14 DAY TRIAL // The first Beta build of the upcoming LibreOffice 5.1 open-source and cross-platform office suite was silently released at the end of November 2015 for all supported operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.
LibreOffice 5.1.0 Beta 1 is a massive bugfix release when compared to the first Alpha build, and the LibreOffice hackers and developers have managed to squash nearly 400 bugs during the first bug hunting session for LibreOffice 5.1.
As you can see from the internal changelog attached at the end of the article for reference, the first Beta release of LibreOffice 5.1 fixes 392 issues that have been either reported by users or discovered by the LibreOffice developers.
LibreOffice 5.1 Release Candidate to arrive near Christmas
The development cycle of LibreOffice 5.1 will continue with the first Release Candidate (RC) build, which should arrive near Christmas 2015. Also, the Document Foundation will organize a second bug hunting session in the first week of December.
While the final release of LibreOffice 5.1 is planned for February 7, 2016, two more Release Candidate (RC) builds will be published for the open-source office suite, on January 17 and January 31, respectively.
The 5.1 branch of LibreOffice will have six maintenance releases until it reaches end of life on November 27, 2016. But until then, you can download LibreOffice 5.1.0 Beta for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems right now from Softpedia.
The Document Foundation encourages all users who are able to test the Beta build of LibreOffice 5.1 to contribute to the development of the software by hunting and reporting bugs.
However, please try to keep in mind that a Beta version of a piece of software is not stable and contains incomplete features. Therefore, we don't recommend installing LibreOffice 5.1 Beta on a production machine.