibreOffice open source office suite for Linux, Windows and Macintosh platforms.
LibreOffice 3.3.0 is finally here (see download links at the end of the article), available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, and ready to knockdown Oracle's OpenOffice.org office suite.
"The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project." - was stated in today's press release.
LibreOffice 3.3.0 comes with lots of original and new features, such as:
· ability to work with and import SVG files; · import filter for Lotus Word Pro documents; · import filter for Microsoft Works documents; · easily format title pages and numbering in LibreOffice Writer; · enhanced Navigator Tool in LibreOffice Writer; · better ergonomics for cell and sheet management in LibreOffice Calc; · PDF import support; · slide-show presenter console; · better report builder; · comes bundled with lots of great extensions.
"We are excited: this is our very first stable release, and therefore we are eager to get user feedback, which will be integrated as soon as possible into the code, with the first enhancements being released in February. Starting from March, we will be moving to a real time-based, predictable, transparent and public release schedule, in accordance with Engineering Steering Committee's goals and users' requests." - said Caolán McNamara from RedHat.
In the new LibreOffice 3.3.0 you will also find the great features of the recently released OpenOffice.org software. Among these, we can mention:
· custom properties handling; · embedding of standard PDF documents and PDF fonts; · Liberation Narrow font; · better protection of documents for Calc and Writer; · auto decimal digits for "General" format in Calc; · support for 1 million rows in a spreadsheet; · new features in the CSV import function of Calc; · ability to insert drawing objects in Charts; · hierarchical axis labels for Charts; · better handling of slide layout in Impress; · easy to use print interface; · colored sheet tabs in Calc.
As we speak, OpenOffice.org is being replaced by the new LibreOffice suite in many Linux distributions, including Knoppix, Pardus and Ubuntu. LibreOffice 3.3.0 will also be the default office suite for the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) operating system.
Download LibreOffice 3.3.0 sources and Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat, Fedora, OpenSuSE, Mandriva binary packages right now from Softpedia.