14 DAY TRIAL // Today, October 27, 2016, we've been informed by The Document Foundation about the general availability of the sixth maintenance update to the LibreOffice 5.1 open-source and cross-platform office suite.
You're reading that right, LibreOffice 5.1 got a new update, not the current stable LibreOffice 5.2 branch, as The Document Foundation is known to maintain at least two versions of its popular office suite, one that is very well tested and can be used for enterprise deployments and another one that offers the latest technologies.
That's why we're seeing the LibreOffice 5.1.6 update today, which comes with a total of 68 bug fixes across all of the office suite's components, including Writer, Impress, Draw, Math, Calc, and Base. LibreOffice 5.1.6 was in development for the past few months, during which it received a total of two Release Candidate milestones (RC1 changelog, RC2 changelog).
"For enterprise deployments, The Document Foundation suggests the backing of professional support by certified developers, migrators and trainers (the full list is available at: http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/)," said Italo Vignoli, Co Founder, Marketing & PR, The Document Foundation.
Therefore, if you are running the LibreOffice 5.1 office suite on your enterprise deployments or even in your home office, we recommend that you update your installation to today's LibreOffice 5.1.6 point release by downloading the binaries for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems via our website.
LibreOffice 5.3 coming February 2017 with more exciting new features
In related news, The Document Foundation is currently working hard on implementing more exciting new features to the open source and free office suite loved by the entire GNU/Linux community, which will be shown to the world next year in February when the LibreOffice 5.3 major version will launch.
For now, you can become an early adopter or public beta tester to report bugs and help the LibreOffice developers polish the final release of the software by downloading and installing the first pre-release builds of the LibreOffice 5.3 office suite on your personal computer. We'll have a list with some of the coolest new LibreOffice 5.3 features soon!