LibreOffice patches malicious code-execution bug, Apache OpenOffice – wait for it, wait for it – doesn't [Ed: Minor issue. Pertaining to Microsoft-style macros.]

Before attempting to guess which app has yet to be patched, consider that Apache OpenOffice for years has struggled attract more contributors. And though the number of people adding code to the project has grown since last we checked, the project missed its recent January report to the Apache Foundation. The upshot is: security holes aren't being patched, it seems.

LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice vulnerable to same bug; only one is fixed

Austrian researcher Alex Inführ publicly reported the vulnerability on Friday, shortly after it was fixed in LibreOffice. His disclosure included a proof-of-concept exploit that successfully executed commands on computers running what was then a fully patched version of LibreOffice. The only interaction that was required was that the target user hover over an invisible link with a mouse. On Wednesday, researcher John Lambert provided additional PoC samples.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar, the office suite which offers the most flexible user experience

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar, a significant major release of the free office suite which features a radical new approach to the user interface – based on the MUFFIN concept [1] – and provides user experience options capable of satisfying all users’ preferences, while leveraging all screen sizes in the best way.

The NotebookBar is available in Tabbed, Grouped and Contextual flavors, each one with a different approach to the menu layout, and complements the traditional Toolbars and Sidebar. The Tabbed variant aims to provide a familiar interface for users coming from proprietary office suites and is supposed to be used primarily without the sidebar, while the Grouped one allows to access “first-level” functions with one click and “second-level” functions with a maximum of two clicks.

The design community has also made substantial changes and improvements to icon themes, in particular Elementary and Karasa Jaga.

A Summary of LibreOffice Karasa Jaga Icon Theme Works (For Upcoming 6.2 Release)

As we know, Karasa Jaga, an icon theme derived from the Oxygen theme successfully entered the last fresh release of LibreOffice (6.1) on August. Since its inception for the first time, Karasa Jaga has been very complete and can even be said to have nearly 5,000 icons, because it has exceeded the number of icons that Galaxy and Colibre have had since first entering Karasa Jaga already has extra large icon support (32px * 32px).

But the work did not stop there, there were many things that should be improved. Moreover, in the next 6.2 release there are so many new icons that should be made especially to support the Notebookbar Tab interface. In addition, the existing icons also need to be adjusted, plus I want to add more SVG support.

LibreOffice 6.2 Officially Available, Raspberry Pi Opens a Store in the UK, Purism Announces Partnership with GDQuest to Create Games for the Librem 5, Three New Snapshots for openSUSE Tumbleweed and Document Your DNA with an RPi Gel Imager

The Document Foundation today announces the official release of LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar. This is a major new release that "features a radical new approach to the user interface—based on the MUFFIN concept—and provides user experience options capable of satisfying all users'preferences, while leveraging all screen sizes in the best way." This version has many new and features, including substantial changes to icon themes, context menus are tidied up and interoperability with proprietary file formats has been improved. See this video for details on all the new features. Note that LibreOffice 6.1.5 also was released today for enterprise-class deployments. You can download LibreOffice 6.2 or LibreOffice 6.1.5 from here.

LibreOffice 6.2 Released With UI Improvements, Security Features, And More

The Document Foundation has released the latest version of its popular open source office suite in the form of LibreOffice 6.2; it brings some major improvements over its predecessor.

One of the most notable features of LibreOffice 6.2 is the new “tabbed” user-interface, dubbed NotebookBar, which was in an experimental phase for quite some time. The feature is not enabled by default and is available in three different variants — Tabbed, Contextual and Grouped.

The new MySQL driver in LibreOffice

Base – the database editing program of LibreOffice – offers several features when it comes to external database connection. One interesting feature is that Base lets you connect to an external database not only with ODBC and JDBC but with native connectors too. Using the native connector instead of a standard like JDBC sometimes has a positive impact on performance.

Considering that MySQL is one of the most used database management systems worldwide it is clear that the support of connecting to a MySQL database is an unavoidable part of Base. Currently there are three ways supported to connect to a MySQL database: with ODBC, JDBC and using a native connector. However, the last option was only available as an extension, and it is the part of the core project only since November 2018.

Why was it only an extension at the first place? The native connection was implemented by using the C++ connector of MySQL, which is licensed under GPL. Because of that it could not be put into the core project. So what is the solution then?

LibreOffice 6.2 Released, This is What’s New

Downloads of LibreOffice 6.2, billed as a ‘significant major release’ of the popular free office suite, are now available.

Headline changes in the LibreOffice 6.2 release include a ‘radical new approach to the user interface’ (albeit optional), new capabilities in Writer, Calc and Draw, and improved compatibility with Microsoft Office files.

LibreOffice 6.2 released

LibreOffice 6.1.5 also released, for enterprise class deployments and
mainstream users looking for robust productivity

Berlin, February 7, 2019 - The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice
6.2 with NotebookBar, a significant major release of the free office suite
which features a radical new approach to the user interface - based on the
MUFFIN concept [1] - and provides user experience options capable of
satisfying all users' preferences, while leveraging all screen sizes in the
best way.

The NotebookBar is available in Tabbed, Grouped and Contextual flavors,
each one with a different approach to the menu layout, and complements the
traditional Toolbars and Sidebar. The Tabbed variant aims to provide a
familiar interface for users coming from proprietary office suites and is
supposed to be used primarily without the sidebar, while the Grouped one
allows to access “first-level” functions with one click and
“second-level” functions with a maximum of two clicks.

The design community has also made substantial changes and improvements to
icon themes, in particular Elementary and Karasa Jaga.

LibreOffice 6.2 new and improved features:

The help system offers faster filtering of index keywords, highlighting
search terms as they are typed and displaying results based on the selected
module.
Context menus have been tidied up, to be more consistent across the
different components in the suite.
Change tracking performances have been dramatically improved, especially
in large documents.
In Writer, it is now possible to copy spreadsheet data into tables instead
of just inserting them as objects.
In Calc, it is now possible to do multivariate regression analysis using
the regression tool. In addition, many more statistical measures are now
available in the analysis output, and the new REGEX function has been
added, to match text against a regular expression and optionally replace
it.
In Impress & Draw, the motion path of animations can now be modified by
dragging its control points. In addition, a couple of text-related drawing
styles have been added, as well as a Format Table submenu in Draw.
LibreOffice Online, the cloud-based version of the suite, includes many
improvements too. On mobile devices, the user interface has been
simplified, with better responsiveness and updates to the on-screen
keyboard.

Interoperability with proprietary file formats has also been improved, as
with every major and minor version of LibreOffice, for better compatibility
with Office documents, including old versions which have been deprecated by
Microsoft. The focus has been on charts and animations, and on document
security features, with agile encryption and HMAC verification.

LibreOffice 6.2's new features have been developed by a large community of
code contributors: 74% of commits are from developers employed by companies
sitting in the Advisory Board like Collabora, Red Hat and CIB and by other
contributors such as the City of Munich and SIL, and 26% are from
individual volunteers.

In addition, there is a global community of individual volunteers taking
care of other fundamental activities such as quality assurance, software
localization, user interface design and user experience, editing of help
system and documentation, plus free software and open document standards
advocacy at a local level.

A video summarizing the top new features of LibreOffice 6.2 is available on
YouTube:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...

LibreOffice 6.1.5 for enterprise class deployments

The Document Foundation has also released LibreOffice 6.1.5, a more mature
version which includes some months of back-ported fixes and is better
suited for enterprise class deployments, where features are less important
than robustness as the main objective is individual productivity.

Enterprises willing to deploy LibreOffice on a professional basis should
source value-added services - related to software support, migrations and
training - from certified people
(http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
and a
LibreOffice LTS (Long Term Supported) versions provided by one of the
companies sitting on TDF Advisory Board
(http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...

Sourcing enterprise class software and/or services from the ecosystem of
certified professionals are the best support options for organizations
deploying LibreOffice on a large number of desktops. In fact, these
activities are contributed back to the project under the form of
improvements to the software and the community, and trigger a virtuous
circle which is beneficial to all parties, including users.

Availability of LibreOffice 6.2 and LibreOffice 6.1.5

LibreOffice 6.2 and LibreOffice 6.1.5 are immediately available from the
following web page:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...
Builds of the
latest LibreOffice Online source code are also available, released as
Docker images:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...

LibreOffice Online is fundamentally a server service, and should be
installed and configured by adding cloud storage and an SSL certificate. It
might be considered an enabling technology for the cloud services offered
by ISPs or the private cloud of enterprises and large organizations.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can
support The Document Foundation with a donation at
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...

LibreOffice 6.2 is built with document conversion libraries from the
Document Liberation Project:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...

Press Kit

The press kit is here:
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...

[1]
http://documentfoundation.hosted.phplist.com/lists/lt.php...

LibreOffice 6.2 is here: Running up a Tab at the NotebookBar? You can turn it all off if you want

While Microsoft was upending the scorn bucket on its own productivity tools, The Document Foundation shoved out an update of LibreOffice, replete with user interface tweaks and improved Office compatibility.

Originally forked from OpenOffice back in 2010, LibreOffice comprises a word processor in the form of "Writer", a spreadsheet in "Calc" and "Impress" for PowerPoint-esque presentations. It also includes tools for vector drawing, database and formula editing.

The new version 6.2 is the first release in 2019. 6.0 appeared just over a year ago and 6.1 turned up in August. It remains free and can be downloaded in Windows, Linux and Mac flavours.

We took a look at the Windows 10 version, the installation of which proved a little problematic.

LibreOffice 6.2 will protect you from Office 2019

OPEN SOURCE Microsoft spoiler LibreOffice has released a major new edition, with a whole crop of new features and tweaks.

The Document Foundation, custodians of the brand, announced LibreOffice 6.2, which brings a tabbed interface for the first time and even more file format compatibility.

This is great news for Microsoft, which recently launched a series of adverts saying how you really shouldn't buy Office 2019, though this is probably not what they had in mind.

LibreOffice 6.2 brings new interfaces, performance improvements to the open source office suite

New interface styles and feature improvements are available in version 6.2 of LibreOffice—the most popular open-source office suite—released Thursday by The Document Foundation. As with any software update, bug fixes and feature enhancements are present, making this release a significant upgrade, particularly for users coming from Microsoft Office, or working with files created with those programs.

LibreOffice patches RCE flaw – Apache OpenOffice doesn't

Cyber Security Today: U.S. restaurant chain hacked, attack uses real document, patch open office suites

U.S. restaurant chain has been hacked, an attack uses a real document to trip uses and patch open office suites

[...]

Speaking of patching, some people and businesses are saving money by using open source productivity suites like LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice for Windows, Linux or Macs. Well, they’re not immune from being attacked, just like Microsoft Office. A security researcher has discovered a severe vulnerability in the two open source suites. He reported them months ago, and LibreOffice was patched — which is another reason why you should update to the latest version if you haven’t done so already. OpenOffice, which may be vulnerable. hasn’t yet issued a fix. For technical details here’s a link to the researcher’s blog.

LibreOffice 6.2 is Here: This is the Last Release with 32-bit Support

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.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.2 with NotebookBar

The NotebookBar is available in Tabbed, Grouped and Contextual flavors, each one with a different approach to the menu layout.

LibreOffice 6.2 Released – Here’s What’s New

LibreOffice, the best free and open source office suite released the latest version 6.2 with some radical changes. The major improvements is the “Notebookbar” which is a ribbon style menu with tabbed, grouped bar for better and easy user experience.

Being the only free office suite for professional and production use, LibreOffice’s notebookbar helps users who is more proficient with popular office suites such as Microsoft Office.