New version of the productivity suite is up for grabs

Mar 1, 2018 13:21 GMT  ·  By

LibreOffice continues to be the top alternative to Microsoft Office, and one of the reasons for this is the fast update pace that the developing team has embraced for the productivity suite.

Version 6.0.2 is the second minor release for LibreOffice 6 released in approximately one month, which again highlights the commitment of The Document Foundation to improve the suite. The team says there are no less than 50 bug and regression fixes in this new version, and needless to say, the faster you update, the better.

For the average Joe, the changelog doesn’t include anything too substantial, though it’s worth mentioning that interoperability has been one of the parts where TDF has focused lately.

The new version thus introduces improvements for several filters and importing and exporting features for document formats that are typically used by Microsoft and Apple document editing solutions, such as Visio, Publisher, Apple Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. So if you’re working with documents originally created in any of these programs, LibreOffice should be able to handle them correctly.

No new features, just under-the-hood improvements

In addition to all these improvements, there are also general bug fixes and refinements that should make the software run smoother on supported desktop platforms, though once again, regular users are unlikely to notice any major change. The focus has been on improving the under-the-hood code and not on shipping new features.

As far as new features are concerned, the recent release of LibreOffice 6 was an important milestone in the development of the productivity suite, and customers still running version 5 are recommended to update as soon as possible. The new version comes with an overhauled UI, new features, and better support for Microsoft Office documents, so the transition is totally worth it.

You can download LibreOffice for Windows, Linux, and Mac from Softpedia right now to get all the aforementioned changes on your system. The full changelog (which includes rather technical details) is available on TDF’s Wiki page here.