LibreOffice is my favorite office suite as a free and powerful alternative to Microsoft Office tools on Linux. Even when I use my Windows machine – I prefer to have LibreOffice installed instead of Microsoft Office tools any day.
Now, with the recent LibreOffice 6.2 update, there’s a lot of good stuff to talk about along with a bad news.
What’s New in LibreOffice 6.2?
Let’s have a quick look at the major new features in the latest release of LibreOffice.
The new NotebookBar
A new addition to the interface that is optional and not enabled by default. In order to enable it, go to View -> User Interface -> Tabbed.
You can either set it as a tabbed layout or a grouped compact layout.
While it is not something that is mind blowing – but it still counts as a significant user interface update considering a variety of user preferences.
Icon Theme
A new set of icons is now available to choose from. I will definitely utilize the new set of icons – they look good!
Platform Compatibility
With the new update, the compatibility has been improved across all the platforms (Mac, Windows, and Linux).
Performance Improvements
This shouldn’t concern you if you didn’t have any issues. But, still, the better they work on this – it is a win-win for all.
They have removed unnecessary animations, worked on latency reduction, avoided repeated re-layout, and more such things to improve the performance.
More fixes and improvements
A lot of bugs have been fixed in this new update along with little tweaks here and there for all the tools (Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress).
To get to know all the technical details, you should check out their release notes.
The Sad News: Dropping the support for 32-bit
Of course, this is not a feature. But, this was bound to happen – because it was anticipated a few months ago. LibreOffice will no more provide 32-bit binary releases.
This is inevitable. Ubuntu has dropped 32-bit support. Many other Linux distributions have also stopped supporting 32-bit processors. The number of Linux distributions still supporting a 32-bit architecture is fast dwindling.
Installing LibreOffice 6.2
Your Linux distribution should be providing this update sooner or later.
Arch-based Linux users should be getting it already while Ubuntu and Debian users would have to wait a bit longer.
If you cannot wait, you can either download the deb file or use this official PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libreoffice
Wrapping Up
LibreOffice 6.2 is definitely a major step up to keep it as a better alternative to Microsoft Office for Linux users.
Do you happen to use LibreOffice? Do these updates matter to you? Let us know in the comments below.
