August 1, 2011
LibreOffice 3.4.2 for enterprise users
Thanks to the work of 300 contributors, the new LibreOffice comes with substantial improvements
The Internet, August 1, 2011 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 3.4.2, the third version of the 3.4 family, targeting both private individuals and enterprises. LibreOffice 3.4.2 fixes the majority of the most-important bugs identified by users in the previous version, and can be deployed for production needs by most enterprises.
The Document Foundation encourages large organizations deploying LibreOffice to do so in conjunction with a support partner, who can carefully assess specific requirements, help manage migration and provide bespoke fixes for identified issues. Purchasing LibreOffice support from a TDF partner also provides enterprises with an indirect means to contribute financially to the project, thereby funding its development, improving its stability, and accelerating its growth. Users should always refer to the release notes before deploying the new version.
LibreOffice 3.4.2 is the result of the combined activity of 300 contributors having made more than 23,000 commits, with the addition, deletion or modification of around five million lines of code. The developer community is well balanced between company-sponsored contributors and independent community volunteers: Oracle and SUSE have each provided around 25% of the commits, with a further 25% coming from community volunteers new to the project since our inception, and with a further 20% from RedHat. The remaining commits came from a combination of pre-TDF contributors, Canonical developers, and organizations like Bobiciel, CodeThink, Lanedo, SIL, and Tata Consultancy Services.
If we look at the same data for individual developers, the top 12 by number of commits since the inception of LibreOffice is composed of a mixture of corporate-sponsored contributors (from 4 companies: Canonical, Oracle, RedHat and SUSE) and a number of private individual contributors, indicating a balanced situation and a healthy community.
“TDF was born with the aim of evolving the OpenOffice.org code to develop a cleaner and leaner free office suite and, after ten months, we are right on track to achieve this objective,” says Bjoern Michaelsen, one of the four Canonical contributors, and a key member of the Engineering Steering Committee. “Of course, with such a large code renovation effort, we are aware of the short-term risk of reduced stability, but this is counterbalanced by the long-term improvement in features, speed and – again – stability.”
Other news is that the number of TDF official contributors and LibreOffice users is increasing. Youbing Jin, President of RedFlag2000 Software Company, says, “We are delighted to see that TDF is getting ever stronger, and we are proud to be part of it.”
The community around The Document Foundation and LibreOffice will gather in Paris for the first LibreOffice Conference, from October 13 to October 15, 2011 (conference.libreoffice.org/). The call for papers is open until August 8, while registration will close at the end of September.
Although TDF is happy that 3.4.2, deployed with support from a suitable partner, can be considered “enterprise-ready”, it is clearly only one more milestone on our march towards ever greater stability, with the 3.4.3 release to incorporate further stability improvements and security fixes by the end of August.
LibreOffice 3.4.2 can be downloaded from www.libreoffice.org/download/.
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off-topic, but: why is the font so friggin’ small?
Comment by FrankyBoy — August 1, 2011 @ 10:20
thats a good question i hope this will change
Comment by anton — August 1, 2011 @ 12:42
thats a good comment.i hope this will change
Comment by sasa — August 1, 2011 @ 17:30
Just type CTRL and “+” in your browser window. That will increase your font size. To decrease type CTRL and “-”
Comment by rati — August 22, 2011 @ 12:09
Great post, I just wish you had not used the 3D pie charts for two reasons:
a) The 3D effect makes it very difficult to correctly compare segment size since the perspective of the slices is distorted. A plain 2D pie chart is better readable in basically every single application, it does not add anything useful except for looking fancy.
b) Even in a 2D pie chart, comparing several segments of similar size is difficult at best. For example, it’s impossible to tell if any significant difference in contribution between Petr, Frank and Thomas. Pie charts are great for 2-3 slices and even when just 3 are involved exact ratios are difficult to determine, putting the percentages next to each slide can help with that but in most instances like the above a bar chart (here probably horizontal) is of more value than a pie chart.
Comment by John — August 1, 2011 @ 10:26
The chart designer has forgotten the color aspects too. It’s impossible to identify the segment related to some specific contributors if you (as myself) have problems with color vision. Almost 9% of Caucasoid male are colorblind.
(Refer to jfly.iam.u-tokyo.ac.jp/color/)
Comment by Guillermo — August 2, 2011 @ 17:17
[...] LibreOffice mögött álló alapítvány, a The Document Foundation a mai napon kiadta az általa fejlesztett irodai programcsomag legújabb, 3.4.2-es verzióját. A 3.4-es széria [...]
Pingback by A TDF kiadta a LibreOffice 3.4.2-es verzióját » Somlói Richárd blogja — August 1, 2011 @ 10:42
is it similar to 3.4.2 RC 3? or i should download the final release? thanks
thanks to all contributors. good job!
Comment by Len — August 1, 2011 @ 11:43
Release notes answer your question:
This release is bit-for-bit identical to the 3.4.2 Release Candidate 3, so you don’t need to download or reinstall if you have that version already.
Comment by vilpan — August 1, 2011 @ 13:32
Well done to all the Libreoffice developers. Thank you for your hard work.
Comment by Gabriel — August 1, 2011 @ 11:48
As usual, Linux users (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian) can check my installation guide:
www.libre-software.net/how-to-install-libreoffice-on-ubuntu-linux-mint
Congratulations to TDF!
Comment by Johannes — August 1, 2011 @ 12:54
[...] manera de empezar el mes de agosto! Hoy los chicos de The Document Foundation acaban de liberar la nueva versión estable para uso empresarial de su completa suite de oficina: LibreOffice [...]
Pingback by LibreOffice 3.4.2 Versión Estable en Español | Gespadas — August 1, 2011 @ 13:38
Why the heck does this still not save correct ppt files when a bug fix has been available for weeks? Bug 32709 – https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32709
How many times can LibreOffice shoot itself in the foot? There are thousands of people who want this to succeed, but a minority who are determined to press ahead with timed releases, consequences be damned. How idiotic is that approach?
Whatever you do, don’t dare to call this “Enterprise Ready”. It is far from it.
Comment by Mike — August 1, 2011 @ 15:04
[...] its growth. Users should always refer to the release notes before deploying the new version. Read more here Download LibreOffice 3.4.2 [...]
Pingback by LibreOffice 3.4.2 For Enterprise Users Is Released | n00bs on Ubuntu — August 1, 2011 @ 15:10
It should be noted that on Windows, Java 7 will not work with LibreOffice.
Comment by Corey — August 1, 2011 @ 16:59
On which windows version?
Comment by eklers — August 2, 2011 @ 17:34
Just checked with Java 7 on Win7 64bit (LibreOffice 3.4.2 crashes while starting)
Though, 3.4.1 seemed to work (did not crash on start-up)
Comment by eklers — August 2, 2011 @ 17:53
There is a bug for it: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39659
Comment by hit_man — August 2, 2011 @ 18:16
[...] Document Foundation представила релиз офисного пакета LibreOffice 3.4.2, форка проекта [...]
Pingback by Релиз LibreOffice 3.4.2 объявлен готовым для корпоративного использования | AllUNIX.ru – Всероссийский портал о UNIX-системах — August 1, 2011 @ 17:01
Interesting that RedHat and SUSE are the only two distributions that actually commit a substantial amount of code to the project. I would have expected Canonical to be an equal partner, as they rely so heavily on the office suite as the main productivity platform for their releases.
Comment by Andy Prough — August 1, 2011 @ 18:04
[...] of new features, can be found in the release notes, on the 3.4 New Features and Fixes page and in a post on The Document Foundation Blog. LibreOffice 3.4.2 is available to download for Windows, Mac OS X [...]
Pingback by LibreOffice 3.4.2 is “Enterprise Ready” : SoftGil Research — August 1, 2011 @ 20:30
[...] can be deployed for production needs by most enterprises,” the Document Foundation said in a blog post. However, large companies interested in deploying the release should do so with help from a [...]
Pingback by ‘Enterprise-ready’ open source LibreOffice version released « Linux News « 123linux tutorials — August 1, 2011 @ 21:16
@Johannes: Thanks for the link! I didn’t know I had to remove the previous version first.
Comment by vegancorr — August 1, 2011 @ 21:34
[...] in dettaglio le novità del nuovo LibreOffice 3.4.2 potete consultare il release notes in questa pagina. Se vogliamo installare LibreOffice 3.4.2 su Ubuntu e Debian per prima cosa rimuoviamo LibreOffice [...]
Pingback by LibreOffice 3.4.2 su Ubuntu e Debian! Ecco come fare… — August 1, 2011 @ 21:39
The information is clear and very descriptive, rather than the last post.
And I like how you explain it with the pie chart …Thanks!
Comment by DrakoDrakkonis — August 2, 2011 @ 01:44
[...] can be deployed for production needs by most enterprises,” the Document Foundation said in a blog post. However, large companies interested in deploying the release should do so with help from a [...]
Pingback by ‘Enterprise-ready’ open source LibreOffice version released « system-ON-key — August 2, 2011 @ 01:55
[...] Today (or yesterday, depending on your timezone) LibreOffice 3.4.2 was released. [...]
Pingback by LibreOffice 3.4.2 Released – Slackware packages available! | Niels Horn's Blog — August 2, 2011 @ 02:42
Why is this being released without the bug fix for 32709 applied when the fix has been available for weeks? Why does libreoffice keep shooting itself in the foot by not fixing such simple regressions?
Call it what you like, but don’t call it enterprise ready when it can’t export ppt files correctly.
Comment by Mike — August 2, 2011 @ 02:53
[...] Document Foundation представила релиз офисного пакета LibreOffice 3.4.2, форка проекта [...]
Pingback by Релиз офисного пакета LibreOffice 3.4.2 « Yakov Dolya — August 2, 2011 @ 07:01
This is great news! Where can we find who the TDF partners are? imho , such information should be part of the announcement.
Users who aren’t careful, could get scammed and be left with bitter feelings towards the suite for the wrong reasons. Please include it here or perhaps on the Libreoffice homepage.
Comment by Robin Parriath — August 2, 2011 @ 07:28
LibreOffice for companies? Not with professional font families!
I’m working with Linux in my small company office and have many Problems with professional fonts in writer.
LibreOffice (LO) does not correctly recognized the fonts and does not store the different font settings in the document. After reopening information is lost and the font in LO’s content is misinterpreted as Medium instead of correct Book!
This is a old problem herited from OpenOffice (reported in 2007 and not fixed openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=82986 )
After switching to LO i had to recognize that the Bug still exists in current versions of LO.
I reported the problem for LO as https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35538
It’s a little bit strange, that DTP programs like Scribus have the ability to store font settings in the document for different fonts.
Comment by GwenDragon — August 2, 2011 @ 08:38
[...] Source de la traduction : blog.documentfoundation.org [...]
Pingback by LibreOffice 3.4.2 pour les utilisateurs d’entreprise | GaLaGaNN's Blog — August 2, 2011 @ 08:53
Quando vai sair a versão 4.0 do LibreOffice?
Comment by Marcus Sá — August 2, 2011 @ 09:51
Marcus, follow this link:
> wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan#3.4_release <
Comment by DrakoDrakkonis — August 2, 2011 @ 19:58