It provides connectors between shapes which are available in a range of line styles, and facilitates drawings such as flowcharts. LibreOffice Draw: This is a vector graphics editor and diagramming tool similar to Microsoft Visio and comparable in features to early versions of CorelDraw. Presentations can be exported as swf files, allowing them to be viewed on any computer with Adobe Flash Player installed. LibreOffice Impress: This is a presentation program resembling Microsoft PowerPoint. It has a number of unique features including a system that automatically defines a series of graphs based on information available to the user. LibreOffice Calc: This is a spreadsheet program, similar to Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3. It has extensive WYSIWYG word processing capabilities but can also be used as a basic text editor. LibreOffice Writer: This is a word processor with similar functionality as, and file support for, Microsoft Word or WordPerfect. A brief overview of the modules of LibreOffice follows. Although Apache OpenOffice can read docx documents, it cannot save documents in this format. A key advantage that LibreOffice has over Apache OpenOffice is the ability to save documents in the docx format. LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice have similar modules called by the same names - Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.
A LibreOffice Viewer for Android devices is also available. LibreOffice is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS. It also supports the file formats of most other major office suites, including Microsoft Office, through a variety of import/export filters. LibreOffice uses the OpenDocument file format (odf) as its native format to save documents for all of its applications. Its suite comprises programs for word processing, the creation and editing of spreadsheets, slideshows, diagrams and drawings, working with databases, and composing mathematical formulae. LibreOffice was forked from OpenOffice in 2010. The centralised launch centre of LibreOffice for all its modules is a very useful feature. LibreOffice is being developed by The Document Foundation.
These are two actively developed forks of, which is no longer being developed. So let’s take a brief look at some of the key open source software.
The benefits of using FOSS include lower software costs, higher security and stability (especially with regard to malware), better privacy protection and more control over the hardware.
This is in contrast to proprietary software, for which the software is under restrictive copyright and the source code is usually hidden from the users. With free and open source software (FOSS) anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.
The required software can be freely downloaded from the Internet and updates can also be applied by simply downloading the latest version of the relevant software. It makes updating the software and its maintenance very easy. My company, MultiSpectra Consultants, uses open source software to the maximum possible extent, thereby streamlining business processes. This is where open source software like LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, Scribus, GIMP, Inkscape, Firefox, Thunderbird, WordPress, VLC media player, etc, come in.