Yes, the conference in Budapest has started. If you’re not there in-person, join one of the chat channels linked to on the site and you can watch talks remotely. Enjoy!

We’re happy to announce the release of GIMP 3.1.4! This release contains initial implementations of our two main GIMP 3.2 roadmap items: link layers and vector layers. It also contains a number of other nice new features, bugfixes, and internal improvements. We’re excited to share these with you and get your feedback in preparation for the GIMP 3.2 release candidate.

Note that a development release is not ready for production use. It might crash. If it didn’t have problems it would be 3.2 already. So please do test, but understand this is a feature release for early adopters and for the more adventurous!

We’ll highlight some of the major features and fixes below. For more details, you can check out our NEWS Changelog.

Non-Destructive Layers¶

This release contains initial implementations of our two GIMP 3.2 roadmap features, link layers and vector layers. We are especially requesting feedback on the stability and user experience of these new layer types - we will continue to polish these features in preparation for the first GIMP 3.2 release candidate.

Link Layers¶

Link layers allow you to link external image files as a layer in your project. For instance, you might add an SVG image file as a link layer, make changes to it in Inkscape, and see it instantly updated inside GIMP! You can also non-destructively scale and rotate the link layer without impacting the quality of the original image.

Jehan initially developed the concept back in 2020, but it was put on hold in order to finish developing GIMP 3.0. It’s now ready for testing in GIMP 3.1.4!

Editing a GIMP SVG Link Layer with Inkscape, by Jehan - GIMP 3.1.4

To access this feature, go to the File menu and choose Open as Link Layer.... This will let you select an image to link from your file directory. Once linked, you can apply transforms and non-destructive filters as you like. You can replace the linked image by double-clicking the icon in the layer dockable or right-clicking and choosing “Edit Layer Attributes”. To convert it to a normal raster layer, you can right-click and choose “Discard Link Information”.

Among the planned changes, we want to add the ability to select a layer to show from a linked file, instead of always showing the full image. This would allow to link another XCF file selectively.

Note that this is an initial UI/UX design - we look forward to your feedback so we can continue to improve it!

Vector Layers¶

Vector layers allow you to create a shape and set its fill and stroke properties. You can then change the shape path, swap out different color settings, and transform the layer non-destructively, without losing any sharpness!

The code for vector layers began as a Google Summer of Code project by Hendrik Boom all the way back in 2006. Since then, it has been updated and ported by a number of developers including Martin Nordholts, Gilles Rochefort, Michael Natterer, and Jacob Boerema. CMYK Student continued this legacy and now this feature is implemented in GIMP 3.1.4 after initial design feedback by Aryeom, Reju, and Denis Rangelov!

To create a vector layer, use the Path tool to draw a path. Click the Create vector layer button to generate a vector layer associated with that path. From here, you can continue to edit the path - the vector layer will automatically update. Once you have a vector layer selected, you can edit fill and stroke settings via the Path tool (or by double-clicking the thumbnail in the layer dock). The transform tools can also be used to non-destructively rotate, scale, and otherwise contort the vector layer. As with link layers, you can also convert the layer to a regular raster layer by right-clicking on the layer in the layer dock and choosing “Discard Vector Information”.

Note that this is an initial UI/UX design - we look forward to your feedback so we can continue to improve it!

GEGL Filter Browser¶

Our GSoC student Ondřej Míchal has added, as part of their summer project, the GEGL Filter Browser! This tool shows, similarly to the existing Procedure Browser, a list of all GEGL operations (i.e., filters) and information related to their use.

This browser is not just another alternative to the GEGL website or the gegl command-line utility. GEGL is extensible and users can register into it new operations. GIMP is also one of these users! GEGL’s website only shows information about operations shipped by GEGL, the gegl utility can also show operations installed by users but does not show operations registered by GIMP at runtime. The new browser is capable of showing all of these operations!

We hope this browser will make it easier for plug-in developers to discover filters they would like to use with the gimp-drawable-filter-* () API for non-destructive editing introduced in GIMP 3.0 and help them in using them.

The new browser can be accessed under the Help menu or by using the / to search for “GEGL Filter Browser”.

MyPaint Brushes 2¶

We have updated our MyPaint code to support the version 2 brushes. This update allows the MyPaint brush engine to take your canvas zoom and rotation into account when painting, to better simulate real brush strokes.

GIMP now comes with over 20 new brushes from the Dieterle set bundled with MyPaint Brushes 2. Some of these include the much requested arrow brush and a Posterizer brush inspired by GIMP’s own Posterize filter. Of course, you can also add your own MyPaint brushes to use.

In addition to the MyPaint version 2 port, we’ve also added a new Gain slider in the MyPaint Brush tool. This controls how much pressure the brush engines thinks you’re applying when painting. This should be useful if you’re painting with a mouse and want to simulate pressing the brush harder or softer - it can also be helpful for tablet users who want to offset their own stylus pressure.

As a note for software packagers, GIMP now depends on mypaint-brushes-2.0 instead of mypaint-brushes-1.0. In our official builds, we also apply a patch that fixes warnings for libmypaint due to typos in some of the version 2 brush properties.

Text tool¶

Another of our GSoC students Gabriele Barbero has been working on a number of updates to the text tool. We recently merged some of their first improvements! Now in the on-canvas editor, you can use Ctrl + B to bold, Ctrl + I to italicize, and Ctrl + U to underline text. We hope to merge more of their updates in the next development release, which we detail in the Teams News section below.

Additionally, the outline color now shows a live preview as you’re changing it in the color selection dialogue, instead of only updating once you confirm your choice.

Plug-ins¶

HRZ¶

HRZ is an older format for storing SSTV signals, exactly 256x240 8-bit RGB images. In older versions of GIMP there was a separate plug-in that supported importing this format, but it was removed. We have restored import support as part of our general raw data plug-in.

JPEG 2000¶

We now support importing signed JPEG 2000 images. Most image formats store pixels with positive values. However, JPEG 2000 is used in several scientific operations where they might want to visualize negative values as well. Thanks to Allan Barklie for both pointing out the problem and sharing sample images to test with!

PAA Textures¶

GIMP can now import non-DXT PAA textures. This texture format is used in games created by Bohemia Interactive Studio.

Seattle Filmworks¶

From the 70s to the early 2000s, you could mail Seattle Filmworks your photo film and they’d digitize it in their proprietary image format. They made several versions, mostly based on a mangled form of JPEG. We’ve added support for importing the SFW93A and SFW94A versions of the Seattle Filmworks format. Special thanks to Loren Amelang for sharing additional sample images and notes.

TIFF¶

We have further improved our support for TIFFs created with Sketchbook. In addition to the layer support added in 3.0 RC1, we now load layer visibility, blending modes, and color tags. Group layers are also loaded, along with which layer was selected.

UX/UI¶

We continue to discuss, review, and implement user experience improvements. As always, we extend an invitation for you to contribute as part of the UX repo!

• Our GSoC student Gabriele Barbero improved our support for showing the correct time format based on your system settings. If you have your time set to a 12 hour system, the time will be shown this way on the “Up to date as of…” section of the About Dialog instead of always using a 24 hour format.

• Reju developed a new design for the Animation Playback plug-in. The layout now resembles the standard interface seen in video software like VLC Player. In addition, the progress bar is now a slider widget, which allows you to easily slide to a specific frame rather than repeatedly clicking the frame advance buttons.

• Gabriele Barbero has updated our macOS code to support the System Colors theme. Now GIMP will adapt to match the macOS dark mode setting if you have your color scheme set to “System Colors”.

• During 3.0 RC development, we added support for turning off animations based on OS settings. We extended this support to also control the sliding animations seen when switching pages in the Welcome and Preferences dialogues.

• While many users find the Welcome Dialog’s Create tab to be a convenient feature, it did prevent the New Image and Open Image keyboard shortcuts from working unless it was turned off on start. Thanks to Gabriele Barbero, you can now have the best of both worlds - the Welcome Dialog will respond to those keyboard shortcuts!

• A small but often requested change is that the color selector no longer shows decimals when set to 0...255 mode. This makes it clearer when you’re in that mode compared to 0...100%, and that you’re entering a whole number for the color instead of a percentage.

• Many of GIMP’s “size entry” fields allow you to enter mathematical expressions such as 3 * 92cm to calculate values. Gabriele Barbero extended this feature to our Configure Grid dialogue and Monitor Resolution settings in Preferences.

Additional Fixes¶

• Jehan made further fixes to our code to import user configurations from older versions of GIMP to 3.2 (and the 3.1 development releases)

• On Windows with the display scaled more than 200%, the crosshair cursor was in the wrong place compared to where the mouse pointer actually was. This was due to changes in how scaling is handled in GTK3. This bug should be fixed now. Thanks to Lance Evans for pointing it out in their review of GIMP 3.0!

• New contributer Corentin Noël developed a fix for the Image Settings tab not appearing when printing in sandboxed applications like flatpak or snap. Due to restrictions, the tab will be created as a secondary dialogue instead - allowing you to edit those settings once again. This patch is a more future-proof version of an earlier attempt by BZZZZ creatively bypassing the sandbox portal. We appreciate the work of both contributers to fix this problem! This proposed solution is not ideal, UX-wise, compared to the original tab, but it is necessary because the portal print dialog is hardly usable without these settings.

• The experimental Seamless Clone tool was broken when we updated our code to handle copy and pasting multiple layers. This has been fixed, so you can now test out the tool again by enabling it in Preferences. However, the tool itself is still quite slow, so it remains in the experimental Playground until further work can be done on it.

• We received a report that the “Import Raw Data” dialogue was too tall for some screens. We converted it to a two-column dialogue to reduce the height and better ensure everything’s visible on all screens.

• As part of the port to GTK3, the default cursors were updated. This change led to some users experiencing the dreaded “Hand” cursor when hovering over a number slider widget. Unfortunately, the arrow cursor from GIMP 2.10 is not included on all platforms so we had to devise an alternate method. Denis Rangelov and Michal Vašut helped us find an initial solution while we continue to work on the design. We hope the current solution will make it easier for you to see where you’re clicking!

• Jacob Boerema has added a new preference option to “Update metadata automatically”. When turned off, GIMP will no longer update comments or historical metadata such as creation time or software. This allows you to keep that metadata undisturbed even if you edit the image in GIMP. Note that image-related metadata such as thumbnails will still be updated, though you can control whether that is included in the final image on export.

• Anders Jonsson continues their important work of finding and marking areas of the GUI as translatable. These fixes may not be immediately apparent for all languages, but his work makes it possible for those to be translated. If you’re interested in helping with translation, find your language and look for the GIMP and Friends section to contribute.

Internal Changes¶

Our co-maintainer Michael Natterer has been hard at work reviewing and improving our internal code. While less visible than some of the other changes listed above, this work is very important to GIMP’s stability and ease to work with. A few highlights:

• Reorganizing our layer search code so it can be used with other items like channels and paths in the future.

• Finishing our internal renaming process from GimpVectors to GimpPath, for consistency and to reduce confusion with the new Vector Layers code structures.

• Reviewing and removing unnecessary or outdated test cases and code warnings.

• Restructuring our internal GimpControllerManager and GimpContainerView APIs.

Several of his changes are also laying the foundation for a future port to GTK4! These include moving code away from GtkTreeView which will be deprecated in future GTK versions, and converting to using GtkListBox. You can try out some of the future changes by enabling Use GtkListBox for simple lists in the Playground section of Preferences. Please report any bugs or performance issues you encounter!

Jehan has also created a new GIMP_WARNING_API_BREAK() macro. We use this in areas where we identify potential improvements that would break the public API. These will throw warnings when we start future development of GIMP 4, so that we know to re-examine those parts of the code to fix them.

PDB¶

For plug-in developers, we’ve added some new public API features. You can now change the paintbrush fade length and repeat settings with gimp-context-set-paint-fade-length and gimp-context-set-paint-fade-repeat. These functions work best in scripts when gimp-context-set-emulate-brush-dynamics is used to enable emulating brush dynamics.

The gimp-file-save API now also updates the image’s associated saved or exported file, so that changes are reflected in the GUI’s titlebar as well as future operations.

We’ve also added some initial public API for creating vector layers. You can use gimp-vector-layer-new to create a vector layer, gimp-vector-layer-refresh to update the view after adjusting the path, and gimp-vector-layer-discard to convert it to a raster layer. We will add more functions in future releases to adjust the fill and stroke settings.

Build Process¶

On GIMP 3.1.4 development cycle, Bruno Lopes focused their attention on Linux (again) by adding two new official nightly builds:

Nightly Snap¶

The biggest addition to our CI recently is a new Snap package available for aarch64 and x86_64. .snap, although mainly used on Ubuntu, is a distro-independent packaging format for Linux that allows users to install and keep GIMP updated in a separate environment, similar to AppImage and Flatpak. We believe that it is always good to provide more universal and established packaging options, especially considering how diverse the Linux community is.

Please note that, right now, it is not available on the Snap Store yet. We are still talking with the Snapcrafters developers to pass over the ownership of the GIMP store entry so we can maintain it. You can track our progress on their tracker. When that happens, we will be able to publish unstable and stable releases on the Snap Store on the same day we release the other official packages. Until then, you can install the nightly Snap by following these instructions

Nightly aarch64 Flatpak¶

We have had nightly flatpak builds for x86_64 architecture for several years, but didn’t had for aarch64 (only for releases on flathub). Now we will be distributing on our CI and on GNOME nightly repository aarch64 builds as well.

Unfortunately, the future availability of these nightly builds is way less certain since GNOME GitLab have only one working runner for this purpose and this runner is sponsored by Open Source Lab, which is in a delicate situation. So, we always welcome runner sponsors

Release stats¶

Since GIMP 3.1.2, in the main GIMP repository:

• 79 reports were closed as FIXED.
• 73 merge requests were merged.
• 687 commits were pushed.
• 16 translations were updated: Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Dutch, Georgian, German, Italian, Norwegian Nynorsk, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian.

30 people contributed changes or fixes to GIMP 3.1.4 codebase (order is determined by number of commits; some people are in several groups):

• 13 developers to core code: Michael Natterer, Jehan, Alx Sa, Jacob Boerema, Gabriele Barbero, Ondřej Míchal, Niels De Graef, Bruno Lopes, lillolollo, Anders Jonsson, Henk Boom, Joey Riches, Liam Quin.
• 10 developers to plug-ins or modules: Alx Sa, Jacob Boerema, Jehan, Anders Jonsson, Ondřej Míchal, Michael Natterer, Niels De Graef, Bruno Lopes, Corentin Noël, lillolollo.
• 18 translators: Yuri Chornoivan, Martin, Luming Zh, Ekaterine Papava, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Marco Ciampa, Cristian Secară, Anders Jonsson, Asier Saratsua Garmendia, Alexander Alexandrov Shopov, Jordi Mas, Aefgh Threenine, Aleksandr Prokudin, Alexander Shopov, Asier Sarasua Garmendia, Emin Tufan Çetin, Nathan Follens, Philipp Kiemle.
• 3 theme designers: Alx Sa, Niels De Graef, Ondřej Míchal.
• 4 contributors on other types of resources: Jehan, Michael Natterer, Gabriele Barbero, Henk Boom.
• 9 build, packaging or CI contributors: Bruno Lopes, Michael Natterer, Jehan, Alx Sa, Joey Riches, Niels De Graef, Jacob Boerema, Ondřej Míchal, Henk Boom.

Contributions on other repositories in the GIMPverse (order is determined by number of commits):

• Our UX tracker had 6 reports closed as FIXED.
• ctx had 172 commits since 3.1.2 release by 1 contributor: Øyvind Kolås.
• gimp-data had 11 commits by 3 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Aryeom.
• The gimp-test-images (unit testing repository) repository had 4 commits by 1 contributor: Jacob Boerema.
• The gimp-macos-build (macOS packaging scripts) release had 15 commits by 3 contributors: Lukas Oberhuber, Bruno Lopes, Gabriele Barbero.
• The flatpak release had 14 commits by 1 contributor, aided with 2 bots: Bruno Lopes,
• Our main website (what you are reading right now) had 67 commits by 5 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Alx Sa, Ondřej Míchal, gturri.
• Our developer website had 36 commits by 3 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan, Petr Vorel.
• Our 3.0 documentation had 84 commits by 13 contributors: Marco Ciampa, Alevtina Karashokova, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Nathan Follens, Jacob Boerema, Matthew Leach, Jordi Mas, Andre Klapper, Anders Jonsson, Andrei Rybak, Dick Groskamp, Julia Dronova, Yuri Chornoivan.

Let’s not forget to thank all the people who help us triaging in Gitlab, report bugs and discuss possible improvements with us. Our community is deeply thankful as well to the internet warriors who manage our various discussion channels or social network accounts such as Ville Pätsi, Liam Quin, Michael Schumacher and Sevenix!

Note: considering the number of parts in GIMP and around, and how we get statistics through git scripting, errors may slip inside these stats. Feel free to tell us if we missed or mis-categorized some contributors or contributions.

Team news¶

Our GSoC students continue to make excellent progress on their projects!

• Ondřej Míchal has already completed their core work on the GEGL Filter Browser (as noted above). Their next steps include collecting and reacting to user feedback, adding usage examples to both the new GEGL Filter Browser and Procedure Browser, and explore how the, now 3, developer browsers can be potentially merged in the future into a single point of reference for developers. You can read Ondřej’s final report for GSoC on his blog.

• Gabriele Barbero has been working with mentor Liam Quin on several “almost-there” merge requests for improvements to the text tool! These include being able to move the on-canvas editor, see live previews of selected text color changes, and an overhaul of the text tool’s layout. You can read more about their work in their status report. Outside of GSoC, they’ve also been busy contributing some needed fixes for our macOS support.

• Shivam has continued their work with mentor Jehan to build our Extensions infrastructure. When finished, this system will allow you to easily download, install (or uninstall), and use plug-ins, brushes, themes, and other custom features of GIMP without having to dig through folders and files. We look forward to sharing more details in a future update!

Also we recently came back from our Wilber Week event, which is an irregular team meeting. Twelve contributors were present. This year, the week was themed around the 30 years of GIMP (depending on how we look at it, GIMP may be already 30 year old — if we consider the first references to an unnamed project in emails — or will soon be, on November 21, if we consider the first release), as can be seen with the splash image.

So I guess: 🥳 Happy birthday GIMP! 🎂 Happiness to Wilber and the whole community! 🥂🤗

Downloading GIMP 3.1.4¶

You will find all our official builds on GIMP official website (gimp.org):

• Linux AppImages for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
• Linux flatpaks for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
• Universal Windows installer for x86 (32 and 64-bit) and for ARM (64-bit)
• Microsoft Store package for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
• macOS DMG packages for Intel hardware
• macOS DMG packages for Apple Silicon hardware

Other packages made by third-parties are obviously expected to follow (Linux or *BSD distributions’ packages, etc).

Note: we don’t provide a macOS package for Intel processor at release time because of last-minute issues. The package may come back soon… or not. Which is also a good occasion to remind that we always welcome new testers! 🤗 Our macOS packages have nearly nobody testing it apart our (awesome!) packager, Lukas Oberhuber.

👉 If anyone wishes to be a tester (for macOS or any other OS/package), reach out by opening an issue here telling us for which operating systems, architectures and packages you wish to contribute testing before a release.

There is no development release for the manual, but you can continue to use the existing GIMP 3.0 documentation.

What’s next¶

Now that we’ve implemented initial versions of the two main roadmap items, we will begin shifting our focus to developing the first GIMP 3.2 release candidate. This is in keeping with our new release policy - smaller, faster development cycles that get new features out to you all sooner!

Note that we definitely expect bugs and UX issues at this stage of the development of GIMP 3.2. We are releasing an early version containing in particular the two major features of GIMP 3.2 (link and vector layers) in order to get early feedback and suggestions to make the best possible implementation when we will release these as a stable version. Our designers are aware that their usability is not always ideal currently; we expect to get there with your help.

User testing and feedback is crucial - we want to hear from you. Help us find bugs and polish the user experience, so we can make the best version of GIMP 3.2 we can!

Don’t forget you can donate and personally fund GIMP developers, as a way to give back and accelerate the development of GIMP. Community commitment helps the project to grow stronger!

You can suggest changes or report bugs by following the link to report a bug near the bottom of www.gimp.org.

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

• Every six months – in February and August – we release a new major update to LibreOffice. And on 20 August, LibreOffice 25.8 arrived with many new features, plus compatibility improvements and performance boosts. Check out this video for an overview (also available on PeerTube):

• One week after the release, we posted some stats. And at the end of the month, the first minor bugfix update was made available: LibreOffice 25.8.1.

• Meanwhile, the LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025 will take place in Tokyo in December, and the call for proposals is now open (until 16 September).

• Throughout the month, we posted regular articles about ODF, the Open Document Format: What’s new in ODF 1.3 and 1.4; Best practices for creating and editing ODF files; and Guide to migrating from proprietary formats to ODF.

• At The Document Foundation, we have a new job opening! Join the LibreOffice Team as a Paid Developer focusing on UI with initial emphasis on macOS, preferably full-time, remote.

• LibreOffice does not include artificial intelligence (AI) out-of-the-box. But many users want AI features in the suite – so we encourage developers to make them available as optional extensions. And that’s what Igor Támara did, creating the “Stable Diffusion for LibreOffice” extension for AI-generated images powered by AI Horde (a volunteer crowd-sourced distributed cluster of image generation workers).

• And here’s another cool thing: PyPos3DLO: a Python 3D app based on LibreOffice to create mechanical characters, edit and optimize Poser files, and manipulate WaveFront files.

• Some sad news: long-time LibreOffice contributor Juan Carlos Sanz passed away. We are very thankful to his work in the project over the years.

• Finally, we posted a reminder that the LibreOffice Conference 2025 is coming up in Budapest, from 4 – 6 September. See you there!

Keep in touch – follow us on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, Reddit and Facebook. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join our community and help to make LibreOffice even better!

Berlin, 29 August 2025 – LibreOffice 25.8.1, the first minor release of the free, volunteer-supported office suite for personal productivity in office environments, is now available at https://www.libreoffice.org/download for Windows, MacOS and Linux.

The release includes close to 100 bug and regression fixes over LibreOffice 25.8 [1] to improve the stability and robustness of the software. In particular, the release resolves the application crash issue related to the NoteBookBar UI option, and several bugs related to opening documents in Microsoft proprietary format.

LibreOffice is the only office suite with a feature set comparable to the market leader. It also offers a range of interface options to suit all user habits, from traditional to modern, and makes the most of different screen form factors by optimising the space available on the desktop to put the maximum number of features just a click or two away.

For users who don’t need the latest features and prefer a version that has undergone more testing and bug fixing, The Document Foundation maintains the LibreOffice 25.2 family, which includes several months of back-ported fixes. The current release is LibreOffice 25.2.5.

The Document Foundation does not provide technical support for users, although they can get it from volunteers on user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: https://ask.libreoffice.org

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support the Document Foundation by making a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate.

[1] Fixes in RC1: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.8.1/RC1.

The LibreOffice Conference will start in a week from today with the Community Meeting, at the Faculty of Informatics of ELTE (Eötvös Loránd University) in Pázmány Péter stny. 1/C, 1117 Budapest. The building is just in front of the Danube on the historic Buda side, and can be easily reached either by walking or by public transportation from the city center in Pest, where you can find the majority of hotels and restaurants.

To reach the city from the airport, take Bus 100E which goes directly to downtown (Deák Ferenc tér). Buy and validate tickets directly on the bus using your bank card for the Budapest Pay&GO service. bkk.hu/en/travel-information/airport-express/

Inside the city use public transport (BKK): metro, tram, bus. Buy tickets from purple machines or use the BudapestGO mobile app (iOS, Android). bkk.hu/en/ The best deal is a 24h / 72h travel pass, which does not need validation at each trip. IMPORTANT: the travel pass is not valid for the airport bus!

Currency is Hungarian Forint (HUF). Cards are accepted almost everywhere, but also you may need some Forint cash from Correct Change, Exclusive Change, or Gold Change. Avoid Euronet ATMs, use instead ATMs at major Hungarian banks like OTP, K&H, Erste, UniCredit, Raiffeisen, or CIB.

Time zone is CEST (UTC+2). Electricity is 230V, with standard European plug.

The Survival Guide with more information will soon be available on the Conference website.

Juan Carlos Sanz, a long time contributor to OpenOffice and LibreOffice, and a TDF Member, passed away last Friday, August 22. He has been contributing to documentation and localization in Spanish, and has been active in the forums to help LibreOffice users as much as he could.

In July 2022, Juan Carlos was interviewed by Mike Saunders for the Community Member Monday. In 2022, he also attended the LibreOffice Conference in Milan (2022) and Bucharest (2023).

 

One week ago, we announced LibreOffice 25.8, our brand new major release. It’s packed with new features, and has many improvements to compatibility and performance too. So, what has happened in the week since then? Let’s check out some stats…

642,564 downloads

These are just stats for our official downloads page, of course – many Linux users will have acquired the new release via their distribution’s package repositories.

23,399 views, shares and likes on social media

Combining our Mastodon, Bluesky, X/Twitter and Facebook posts about the announcement, and all the likes, shares, views and comments, we get 23,999. Thanks to everyone who spread the word on social media!

1,225 upvotes on Reddit

On release day, we posted the announcement on the /r/linux subreddit. There was lots of discussion there about the new update, including things users like and things that could still be improved.

Huge thanks to our worldwide community of volunteers, and certified developers, for all their work on this release!

🚀 Features

• Moved bug report button to settings (#892) by @crazicus in #892

🌐 Translations

• Updated Latvian translation using Weblate by @Coool in commit
• Updated Turkish translation using Weblate by @Ruzgarland in commit
• Updated Catalan translation using Weblate in #881

❤️ New Contributors

• @Ruzgarland made their first contribution
• @crazicus made their first contribution in #892

Today we’re talking to Olivier Dufailly, who’s working on PyPos3DLO, an app based on LibreOffice to create mechanical characters, edit and optimize Poser files, and manipulate WaveFront files:

Tell us a bit about yourself!

I live in Toulouse (France) and for around 30 years I’ve mainly worked in the space and aeronautical domain (from software to system engineering), although I was also a business manager for a few years, and the first CIO of a mid-size engineering company. But now, I’m back in my preferred domain: space systems engineering and development. It’s a so exciting environment.

On a personal side, I like and practice sports (swimming, biking, running) and 3D modeling. I remember, when I bought my first Casio graphic tracer in 1985, I immediately ported some Apple BASIC 3D curves programs to Casio BASIC!

And now, I always like to produce some airplanes models for 3D rendering (unfortunately, the former free site ShareCG.com has disappeared so I need to find a way to publish my work elsewhere). Additionally, I think that we – all of us – are responsible of our children’s planet, and open source software is sustainable and so is vital to help us in the future.

What are you working on right now?

I’ve produced a LibreOffice-based application to help 3D mechanical characters development. I’d would be proud to present it in more detail later, but for now: PoJamas aims to provide a Python library and tools for loading, processing, and producing .cr2, pz3 (crz, pzz) files compatible with the SmithMicro (e-Frontier) Poser character animation application. It includes PyPos3DLO, an app based on LibreOffice to create mechanical characters, and edit and optimize Poser files.

Why did you choose to become a member of The Document Foundation?

LibreOffice is a great project and I’d like to try to contribute to its development. It’s just the beginning, but I feel welcome in the project already.

Anything else you plan to do in the future? What does LibreOffice really need?

I have a strategic approach concerning LibreOffice and general engineering usage.

In my professional and personal domains, engineers, PhD, techs guys produce studies and data for testing and running large and complex systems. To do this, they usually use Microsoft Office with a huge amount of BASIC macros. Moreover, they also use MATLAB and try to integrate or automatize things.

They usually have a lot of “integration” problems and the result is frequently a mess: hard to use, and more or less impossible to maintain or transfer. It’s a lack of experts’ time, when they spend too much time o “silly” development instead of doing their own business.

Our main problems are testing, maintainability and costs.

Finally, I’m convinced that we should promote a new maintainable approach for engineering studies with a better integration of Python (or other, if any languages) in LibreOffice. (Financial studies may be also greatly enhanced with an easy integration between Python libraries and Calc/Excel sheets).

At the end of the journey, BASIC should naturally become extinct.

To achieve this goal, we will need to enhance LibreOffice, ease the development of LibreOffice macros, and teach our users with many tutorials.

I’d be happy to help with testing, writing tutorials, or anything else.

LibreOffice 25.8: a Strategic Asset for Governments and Enterprises Focused on Digital Sovereignty and Privacy

Overview

In a time when geopolitical tensions, data localization laws, and compliance risks are reshaping the IT landscape, LibreOffice 25.8 (released last week) stands out as a strategic choice. It’s a fully open source, locally run productivity suite designed for organizations that require full control over their software, data, and infrastructure.

This version builds directly on priorities voiced by public administrations and large enterprises worldwide: protecting user data, reducing dependency on foreign vendors, and strengthening digital autonomy.

Why Digital Sovereignty Matters

For governments and enterprises, digital sovereignty is about more than philosophy. It’s about:

• National security: Reducing exposure to extraterritorial surveillance and software backdoors.
• Regulatory compliance: Meeting legal requirements like GDPR, national procurement laws, and IT localization mandates.
• Vendor independence: Avoiding forced migrations, aggressive licensing models, or unpredictable pricing from proprietary vendors.
• Strategic resilience: Keeping mission-critical systems operational without reliance on the cloud.

LibreOffice 25.8 is purpose-built for these goals.

Key Benefits in LibreOffice 25.8 for Institutions

Privacy-First Architecture

• Zero telemetry: No background data collection. LibreOffice is entirely transparent and silent by design.
• Full offline capability: Every feature works without internet access, ideal for secure, air-gapped, or mission-critical environments.
• OpenPGP encryption: Documents can be encrypted with user-managed keys, ensuring compliance with internal security policies.

Open Standards & Interoperability

• Native support for the Open Document Format (ODF), an ISO standard that guarantees long-term access and eliminates proprietary lock-in.
• Improved compatibility with Microsoft Office/365 formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx), enabling smooth transitions and document exchange.

Flexible Deployment & Integration

• Available for Windows, Linux, and macOS: supports heterogeneous IT environments.
• Seamless integration with Nextcloud, ownCloud, and self-hosted collaboration platforms.
• Scalable from a single secure workstation to full enterprise deployments with centralized configuration and policy enforcement.

Strategic Advantages for Public and Enterprise IT

• Cost Control: No license fees. LibreOffice can cut IT spending while aligning with public procurement regulations that mandate open standards and fair competition.
• Auditability: Fully open source. Every line of code is visible and verifiable, supporting audit requirements and reducing supply chain risks.
• Local Empowerment: Encourages national and regional IT ecosystems by enabling local support contracts, customization, and professional services, stimulating the domestic tech sector.

Real-World Adoption

Governments and large institutions across Europe, Latin America, and Asia have adopted LibreOffice as part of digital sovereignty initiatives. Government bodies in Germany, Denmark and France, and national ministries in Italy and Brazil, have turned to LibreOffice to reclaim control over their digital infrastructure.

LibreOffice is backed by The Document Foundation, a neutral, non-profit steward with a global contributor base, not a private corporation with conflicting interests.

Conclusion

LibreOffice 25.8 is more than a productivity tool. It’s a vehicle for strategic IT independence. With no data collection, no vendor lock-in, and complete local control, it’s ideally suited for:

• Ministries and government agencies
• Defense and infrastructure sectors
• Enterprises in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, legal)
• Educational institutions managing sensitive student data

It’s time to own your documents, own your infrastructure, and own your future.

Download LibreOffice 25.8 here

Get a quick overview of some of the new features in LibreOffice 25.8, released on Wednesday. (This video is also available on PeerTube).

The best open source office suite continues to evolve, while maintaining its focus on privacy and digital sovereignty

Berlin, 20 August 2025 – The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 25.8. This latest version of the market-leading free open source office suite maintains its focus on digital sovereignty and privacy protection. It offers individuals, organisations, and governments total control over their data and the most comprehensive productivity tools.

In a global context of growing concern about data privacy, cloud lock-in, and surveillance capitalism, LibreOffice 25.8 provides concrete solutions.

Open Source: The source code is available for inspection and is completely free from proprietary technology constraints.

Privacy and Control: LibreOffice does not collect personal data, usage metrics or diagnostic information, and complies with the data protection regulations required by public administration implementations (GDPR).

Local Execution: all features are executed locally on the user’s computer, without the need for an internet or cloud connection.

Self-Hosted Collaboration: Integration with on-premises cloud solutions, such as Nextcloud, enables teams to collaborate without sharing information with Big Tech.

LibreOffice 25.8: new performance and features

User Interface: the Welcome/What’s New dialog now offers access to the user interface picker and appearance options, allowing new users to leverage LibreOffice’s flexible UI and personalise the look and feel according to their preferences.

Performance: everything is faster, from startup to scrolling through large documents – with significant speed improvements on less powerful machines.

• In benchmark tests, Writer and Calc open files up to 30% faster.
• Optimised memory management allows for smoother operation on virtual desktops and thin clients.

Better Interoperability with Microsoft Office files, with more accurate handling of DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files and fewer formatting issues, thanks to changes such as:

• a complete overhaul of word hyphenation and spacing
• font management in Impress that is compatible with PowerPoint files
• the addition of new functions in Calc: CHOOSECOLS, CHOOSEROWS, DROP, EXPAND, HSTACK, TAKE, TEXTAFTER, TEXTBEFORE, TEXTSPLIT, TOCOL, TOROW, VSTACK, WRAPCOLS and WRAPROWS.

There are, of course, other important new features, such as the ability to export to the PDF 2.0 format, and several new ScriptForge library services. The complete list is available here: wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/25.8.

In terms of operating system support changes, LibreOffice 25.8 will no longer run on Windows 7 or 8/8.1 versions. It is also the last version to run on macOS 10.15. Support for x86 (32-bit) Windows versions is deprecated.

LibreOffice 25.8 for Businesses

The Document Foundation collaborates with a global network of certified partners who offer enterprise-grade support and maintenance, customised features and integrations, and assistance with user migration and training. A full list of partners can be found here: www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/.

Positioning of LibreOffice 25.8

LibreOffice 25.8 is completely free and offers a viable alternative to proprietary office suites for individual users, schools, businesses, and public institutions. It contains no advertising, data tracking, or subscriptions.

It is ideal for students and teachers who need reliable tools for documents, presentations and data analysis, as well as for home users and freelancers looking for a solid, free alternative to Microsoft Office/365 or Google Docs. It is also ideal for public administrations and companies that value data sovereignty and the long-term accessibility of documents.

LibreOffice 25.8 reaffirms our dedication to safeguarding the freedom and privacy of end users in the digital age. With this new release, we ensure that personal information stays where it belongs – with the individual. LibreOffice gives end users full control over their documents, helping them to avoid reliance on third-party platforms that might compromise their data or privacy. It’s about empowering users to work securely, independently and confidently, said Eliane Domingos, chairwoman of The Document Foundation.

LibreOffice 25.8 is available for Windows, macOS and Linux, with versions for Intel and ARM/Apple processors, at www.libreoffice.org/download/.

About The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation is a non-profit organisation that promotes open document formats and develops LibreOffice, the market-leading free open-source office suite. Its mission is to empower individuals and organisations to maintain control over their data and tools in an increasingly digital world dominated by closed platforms.

—

Press Kit: nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/doGTtfJSkNAtrNi
Video YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dIRR37PF7M
Video PeerTube: peertube.opencloud.lu/w/1J49cZ9NvZy1sLmx8dJKDi

• Milestone

A few highlights ✨:

• Implement support for HTTP 429 Too Many Requests and 503 Service Unavailable, obey Retry-After
• Add sort by category title, or by feed title
• Add search operator c: for categories like c:23,34 or !c:45,56
• Custom feed favicons
• Several security improvements, such as:
  • Implement reauthentication (sudo mode)
  • Add Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors
  • Ensure CSP everywhere
  • Fix access rights when creating a new user
• Several bug fixes, such as:
  • Fix redirections when scraping from HTML
  • Fix feed redirection when coming from WebSub
  • Fix support for XML feeds with HTML entities, or encoded in UTF-16LE
• Docker alternative image updated to Alpine 3.22 with PHP 8.4 (PHP 8.4 for default Debian image coming soon)
• Start supporting PHP 8.5+
• And much more…

This release has been made by @Alkarex, @Inverle, @the7thNightmare and newcomers @Deioces120, @Fraetor, @Tarow, @dotsam, @hilariousperson, @pR0Ps, @triatic, @tryallthethings

Full changelog:

• Features
  • Implement support for HTTP 429 Too Many Requests and 503 Service Unavailable, obey Retry-After #7760
  • Add sort by category title, or by feed title #7702
  • Add search operator c: for categories like c:23,34 or !c:45,56 #7696
  • Custom feed favicons #7646, #7704, #7717,
    #7792
  • Rework fetch favicons for fewer HTTP requests #7767
  • Add more unicity criteria based on title and/or content #7789
  • Automatically restore user configuration from backup #7682
  • API add support for states in s parameter of streamId #7695
  • Improve sharing via Print #7728
  • Redirect to the login page from bookmarklet instead of 403 #7782
  • Clean local cache more often, when refreshing feeds #7827
• Security
  • Implement reauthentication (sudo mode) #7753
  • Add Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors #7677
  • Ensure CSP everywhere #7810
  • Show warning when unsafe CSP policy is in use #7804
  • Fix access rights when creating a new user #7783
  • Improve security of form for user details #7771, #7786
  • Disallow setting non-existent theme #7722
  • Regenerate cookie ID after logging out #7762
  • Require current password when setting new password #7763
  • Add missing access checks for feed-related actions #7768
  • Strip more unsafe attributes such as referrerpolicy, ping #7770
  • Remove unneeded execution permissions #7802
• Bug fixing
  • Fix redirections when scraping from HTML #7654, #7741
  • Fix multiple authentication HTTP headers #7703
  • Fix HTML queries with a single feed #7730
  • WebSub: only perform a redirection when coming from WebSub #7738
  • Include enclosures in entries’ hash #7719
    • Negative side-effect: users of the option to automatically mark updated articles as unread will once have some articles with enclosures re-appear as unread
  • Fix cancellation of slider exit UI #7705
  • Honor disable update on update page #7733
  • Fix no registration limit setting #7751
  • Fix XML encoding of sharing functions #7822
• SimplePie
  • Fix propagation of HTTP error codes #7670
  • Fix support for XML feeds with HTML entities #7689, simplepie#915
  • Fix feeds encoded in UTF-16LE #7691, simplepie#916
  • Various upstream contributions simplepie#917, simplepie#924,
    simplepie#926, simplepie#932, simplepie#933
  • Sync upstream #7706, FreshRSS/simplepie#45, #7775,
    FreshRSS/simplepie#50, #7824, #7825,
  • Fix regex Backtrack limit was exhausted in clean_hash() #7813, FreshRSS/simplepie#48
• Deployment
  • Docker default image (Debian 12 Bookworm) updated to PHP 8.2.29 #7805
  • Docker alternative image updated to Alpine 3.22 with PHP 8.4.11 and Apache 2.4.65 #7740, #7740,
    #7803
  • Start supporting PHP 8.5+ #7787, #7826
    • Docker Alpine dev image :newest updated to PHP 8.5-alpha and Apache 2.4.65 #7773
  • Docker: interpolate FRESHRSS_INSTALL and FRESHRSS_USER variables #7725
  • Docker: Reduce how much data needs to be chown/chmod’ed on container startup #7793
  • Test for database PDO typing support during install (relevant for MySQL / MariaDB with obsolete driver) #7651
• Extensions
  • Add API endpoint for extensions #7576
  • Expose the reading modes for extensions #7668, #7688
  • New extension hook before_login_btn #7761
• UI
  • Improve mark as read request showing popup due to onbeforeunload #7554
  • Fix lazy-loading for <video poster="..."> and <image> #7636
  • Avoid styling <code> inside of <pre> #7797
  • Improve confirmation logic with data-auto-leave-validation #7785
  • Update chart.js to 4.5.0 #7752, #7816
  • Various UI and style improvements: #7616, #7811
• I18n
  • Show translation status in README #7715
  • Improve Indonesian #7654, #7721
  • Improve Persian #7795
• Misc.
  • Improve PHP code #7642, #7665, #7761,
    #7781, #7794
  • Update dev dependencies #7708, #7709, #7710,
    #7711, #7776, #7777

LibreOffice does not include artificial intelligence (AI) out-of-the-box. But many users want AI features in the suite – so we encourage developers to make them available as optional extensions. And that’s what Igor Támara did, creating the “Stable Diffusion for LibreOffice” extension for AI-generated images powered by AI Horde (a volunteer crowd-sourced distributed cluster of image generation workers).

We talked to Igor about the extension – here’s what he had to say:

What does the extension do?

You write some text describing an image, and get an AI image generated from the given text. You can tweak parameters, choose a model and use the best result on written documents, presentations or the place you prefer. The images are generated on volunteer GPUs through AI Horde.

When did you start working on it?

Two weeks ago, starting from a Gimp plugin as a base. I’m brand new to the LibreOffice project, and started it as a macro to get this functionality in the software. One week later I put it on GitHub.

Later on I got help from friendly people on the forum to turn it into an extension. I also joined the the chat and filled some requests in the bug tracker.

What are the current limitations, and what’s coming next?

Be aware that the text you provide is sent to AI Horde and seen by the machines that create the image, so do not send sensitive data. Also, you can get better results if you send the description of the desired image in English. You are encouraged to try different languages to see the results.

You need internet connection to use it. If you wanted to create images locally on your machine, it would take time to configure your environment with local AI models, with gigabytes of memory dedicated to this purpose, and maybe processing for hours to get something useful.

Sometimes the text can be marked as NSFW (“not safe for work”) – in which case you end up with black and white text saying so.

For now, the extension works in Writer and Impress; when invoked from other LibreOffice components, it opens a new text document and inserts the image along with the provided text.

The roadmap includes:

• Translating the plugin to other languages
• An option to pre-translate the text to English
• Better integration with LibreOffice Calc and Draw
• Earn kudos, rating the images to have more priority when requesting an image

How can others help to improve it?

Report any problems you find, and help to translate into your language. Please do so by filling an issue with your intention saying which language.

If you have a GPU (and good graphics hardware in general), you can volunteer as a worker joining the horde, to add to the computing power – and you can earn kudos to have higher priority when you need it.

If you work with a friendly company that wants to make use of the existing hardware, you can join the horde too.

One of the purposes of AI Horde is to aid education, having a special program for that.

This plugin and AI Horde are all open source, so everyone can learn and be as transparent as possible in this changing and revolutionary world of AI times.

There might be concerns about the use of products and the ownership of work. As I see it, we are always learning by example and reusing what others have invented from thousands of years ago, like how to walk, make fire, communicate, explore, recreate and mix. We can continue to learn and make fair use of resources – and contribute too.

Click here to get the extension

In the digital world, document formats are essential. Proprietary formats such as Microsoft Word’s DOCX or Excel’s XLSX dominate the workplace, but at the same time they lock users into a specific vendor and its business strategies, which tend to exploit users to the maximum in every way. The Open Document Format (ODF) offers an open, standard alternative that protects users and their privacy, promotes interoperability, long-term access and data ownership.

Migrating documents from proprietary formats to ODF is the solution, and although vendors who rely on proprietary formats – not only Microsoft, but also its freeware clones such as OnlyOffice or WPS Office – do everything they can to prevent it, it is very easy and represents a fundamental step forward for users in terms of privacy and digital sovereignty (i.e., ownership of their own content).

This guide breaks down the migration process to make the transition smooth, efficient and sustainable, both at the individual level (where problems are virtually non-existent) and at the enterprise level, where problems exist due to the lock-in strategies of proprietary formats.

Step 1: Understand ODF and its advantages

• No dependence on a single vendor: freedom to use any compatible software
• Better long-term accessibility, robustness and stability of storage
• Transparency and security, thanks to full compliance with open specifications
• Better interoperability between platforms and tools

Step 2: Document inventory to define conversion priorities and estimate the effort required for migration

• Identification of file types (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX) and their number
• Analysis of documents to distinguish between active (used periodically) documents, those that can be archived and obsolete documents
• Analysis of documents with complex formatting or embedded multimedia content

Step 3: plan the migration workflow

• Convert documents in bulk or gradually as needed?
• Pilot phase with a small group of users to identify any issues with the documents before the mass conversion
• User training on the migration and creation of a support service for conversions and backup management

Step 4: Converting documents to ODF format

• Use the LibreOffice export function (‘Save As’)
• Use batch conversion tools for large volumes (LibreOffice command line scripts)
• Validate converted files to ensure formatting and data integrity
• Back up original files until migration is successfully completed

Step 5: Monitoring the migration

• Updating internal policies to make ODF the default format for document creation and sharing, and to prevent a return to proprietary formats
• Monitoring user feedback and trends in document creation, and resolving issues in a timely manner
• Integrating ODF support into enterprise software platforms, and using automatic conversions where possible

Conclusion

Migrating from proprietary formats to ODF is a strategic move, both individually and for businesses, towards openness, content control and document protection for the future. In a business environment, it requires careful planning and user involvement, but the benefits in terms of flexibility, interoperability and cost savings are well worth the effort.

LibreOffice 25.8 will be released next week, on August 20, 2025 (check the Release Plan). LibreOffice 25.8 RC3 brings us closer to the final version, which will be preceded by a last minute LibreOffice 25.8 RC4 needed for a fix solving an easy to trigger crash. Check the release notes to find the new features included in this version of LibreOffice.

LibreOffice 25.8 RC3 is already available, while LibreOffice 25.8 RC4 will be available from Thursday, August 14. Both can be downloaded for Linux, macOS and Windows, and will replace the standard installation.

In case you find any problem in these pre-releases, please report it in Bugzilla (you just need a legit email account in order to create a new account). For help, you can contact the QA Team directly in the QA IRC channel or via Matrix.

LibreOffice is a volunteer-driven community project, so please help us to test, we appreciate your contribution! Happy testing!!!

This is the BETA release for Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara”.

Linux Mint 22.2 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2029. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use.

New features:

This new version of Linux Mint contains many improvements.

For an overview of the new features please visit:

“What’s new in Linux Mint 22.2“.

System requirements:

• 2GB RAM (4GB recommended for a comfortable usage).
• 20GB of disk space (100GB recommended).
• 1024×768 resolution (on lower resolutions, press ALT to drag windows with the mouse if they don’t fit in the screen).

Upgrade instructions:

• This BETA release might contain critical bugs, please only use it for testing purposes and to help the Linux Mint team fix issues prior to the stable release.
• Upgrade instructions will be published after the stable release of Linux Mint 22.2.
• It will be possible to upgrade from this BETA to the stable release.
• It will also be possible to upgrade from Linux Mint 22.1.

Bug reports:

• Bugs in this release should be reported on Github at https://github.com/linuxmint/mint22.2-beta.
• Create one issue per bug.
• As described in the Linux Mint Troubleshooting Guide, do not report or create issues for observations.
• Be as accurate as possible and include any information that might help developers reproduce the issue or understand the cause of the issue:
  • Bugs we can reproduce, or which cause we understand are usually fixed very easily.
  • It is important to mention whether a bug happens “always”, or “sometimes”, and what triggers it.
  • If a bug happens but didn’t happen before, or doesn’t happen in another distribution, or doesn’t happen in a different environment, please mention it and try to pinpoint the differences at play.
  • If we can’t reproduce a particular bug and we don’t understand its cause, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to fix it.
• The BETA phase is literally a bug squashing rush, where the team is extremely busy and developers try to fix as many bugs as fast as possible.
• There usually are a huge number of reports and very little time to answer everyone or explain why a particular report is not considered a bug, or won’t get fixed. Don’t let this frustrate you, whether it’s acknowledged or not, we appreciate everyone’s help.

Download links:

Cinnamon Edition:

• Torrent https://linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-22.2-cinnamon-64bit-beta.iso.torrent
• World Cicku
• World Linux Mint
• World Rackers
• Canada Manitoba Unix User Group
• Canada University of Waterloo Computer Science Club
• USA advancedhosters.com
• USA Clarkson University
• USA Fremont Cabal Internet Exchange
• USA GigeNET
• USA Harvard School of Engineering
• USA Hoobly
• USA James Madison University
• USA kernel.org
• USA Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13
• USA MIRhosting
• USA Open Computing Facility at UC Berkeley
• USA Purdue Linux Users Group
• USA Sonic
• USA Team Cymru
• USA TeraSwitch
• USA US Internet
• USA XMission Internet
• Belarus ByFly
• Belgium Unix-Solutions
• Bulgaria IPACCT
• Bulgaria Telepoint
• Bulgaria University of Ruse
• Czech Republic CZ.NIC
• Czech Republic IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center
• Czech Republic UPC Ceska republika
• Czech Republic Webglobe
• Denmark c0urier.net
• Denmark Dotsrc.org
• Denmark KLID
• France CNRS IBCP
• France Crifo.org
• France Johnnybegood
• France Université de Reims
• Germany c48.uk
• Germany dogado GmbH
• Germany Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• Germany Funkfreunde Landshut e.V.
• Germany GWDG
• Germany Hochschule Esslingen University of Applied Sciences
• Germany IPB Internet Provider in Berlin GmbH
• Germany NetCologne GmbH
• Germany Netzwerge GmbH
• Germany PyrateLAN.party
• Germany University of Frankfurt
• Germany wilhelm.tel GmbH
• Greece GreekLUG
• Greece University of Crete
• Hungary Quantum Mirror
• Ireland Webworld
• Italy GARR
• Latvia koyanet.lv
• Moldova iHost
• Netherlands Evoluso.com
• Netherlands LiteServer
• Netherlands MIRhosting
• Netherlands NLUUG
• Netherlands Triple IT
• Poland ICM – University of Warsaw
• Poland Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
• Portugal FCCN
• Portugal PTISP
• Portugal RNL – Técnico Lisboa
• Portugal Universidade do Porto
• Romania Hosterion
• Romania Hostico
• Romania Orange Romania
• Russia HyperDedic
• Russia Powernet ISP
• Russia Yandex Team
• Serbia SOX
• Serbia University of Kragujevac
• Spain Aire Networks
• Spain Oficina de Software Libre do Cixug
• Spain Raiola Networks
• Sweden Academic Computer Club
• Sweden Bahnhof
• Sweden Brain Drain Lan
• Sweden Infania Networks
• Sweden Zetup
• Switzerland GoFOSS
• Switzerland Init7
• Switzerland Metanet.ch
• Turkey ekiphost
• Turkey Guzel Hosting
• Turkey Linux Kullanicilari Dernegi
• Turkey Verinomi
• Ukraine Distrohub
• Ukraine Hostiko
• Ukraine IP-Connect LLC
• United Kingdom c48.uk
• United Kingdom QuickHost
• United Kingdom Server.net
• United Kingdom UK Dedicated Servers
• United Kingdom UKFast
• United Kingdom University of Kent UK Mirror Service
• United Kingdom VineHost
• Azerbaijan OUR.Technology
• Bangladesh XeonBD
• China Alibaba Cloud
• China Beijing Foreign Studies University
• China Nanjing University
• China Shanghai Jiao Tong University Linux User Group (SJTUG)
• China TUNA
• China University of Science and Technology of China Linux User Group
• Hong Kong KoDDoS
• India Albony Network
• India NxtGen DataCenter
• India PicoNets-WebWerks
• Indonesia DatautamaNET
• Indonesia Heru.id
• Japan ICSCoE
• Japan repo.jing.rocks
• Japan Yamagata University
• Kazakhstan Hoster.kz
• Kazakhstan PS Internet Company LLC
• Singapore Freedif
• Singapore jingk.ai
• South Korea Archive of Siwoo
• South Korea Jeonnam High School
• South Korea KAIST
• Taiwan Taiwan Digital Streaming Co.
• Thailand Khon Kaen University
• Vietnam Clearsky
• Vietnam MeowSMP.net
• Australia AARNet
• New Zealand University of Canterbury
• Argentina Zero.com.ar
• Brazil C3SL
• Chile Universidad de La Frontera
• Ecuador CEDIA
• Botswana Retention Range
• Kenya Liquid Telecom
• Mauritius cloud.mu
• South Africa Dimension Data
• South Africa University of Free State

Xfce Edition:

• Torrent https://linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-22.2-xfce-64bit-beta.iso.torrent
• World Cicku
• World Linux Mint
• World Rackers
• Canada Manitoba Unix User Group
• Canada University of Waterloo Computer Science Club
• USA advancedhosters.com
• USA Clarkson University
• USA Fremont Cabal Internet Exchange
• USA GigeNET
• USA Harvard School of Engineering
• USA Hoobly
• USA James Madison University
• USA kernel.org
• USA Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13
• USA MIRhosting
• USA Open Computing Facility at UC Berkeley
• USA Purdue Linux Users Group
• USA Sonic
• USA Team Cymru
• USA TeraSwitch
• USA US Internet
• USA XMission Internet
• Belarus ByFly
• Belgium Unix-Solutions
• Bulgaria IPACCT
• Bulgaria Telepoint
• Bulgaria University of Ruse
• Czech Republic CZ.NIC
• Czech Republic IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center
• Czech Republic UPC Ceska republika
• Czech Republic Webglobe
• Denmark c0urier.net
• Denmark Dotsrc.org
• Denmark KLID
• France CNRS IBCP
• France Crifo.org
• France Johnnybegood
• France Université de Reims
• Germany c48.uk
• Germany dogado GmbH
• Germany Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• Germany Funkfreunde Landshut e.V.
• Germany GWDG
• Germany Hochschule Esslingen University of Applied Sciences
• Germany IPB Internet Provider in Berlin GmbH
• Germany NetCologne GmbH
• Germany Netzwerge GmbH
• Germany PyrateLAN.party
• Germany University of Frankfurt
• Germany wilhelm.tel GmbH
• Greece GreekLUG
• Greece University of Crete
• Hungary Quantum Mirror
• Ireland Webworld
• Italy GARR
• Latvia koyanet.lv
• Moldova iHost
• Netherlands Evoluso.com
• Netherlands LiteServer
• Netherlands MIRhosting
• Netherlands NLUUG
• Netherlands Triple IT
• Poland ICM – University of Warsaw
• Poland Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center
• Portugal FCCN
• Portugal PTISP
• Portugal RNL – Técnico Lisboa
• Portugal Universidade do Porto
• Romania Hosterion
• Romania Hostico
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We look forward to receiving your feedback. Many thanks in advance for testing the BETA!

Adhering to these guidelines can enhance productivity and guarantee that documents remain consistent, robust and accessible over time, irrespective of the platform.

Firstly, use an editor such as LibreOffice that natively supports the format without conversion. This preserves the nuances of the ODF XML structure, supports all its features and reduces the risk of formatting issues or data loss. It also ensures that documents are fully compatible with the ISO standard.

Secondly, use an up-to-date version of LibreOffice to benefit from continuous improvements in ODF feature management, avoid bugs that could cause file corruption (a rare event thanks to the robustness of the ODF format, but still possible) and enjoy the highest level of security in file management.

Thirdly, use LibreOffice document templates and styles for all elements, such as headings, fonts, paragraphs, and tables, to ensure consistent formatting throughout the document. This allows you to make global changes quickly by changing the style rather than each individual element, and improves accessibility, as screen readers and other assistive technologies rely on a consistent structure. This also results in smaller, more robust ODF files.

Creating and reusing LibreOffice templates is an excellent practice for companies that produce many similar documents (such as invoices or monthly reports). Once all the characteristics of the document have been defined, simply save it in ‘template’ format to obtain a blank copy with all repetitive elements already in place.

The fourth condition is to save and back up documents frequently and regularly. ODF files are compressed XML files, which makes them robust and reliable, but not immune to problems. In a business environment, it is advisable to use a cloud storage solution with a version history, such as Nextcloud, which allows you to revert to an earlier version of a file.

The fifth recommendation is to avoid overly complex formatting to ensure maximum compatibility when sharing ODF files with a diverse audience or converting them to other formats, such as Microsoft Office proprietary formats, because complicated layouts, embedded objects or macros may not work or appear differently.

It is recommended that you use basic styles and standard LibreOffice fonts (open source and available to all users), or fonts that can be installed by any user, independently of the operating system, even if backed by an End User Licence Agreement (such as Microsoft Aptos, which can only be downloaded from the Microsoft website). You should also avoid excessive use of tables or nested text boxes.

The sixth condition is to integrate multimedia content sensibly, optimising images or videos used in presentations to reduce their size without compromising quality.

The seventh and final condition is to always save the original file in ODF format, even when sharing with users who insist on using Microsoft Office’s proprietary format — thereby handing over ownership of their files to Microsoft. Once the document is finalised, save a copy in OOXML format and share this with Microsoft users.

Similarly, when receiving an OOXML document from a Microsoft user, immediately save a copy in ODF format for editing until the document is finalised and the OOXML copy can be shared again.

When sharing a document within a team, it is advisable to use comments to provide feedback instead of editing the body of the document, enabling change tracking so that changes can be reviewed before acceptance or rejection. Where possible, collaborate on a shared ODF platform based on LibreOffice technology and the cloud, such as Collabora Online.

Open standard formats such as ODF allow you to avoid dependence on a single supplier, maintain ownership and control of your documents, and future-proof your work — but only if used wisely. Following best practices will enable you to manage ODF documents more smoothly and conveniently without sacrificing any of the advantages of the ISO standard format.

Love LibreOffice development? Want to turn your passion into a paid job? We are The Document Foundation (TDF), the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice. We’re passionate about free software, the open source culture and about bringing new companies and people with fresh ideas into our community.

To improve the user interface of LibreOffice, the office productivity suite for over 200 million users around the globe, we’re searching for a developer (m/f/d) to start work (from home) as soon as possible. This is what you’ll do:

• Work on the LibreOffice codebase (mostly C++)
• Focus on LibreOffice’s user interface, in the way it is rendered and laid out
• Fix bugs, implement new features, and improve the quality of the UI code in LibreOffice while working together with the design team and other contributors
• Document what you do, actively share knowledge in public with volunteers and contributors via blog posts, workshops and conference talks, so other developers and users have an easier time learning about your work

Examples of tasks:

• Convert the remaining uses of macOS Carbon API to Cocoa and move from deprecated functions to supported ones
• Rework the code responsible for the Tabbed UI and other alternative UIs to make it consistent with the rest of the UI

What we want from you:

• Very good C++ development skills
• Proven experience working on macOS
• Proven experience working with UI toolkits
• Good understanding of graphics programming
• Good team-playing skills
• Speaking and writing English

Previous development experience under Windows and Linux and contributions to FOSS projects (show us your repos!) are a plus. A previously established relationship within the developer community, as well as with other teams such as QA is a plus, but it is not mandatory at the start and can be achieved during the work itself.

As always, TDF will give some preference to individuals who have previously shown a commitment to TDF, including but not limited to members of TDF. Not being a member does not exclude any applicants from consideration.

Join us!

All jobs at The Document Foundation are remote jobs, where you can work from your home office or a co-working space. The work time during the day is flexible, apart from a few fixed meetings. The role is offered as full-time (ideally 40 hours per week). While we prefer full-time for the role, part-time applications, or proposals to grow the hours over time, will be considered. Candidates that are resident in (or willing to relocate to) Germany will be employed directly by TDF. Otherwise, external payroll services will be used if available in the candidate’s country of residence.

Are you interested? Get in touch! We aim to schedule the first interview within two weeks of your application. You can also approach us any time for an informal chat, to learn about the role or in case of questions.

TDF welcomes applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, gender, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age. Don’t be afraid to be different, and stay true to yourself. We like you that way!

We’re looking forward to receiving your application, including information about you (your resume), when you are available for the job, and of course your financial expectations. Pointing to public repositories with your code is very helpful. Please send us an e-mail to developers@documentfoundation.org no later than September 12, 2025. If you haven’t received feedback by October 13, 2025, your application could not be considered.

Also note: we only accept applications from the applicant, and not from any intermediary. We do not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to any recruiting alias or employee.

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

• We started July with some very positive news: a Danish Ministry is switching from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice. The goal is to “create more competition and innovation – and reduce Denmark’s dependence on the few”.

• Then we posted the LibreOffice Podcast, Episode #4 – Documentation in Free and Open Source Software. What exactly makes “good” documentation? And why is it important today? Watch to learn more (also available on PeerTube).

• Throughout the month, we posted various articles about the Open Document format and XML: Technology at the heart of our daily lives; The role of XML in interoperability; An artificially complex XML schema as a lock-in tool; and Understanding ODF file types: .odt, .ods, .odp, and beyond.

• On July 17, we announced LibreOffice 25.2.5. This is the fifth minor update to the 25.2 branch, with bugfixes and compatibility improvements. All users are recommended to upgrade.

• And while that branch is being updated regularly, we’re also preparing for the next major release. LibreOffice 25.8 RC2 is available for testing – thanks in advance to everyone who helps to report issues, so we can make it a rock-solid final version!

• In Documentation news, the Getting Started Guide 25.2 was published after some months of work. Well done to everyone involved!

• And finally, the Call for Proposals for the LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025 was opened. The event will take place in Tokyo on 13 and 14 December.

Keep in touch – follow us on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, Reddit and Facebook. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join our community and help to make LibreOffice even better!

🐛 Bug Fixes & Minor Changes

• Increased allowed cache sizes (#862) by @spacecowboy in #862

🌐 Translations

• Updated Latvian translation using Weblate by @Coool in commit
• Updated Hungarian translation using Weblate in #811
• Updated Thai translation using Weblate by @bowornsin in commit
• Updated Bulgarian translation using Weblate by @trunars in commit
• Updated Tamil translation using Weblate by @TamilNeram in #825
• Updated Slovak translation using Weblate by @martinco78 in #850
• Updated Indonesian translation using Weblate by @zmni in commit
• Updated Finnish translation using Weblate by @Ricky-Tigg in #861
• Updated Portuguese (Portugal) translation using Weblate by @SantosSi in commit

❤️ New Contributors

• @martinco78 made their first contribution in #850

ODF ensures that documents remain accessible, portable, and free from restrictions. Now that version 1.3 has been widely adopted and version 1.4 is on the horizon, it’s time to have a look at the new features and upcoming releases.

ODF 1.3: What’s New

ODF 1.3 was finalised in January 2021 by OASIS. It introduced a number of long-awaited improvements, particularly in the areas of security, digital signatures, and document integrity.

1. Digital signatures and document security:

One of the most significant enhancements in ODF 1.3 was the formal specification for digital signatures:

• It now supports XAdES (XML Advanced Electronic Signatures).
• You can sign entire documents, individual parts (e.g. only spreadsheets), or even multiple sections.
• Improved metadata provides information about who signed, when and under what circumstances.

This is a significant development for public administrations and organisations that require reliable document verification.

2. OpenPGP support for encryption

• ODF 1.3 now offers optional OpenPGP-based encryption in addition to the traditional Blowfish method.
• Higher cryptographic standards and better integration with tools such as GnuPG are also included.
• It encourages key-based encryption for personal and business documents.

3. Change management:

• The format now offers greater granularity for change management.
• Supports change tracking in tables, which was previously a weak point.
• Improves compatibility with editing tools that handle collaborative workflows.

4. Metadata:

• Improved management of custom metadata fields using RDF.
• Greater richness of semantic descriptions of content (e.g. for archival or academic purposes).
• Encourages integration with deep graphs and linked data systems.

5. Other changes:

• New chart types and charting features.
• Improved text formatting options.
• Improved compliance with accessibility standards.

ODF 1.3 introduced two new compliance modes: Strict, for clean documents that comply with the specifications, and Extended, which allows specific enhancements by a company for broader feature support.

What’s new in ODF 1.4

ODF 1.4 is still under active development, with the first drafts already implemented in the latest versions of LibreOffice. Although the specifications are not final, the following is planned:

1. Change tracking:

• Support for tracking style changes (e.g. switching from bold to italic).
• Better differentiation between insertions, deletions and formatting changes.
• Change IDs and support for real-time conflict resolution for collaborative editing.

2. Charts:

• More flexibility in charts, including custom colours, gradient fills, multiple axes and formatted data labels.
• Better alignment with modern expectations and improved interoperability with Excel.

3. Accessibility:

• Clearer semantics for assistive technologies.
• Improved navigation for screen readers.
• Structural tags for headings, lists and tables make documents easier to analyse programmatically.

4. Form controls:

• More robust form field types, such as date pickers, drop-down menus and sliders.
• Better interaction support for forms within spreadsheets and presentations.
• Cross-platform consistency.

5. Improved spreadsheet features:

• Native support for named ranges in the sheet.
• Improved formula representation for functions in edge cases.
• More complex conditional formatting rules.

6. Compatibility:

• Mapping of Microsoft Office formats (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX) to reduce conversion issues.
• Improved handling of embedded media and OOXML-style layouts.

Final considerations

ODF 1.3 represented a significant advancement in terms of security and interoperability. ODF 1.4 adds usability improvements, more modern features, and better alignment with current office suite trends.

With an increasing number of governments and organisations adopting open standards, the evolution of ODF is crucial. The focus is not on competing with Microsoft; it’s about ensuring that your documents remain yours.

Photo from the LibreOffice Asia Conference 2024

This is a translation of the Japanese post:

---

The LibreOffice Asia Conference Committee is pleased to invite proposals for talks at the LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025, which will be held in Tokyo, Japan, on December 13 (Saturday) and 14 (Sunday), at IIJ Head Office (Iidabashi Grand Bloom).

This conference brings together LibreOffice users and contributors across Asia — including developers, translators, QA testers, community organizers, and marketing professionals — to share knowledge, tools, experiences, and challenges. We will welcome international guests, including team members from The Document Foundation, and encourage cross-border exchange and collaboration.

The conference will be held as a single-track event over two days, with most sessions in English. However, talks in Japanese are also welcome. If you plan to give your talk in Japanese, please prepare your slides in English so that non-Japanese-speaking attendees can follow along. We may also organize separate workshops or additional sessions.

Please make sure to check the following for details such as the event schedule.
(The information will be updated as needed.)
wiki.documentfoundation.org/Events/2025/LibreOffice_Asia_Conference

Here are some examples of topics (but not limited to):

• Case studies of LibreOffice adoption or ODF migration efforts
• Technical insights into LibreOffice code development
• Community activities such as translation, quality assurance, outreach, or marketing
• Tips and techniques for using LibreOffice effectively

Talk duration: 25 minutes including Q&A

• The presentation will be recorded and made publicly available.
• Please apply the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license to your presentation slides.
• Please submit your slides after the event.

Travel support:
We may provide travel support to accepted speakers traveling from outside Tokyo:

• Airfare or bullet train tickets
• Hotel accommodation (up to 2 nights; up to 4 nights for those traveling long distances, e.g., from overseas)

How to submit

Please submit your proposal via the following website:
events.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice-asia-conference-2025/
If you have difficulty submitting through the website, please send an email to ja-contact@libreoffice.org with the following information and with the email subject “Proposal Submission for LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025”:

• Your name
• Your email address
• Your profile
• Talk title
• Abstract (around 130-250 words)
• Travel cost approximate estimation (only if you want to request travel support)

Due to limited hotel availability in Tokyo, please make a cancelable hotel reservation at the time of your CFP submission.

Submission deadline: September 16, 2025, 23:59 (JST, UTC+9)

Notification of acceptance: by October 1, 2025

The LibreOffice Documentation Team is excited to announce the release of the brand new Getting Started Guide 25.2, updated with all the latest features of LibreOffice 25.2!

Whether you’re brand new to LibreOffice or just want a fast track to mastering its tools, this guide is your perfect starting point. Inside, you’ll find easy-to-follow introductions to:

Writer (word processing)
Calc (spreadsheets)
Impress (presentations)
Draw (vector graphics)
Math (formula editor)
Base (database management)

This guide is part of our growing collection of documentation — lovingly written, edited, and reviewed by a global team of dedicated volunteers who are passionate about open-source software and digital freedom.

The 25.2 update was coordinated by Dione Maddern, with valuable contributions from Peter Schofield, Jean Weber, Ed Olson, Karen Burke, B. Antonio F., and Olivier Hallot. A huge thanks to everyone involved!

Ready to dive in? Download the guide for free from the Documentation website or check it out on the Bookshelf Project.

LibreOffice 25.8 will be released as final on August, 20, 2025 (check the Release Plan). LibreOffice 25.8 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) brings us closer to the final version, which will be preceded by Release Candidate 3 (RC3). Check the release notes to find the new features included in this version of LibreOffice.

LibreOffice 25.8 RC1 can be downloaded for Linux, macOS and Windows, and it will replace the standard installation.

In case you find any problem in this pre-release, please report it in Bugzilla (you just need a legit email account in order to create a new account).

For help, you can contact the QA Team directly in the QA IRC channel or via Matrix.

LibreOffice is a volunteer-driven community project, so please help us to test, we appreciate your contribution! Happy testing!!!

If you’ve ever wondered what those .odt, .ods, or .odp files are all about – or if you’ve stumbled across them and weren’t sure what to do – this post is for you.

.odt: The Open Document Text File

Think of .odt as the open counterpart to .docx. It’s the default file format for LibreOffice Writer. You can use it for everything from a quick grocery list to a dissertation.

What’s great about .odt is that it’s built on open standards. That means anyone can build software to read or write it without jumping through legal hoops. It also means you’re not tied to one company’s ecosystem, which is increasingly important when you think about long-term access to your own data.

Yes, you can open .odt files in Word – and yes, the formatting usually holds up pretty well. Not perfect, but usable.

.ods: Spreadsheets Without Strings Attached

Spreadsheets aren’t just for accountants anymore. Whether you’re managing a budget, tracking tasks, or planning a trip, you’re probably using rows and columns for something. .ods is the ODF version of .xlsx, and it’s handled by tools like LibreOffice Calc.

If you’re used to Excel, Calc will feel familiar enough. Basic formulas, charts, conditional formatting – it’s all there. Advanced Excel users might bump into limits (especially with macros or highly specific plugins), but for everyday work, .ods gets the job done.

And again, it’s open. Your data isn’t buried in a proprietary format you need a subscription to access five years from now.

.odp: Presentations Without PowerPoint

Then there’s .odp, the ODF format for presentations. It works like PowerPoint’s .pptx. You’ve got slides. You’ve got transitions. You’ve got bullet points. Even if you’re trying to build the next TED Talk with embedded video and flashy animations, it’s more than enough.

LibreOffice Impress opens and edits .odp files easily, and you can usually open them in PowerPoint too, though some visual effects might not translate perfectly. For most professional or academic presentations, it’s a reliable option – especially when you don’t know what software will be available on the receiving end.

Other File Types in the ODF Family

ODF isn’t limited to just text, spreadsheets, and slides. There are a few lesser-known formats worth mentioning:

• .odg – for vector graphics and diagrams. Think flowcharts, not Photoshop.
• .odf – confusingly, this one’s for formulas (as in math), used by LibreOffice Math.
• Templates like .ott (text), .ots (spreadsheets), and .otp (presentations) make it easy to standardize layouts and branding across documents.

These formats are all part of the same ecosystem. They’re modular, open, and designed to work well together.

Why It Matters

It’s easy to dismiss file formats as a technical detail, but they shape who controls access to your work. When you rely only on proprietary formats, you’re tied to that company’s tools, updates, subscriptions and limitations. You’re renting your own documents.

ODF flips that script. It’s not just a format – it’s a philosophy. One that says your work belongs to you, and you should be able to access it any time, on your terms.

If you’re already using open-source tools, chances are you’re already working in ODF whether you realized it or not. If not, it’s worth considering – especially if you want to keep your documents open, portable and future-proof.

A document format is a tool for sharing knowledge and, as such, should be as simple and accessible as possible in relation to the complexity of the document content itself. This remains true even when the format is based on an XML schema that is hidden from users when the document is displayed on screen.

Unfortunately, while an XML schema can be simple, it can also be unnecessarily complex, bloated, convoluted and difficult to implement without specific knowledge of its features. This is true even if the on-screen documents are identical. In this case, complexity is an intentional tactic used to lock users into a vendor, as is the case with the Microsoft 365 document format.

An XML schema comprises the structure, data types and rules of an XML document and is described in an XML Schema Definition (XSD) file. This tells the PC what to expect and checks that the data follows the rules. In theory, XML and XSD together form the basis of the concept of interoperability. However, in practice, an XML schema can be made so complex that it becomes a barrier rather than a bridge.

An “artificially complex” XML schema goes beyond the level of complexity needed to display even the most intricate content on screen. In fact, it is completely disconnected from the actual complexity of the content, to the extent that even a simple sentence such as “To be, or not to be, that is the question” becomes an inextricable sequence of tags that users cannot access.

This artificial complexity is characterised by a deeply nested tag structure with excessive abstraction, dozens or even hundreds of optional or overloaded elements, non-intuitive naming conventions, the widespread use of extension points and wildcards, the multiple import of namespaces and type hierarchies, and sparse or cryptic documentation.

In the case of the Microsoft 365 document format, the only characteristic not present is sparse or cryptic documentation, given that we are talking about a set of documents totalling over 8,000 pages. All the other characteristics are present to a greater or lesser extent, making life almost impossible for a developer trying to implement the schema.

To illustrate how this translates into a lock-in strategy, consider a railway system where the tracks are accessible to all, but the main train manufacturer imposes its own incredibly complicated control system. In theory, anyone could build a train compatible with the tracks, but the control system specifications are so convoluted that only the main train manufacturer can ultimately offer rail services.

The worst thing is that passengers don’t realise they are being held hostage by technical constraints that they cannot understand until ticket prices rise or the number of cities served declines. At this point, the main manufacturer can dictate its terms, which passengers are forced to accept.

This is very similar to what is happening in the world of information technology, where Microsoft is effectively forcing its customers to switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11 against their will. This switch has no technical justification and locks customers into using Windows 11 and Microsoft 365. This is because customers have completely ignored the problems that arise from using proprietary technologies.

If, over the years, the millions of Microsoft users who uncritically accepted a narrative that was credible to non-technical users but divorced from technological reality had taken a critical stance towards this monopoly, which would have raised doubts in any other sector, we would be in a very different situation today.

Instead, these users – including governments and supranational organisations – have allowed lock-in strategies, in which Microsoft 365’s artificially and unnecessarily complex XML document schema plays a fundamental strategic role, to become increasingly sophisticated and pervasive.

Therefore, if you are developing or choosing an XML-based system, bear in mind that complexity imprisons people, whereas simplicity and clarity set them free.

LibreOffice 24.8 has now reached the end of life, so all users have to update their free office suite to the latest release

Berlin, 17 July 2025 – The Document Foundation announces the release of LibreOffice 25.2.5, the fifth maintenance release of the LibreOffice 25.2 family for Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM), macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux OSs, available for download at www.libreoffice.org/download [1].

LibreOffice 24.8 has reached the end of life, which means that this release – which includes dozen of fixes and enhancements that further improve reliability, performance and interoperability – is suggested for production environments, and all users should update their installation as soon as possible.

LibreOffice 25.2.5 is based on the LibreOffice Technology, which enables the development of desktop, mobile and cloud versions – either from TDF or from the ecosystem – that fully support the two ISO standards for document formats: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the closed and proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).

Products based on the LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) and the cloud.

For enterprise-class deployments, TDF recommends a LibreOffice Enterprise-optimized version from one of the ecosystem companies, with dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as SLAs and security patch backports for three to five years.

English manuals for LibreOffice 25.2 Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw and Math are available for download at books.libreoffice.org/en/. End users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website: ask.libreoffice.org.

Downloading LibreOffice

All available versions of LibreOffice for the desktop can be downloaded from the same website: www.libreoffice.org/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project by making a donation: www.libreoffice.org/donate.

[1] Fixes in RC1: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.5/RC1. Fixes in RC2: wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/25.2.5/RC2.

Hello everyone,

Many thanks to our sponsors and to all of you who support the project with your donations.

Linux Mint 22.2

The team is working on a BETA release for Linux Mint 22.2.

This new version introduces an HWE kernel, fingerprint authentication, theme updates, accent color support and improved libAdwaita compatibility. Work also continues in the Cinnamon edition, to make input methods and keyboard layouts compatible with Wayland.

Packages and projects are being finalized. Pull requests are being merged. There is no set date for the release but we’re hoping to get the BETA out by the end of July or the beginning of August.

LMDE 7

After Linux Mint 22.2 gets its stable release, the focus is likely to switch in September to LMDE 7, codenamed “Gigi”.

Gigi will come with all the improvements featured in Linux Mint 22.2 but on top of a Debian 13 package base instead of Ubuntu 24.04.

Another key improvement in LMDE 7 compared to LMDE 6 will be that it will support OEM installations.

Moderation

We unfortunately had to tighten moderation settings on this blog and it’s a real shame.

When we say everyone is welcome here, it means absolutely EVERYONE, no exceptions. This can only work if divisive topics are left behind and people refrain from labeling or excluding each other. Here, we’re all the same. Everybody’s welcome to participate. There’s no such thing as “freedom of speech”. We’re not here to fight for such or such ideas, we’re here to build something together and to protect our project and our community. We want comments to be on-topic and constructive, always.

We will not tolerate any kind of ideology.

We’re already bombarded by commercial spam. This is one of the last places in our community where you can interact without having to authenticate. I’m really hoping it can stay that way.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors: Silver Sponsors:

Bronze Sponsors:

Donations in June:

A total of $15,453 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 468 donors:

$600, Eric F. aka “f0r73”
$531 (3rd donation), SunWare Solartechnik Produktions-GmbH & Co KG
$531, David W.
$500, Luke | onlyfastcode.com
$400, Maxwell
$300 (4th donation), Gregory F.
$265, H.J.M. S.
$250 (4th donation), Benjamin M.
$212, Loraine M.
$200 (9th donation), James F.
$200, Gail N.
$159,
$159, Daniel M.
$150, Loretta O.
$120 (7th donation), Michael P.
$107 (2nd donation), Paul E.
$106, Camping-Park L%FCneburger Heide
$106, Cryptobuffet
$106, Hans D. aka “HWD”
$106, Johannes H.
$106, Ludwig A.
$106, Murray L. H.
$106, Ole H.
$100 (22nd donation), John Mc aka “Land Research Project“
$100 (14th donation), Mountain Computers, Inc aka “MTNCOMP aka GGPCTU“
$100 (5th donation), Dale H.
$100 (2nd donation), Anita L.
$100 (2nd donation), Mark S.
$100, Andrey S.
$100, Brent F.
$100, gerald S.
$100, John B.
$100, Travis F.
$100, William R.
$84 (3rd donation), Sebastian Friedrich
$70, Nick M.
$61 (72nd donation), Michael R.
$53 (18th donation), Paul S. E. aka “Paul”
$53 (11th donation), Jyrki A.
$53 (11th donation), Mimi
$53 (5th donation), CH
$53 (4th donation), Derek M.
$53 (4th donation), Hakan C.
$53 (4th donation), Marius M.
$53 (3rd donation), António Salsinha – Graphic Designer
$53 (3rd donation), Frank J.
$53 (3rd donation), Henk B.
$53 (2nd donation), David
$53 (2nd donation), Marek Stapff
$53 (2nd donation), Mark B.
$53 (2nd donation), Peter F.
$53 (2nd donation), Stefan R.
$53 (2nd donation), Tom D. C.
$53, Alexander E.
$53, Christian A.
$53, Dominik B.
$53, Felipe A. I.
$53, Jens K.
$53, Juan M. L. Z.
$53, Karl W.
$53, Lars-olof G.
$53, Laurens R.
$53, Manfred M.
$53, Michael Z.
$53, Nina W.
$53, Paul R.
$53, Pieter V. W.
$53, Rick van den Bergh aka “Nostalgia Realm“
$53, Stefan B.
$53, Stefan K.
$53, Toni A.
$50 (9th donation), Mothy
$50 (6th donation), Anthony C. aka “Ciak”
$50 (5th donation), Ranald C.
$50 (4th donation), Stephen B.
$50 (3rd donation), Kris J.
$50 (2nd donation), Alan G.
$50 (2nd donation), Andrew B.
$50 (2nd donation), Bernard B.
$50 (2nd donation), Dinilson P.
$50 (2nd donation), Hubert R.
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$50 (2nd donation), Todd S.
$50 (2nd donation), William M. aka “BillMcG”
$50, andy_van_isle
$50, Anonymous
$50, Brandon L.
$50, Daniel M. P.
$50, Daniel W. S.
$50, Isaac L.
$50, Isabella S. R.
$50, Jimmy O.
$50, John S.
$50, Jonathan C.
$50, Khalid A.
$50, Matthew N.
$50, Richard Pate Photographic Art
$50, Robert J. E. J.
$50, Ryan B.
$50, Thomas D.
$50, thomas J.
$50, Tristan C.
$50, Victor C.
$50, Wai C.
$40 (10th donation), Eric W.
$40 (2nd donation), Gary S.
$37 (7th donation), Anthony G M.
$37 (6th donation), Anna U.
$36, Jean M.
$35 (8th donation), P W E.
$31 (2nd donation), Gianni G.
$31, Erica O.
$31, Oliver R. aka “LinuxOlli“
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$31, William N.
$30 (2nd donation), Paul H.
$30 (2nd donation), Yusuke M.
$30, Bernard G.
$30, Dan R.
$26 (2nd donation), Abilio R.
$26, Anastasiia D.
$25 (52nd donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (20th donation), Richard N.
$25 (11th donation), Mihnea Rădulescu
$25 (6th donation), Gary D.
$25 (2nd donation), Mark O.
$25 (2nd donation), Theron K.
$25, paolo C.
$25, Stephen K.
$25, Stephen M.
$25, Travis T.
$24 (28th donation), aka “AsciiWolf”
$22 (4th donation), Cevad O.
$21 (108th donation), Johann J.
$21 (60th donation), Peter E.
$21 (27th donation), Stefan W.
$21 (22nd donation), Benjamin W. aka “UncleBens”
$21 (21st donation), Marek S.
$21 (13th donation), Emanuele Proietti aka “Manuermejo”
$21 (9th donation), Peter C.
$21 (6th donation), Gabriele G.
$21 (5th donation), Stephen C.
$21 (4th donation), David W.
$21 (4th donation), Roland K.
$21 (3rd donation), Jean-pierre V.
$21 (3rd donation), Kris K.
$21 (3rd donation), Marc R.
$21 (3rd donation), Mateusz M.
$21 (3rd donation), Philip S.
$21 (3rd donation), Toon V.
$21 (2nd donation), Alfonso B.
$21 (2nd donation), christophe O.
$21 (2nd donation), Florian A.
$21 (2nd donation), Frank W.
$21 (2nd donation), Leonard H.
$21 (2nd donation), Martin H.
$21 (2nd donation), Pgm R.
$21 (2nd donation), Volker W.
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$21, Andre V.
$21, Andrea F.
$21, Antonia H.
$21, Armin S.
$21, Bernd G.
$21, Bernhard S.
$21, Curd-Juergen S.
$21, Didier E.
$21, Dominique V.
$21, Felix R.
$21, FLEURIVAL H.
$21, Javier R.
$21, Jochen E.
$21, Julius J.
$21, Kari B.
$21, Kevin G.
$21, Kevin Schnurbusch aka “Istalrî”
$21, KPRco
$21, Liam T.
$21, Linda V. E.
$21, LJ W.
$21, Lorenz G.
$21, Luca G.
$21, Luk%E1%9A L.
$21, Marco R.
$21, Martin D.
$21, Matthias W.
$21, Mesut M.
$21, Mili D.
$21, MIQUEL R. P. aka “Maki”
$21, MR J. R.
$21, Odin B.
$21, Reg L.
$21, Ren%E9 C.
$21, Ronny S.
$21, Sebastian B.
$21, Sebastian L.
$21, Sonja C.
$21, Stefan A. aka “Keulinsche”
$21, Tomas K.
$21, Vadim B.
$21, Vasco S.
$21, wietze B.
$20 (69th donation), Bryan F.
$20 (47th donation), John D.
$20 (33rd donation), vagrantcow
$20 (28th donation), Aimee W.
$20 (12th donation), redman
$20 (9th donation), DaveW
$20 (8th donation), Erich K.
$20 (8th donation), Zile
$20 (7th donation), Joseph G.
$20 (6th donation), J. S. .
$20 (6th donation), John P.
$20 (4th donation), Brian C.
$20 (4th donation), Bruce C.
$20 (4th donation), Daniel B.
$20 (4th donation), Kevin Humphreys
$20 (4th donation), Leela A.
$20 (3rd donation), Logan Gartrell
$20 (3rd donation), Raymond T.
$20 (3rd donation), Sergio Arroyos
$20 (2nd donation), Andrew Y.
$20 (2nd donation), Cesar G.
$20 (2nd donation), David R.
$20 (2nd donation), Denise D.
$20 (2nd donation), Dirk S. aka “balkaninvest“
$20 (2nd donation), Greg L.
$20 (2nd donation), James B.
$20 (2nd donation), John M.
$20 (2nd donation), Joseph
$20 (2nd donation), Joshua S. aka “Better than Jeffrey H.”
$20 (2nd donation), Kevin D.
$20 (2nd donation), Lutz L.
$20 (2nd donation), Thomas M.
$20 (2nd donation), Ulf W.
$20, ALEKSANDR A.
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$20, Anthony R.
$20, Anthony R.
$20, Back Office Geeks
$20, Bill D.
$20, Brian D. O.
$20, Bruce L.
$20, DG
$20, Eddie N.
$20, Hans Z.
$20, Ingvar A.
$20, Jan I. L.
$20, Jared R.
$20, Jerred W.
$20, Joaquin H.
$20, Joe D.
$20, KENNETH D.
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$20, Michael H.
$20, Paul M.
$20, Randall W.
$20, Rigs by Russ
$20, Ron L.
$20, Sabrina F.
$20, Susan M.
$20, TAKAO Y.
$20, Tyler H.
$20, Văduva R.
$18 (5th donation), James H.
$16 (3rd donation), Bernd K.
$15 (5th donation), Harald H.
$15 (3rd donation), Balazs B.
$15 (3rd donation), Norberto C. N. aka “Konbini-San”
$15 (2nd donation), Jonas K. aka “Jonas”
$15, anonymous
$15, Gerald G. G.
$15, Jens-Peter G.
$15, Jesse D. K.
$15, Kevin Q.
$15, Stefano G.
$13, gino R.
$12 (2nd donation), Stibbon Leather
$11 (14th donation), Bengt Falke aka “Falke”
$11 (7th donation), Alessandro S.
$10 (111st donation), Thomas C.
$10 (55th donation), Philip Woodward
$10 (47th donation), Thomas R.
$10 (39th donation), Sami Mannila
$10 (38th donation), Tugaleres.com
$10 (35th donation), Denys G. aka “GD Next“
$10 (28th donation), Wilson G.
$10 (20th donation), Abdulkadir H. aka “Askari”
$10 (18th donation), Michael P. aka “www.perron.de“
$10 (17th donation), platypus products
$10 (15th donation), TONY aka “STRUZZIN ELECTRONICS“
$10 (13th donation), Axel R.
$10 (10th donation), JvdB
$10 (8th donation), Geoffrey P.
$10 (8th donation), Stefan S.
$10 (7th donation), Gene E.
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$10 (6th donation), Abe Z.
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$10 (5th donation), Andrew I.
$10 (5th donation), Artem Ignatyev aka “ZaZooBred”
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$10 (5th donation), Damir L.
$10 (5th donation), John B.
$10 (5th donation), Network Marketing Blog
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$10 (4th donation), M.B.
$10 (3rd donation), Christoph V.
$10 (3rd donation), Claudio F.
$10 (3rd donation), Daniel W.
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$10 (3rd donation), Lucie T. aka “shaolinlucie“
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$10 (3rd donation), Victoria J.
$10 (2nd donation), Armin V.
$10 (2nd donation), Cezar G.
$10 (2nd donation), Došlo R.
$10 (2nd donation), Frederik L.
$10 (2nd donation), Jivko R.
$10 (2nd donation), Kenton B.
$10 (2nd donation), kstevenson
$10 (2nd donation), Luka L.
$10 (2nd donation), Marco D.
$10 (2nd donation), Mariusz B.
$10 (2nd donation), Mohamed E.
$10 (2nd donation), Ramiro M.
$10 (2nd donation), Russell M.
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$10 (2nd donation), SunBaked272
$10 (2nd donation), Tamas R.
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$10, Vlad aka “UASK”
$10, A M.
$10, André S.
$10, Andreas O.
$10, Andrew S.
$10, Andy R.
$10, ANNA L
$10, Arthur U.
$10, Barry T.
$10, Beatrice B.
$10, Bernhard S.
$10, Brandon W.
$10, Carsten H.
$10, Celtia M. L.
$10, CHRISTIAN D. S. A.
$10, Christian R.
$10, Daniel I.
$10, Daniel P.
$10, Darold H.
$10, David B.
$10, david J.
$10, Denali W.
$10, Diego D. B. O.
$10, Diego V.
$10, DOMENICO A.
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$10, Ferran T. B.
$10, Fredrik C.
$10, Giovanni R.
$10, Harold T.
$10, Heinrich V. V.
$10, hermann K.
$10, HOWARD S.
$10, Ingemar H.
$10, ion S.
$10, j.w. V. D.
$10, Jarod L.
$10, John C.
$10, Juan D. L. R.
$10, Kiril V. aka “Nidux“
$10, Kristian H. Sejersen
$10, Krzysztof P.
$10, Lucas F. J. B.
$10, ludovic T.
$10, Luka G.
$10, Marcel R.
$10, Marcio C.
$10, Marco K.
$10, Markus W.
$10, Matt N.
$10, Michael P.
$10, Pawe I.
$10, Pedro S.
$10, Rennie H.
$10, Ricardo P.
$10, richard F.
$10, ronald H.
$10, Sebastian S.
$10, Sergei D.
$10, Soeren
$10, Thorsten K.
$10, Volker R.
$10, Zachary H.
$8 (2nd donation), Özkan V.
$8, William G.
$232 from 60 smaller donations

If you want to help Linux Mint with a donation, please visit https://www.linuxmint.com/donors.php

Patrons:

Linux Mint is proudly supported by 1,649 patrons, for a sum of $4,205 per month.

To become a Linux Mint patron, please visit https://www.patreon.com/linux_mint

Hello everyone,

Many thanks to our sponsors and to all of you who support the project with your donations.

Sponsorships:

Linux Mint is proudly sponsored by:

Gold Sponsors: Silver Sponsors:

Bronze Sponsors:

Donations in May:

A total of $15,377 were raised thanks to the generous contributions of 501 donors:

$707 (6th donation), Daniel P. aka “Monkey”
$531 (4th donation), Andreas B.
$531 (2nd donation), Olli P.
$318, Laurent J. aka “Mad Rabbit”
$300 (6th donation), Keith M.
$212, alain B.
$200 (17th donation), Tomasz E.
$169 (8th donation), Wolfgang S.
$120 (2nd donation), Alexander K.
$120, Adrian E.
$106 (5th donation), Jiří B.
$106 (3rd donation), Elmar V.
$106 (3rd donation), F. S.
$106 (2nd donation), Jan M.
$106, Alexander L.
$106, Andreas F. M.
$106, Dieter O. B.
$106, Hans S.
$106, Jaakko M.
$105 (3rd donation), David L.
$100 (21st donation), John Mc aka “Land Research Project”
$100 (11th donation), Michael S.
$100 (7th donation), David T.
$100 (6th donation), Charles H.
$100 (3rd donation), Brady B.
$100 (3rd donation), Faisal Yousuf
$100 (2nd donation), Jason F.
$100, Antonio P.
$100, Herbert L.
$100, Mark A. M.
$100, Michael B.
$100, Michael L.
$95, peter A. W.
$84, Peter C.
$79 (2nd donation), J. S.
$79, Christian T.
$79, Sven S.
$65 (7th donation), Susan S.
$65, Waylon J. E.
$63, ANTHONY C.
$63, Mike W.
$60 (10th donation), Joe K.
$60, Karen P.
$53 (7th donation), Quim aka “slackjp”
$53 (5th donation), Johan P.
$53 (3rd donation), Daniel T.
$53 (2nd donation), Alexander S.
$53 (2nd donation), Andreas F.
$53 (2nd donation), Martin T.
$53 (2nd donation), Michael C.
$53 (2nd donation), Ron D.
$53 (2nd donation), Sebastian Friedrich
$53, Alexandre D. S.
$53, Andre B.
$53, Bastiaan S.
$53, Daniel F.
$53, Daniel G.
$53, Diedrich R.
$53, Ed G.
$53, Elmar R.
$53, Francis K.
$53, Georg H.
$53, Iulian D.
$53, Ivica B.
$53, Juha T.
$53, K D. B.
$53, Luis M.
$53, Marc J.
$53, Marek Stapff
$53, Olaf K.
$53, SALOME V. D.
$53, Thomas N.
$53, Tom D. C.
$53, TZer0
$53, Ursula C.
$53, vincent A.
$53, Vitalijus P.
$51 (21st donation), Adam K.
$50 (10th donation), Michael T.
$50 (9th donation), George M.
$50 (8th donation), Mothy
$50 (5th donation), Anthony C. aka “Ciak”
$50 (5th donation), Peter J, aka “Dr Peter”
$50 (3rd donation), Richard B. T.
$50 (2nd donation), Armin M.
$50 (2nd donation), Christopher M.
$50 (2nd donation), Douglas S.
$50 (2nd donation), Joshua D.
$50 (2nd donation), Nancy A.
$50, aka “Max”
$50, André L.
$50, Charles H.
$50, Derek N.
$50, Elwyn A.
$50, Giorgi Q.
$50, James C.
$50, Jay S.
$50, jeremy H.
$50, Johnny-Rico
$50, Joshua M. J.
$50, Katherine S.
$50, Kurt A.
$50, Kyle H.
$50, mark M.
$50, Martin B.
$50, Michael F.
$50, Michael M.
$50, Michael R.
$50, Radu Privantu
$50, Randall R.
$50, Sarosh P.
$50, seth H.
$50, Steven D. P.
$50, Valentin R.
$50, Youssef E. G.
$50, ZeSheng S.
$45 (6th donation), The W.
$44, Federico S.
$42, Albert S.
$39 (3rd donation), Neil M.
$35 (7th donation), P W E.
$35 (2nd donation), Robert L W.
$35, Rosaire D.
$35, THAPA S.
$31, Frode F.
$31, REGOJO M. aka “REGOM”
$31, Thorsten W.
$30 (11th donation), jowind
$30 (7th donation), Frank F.
$30 (3rd donation), Ron N. aka “TechNick”
$26, Achim S. thanks for LMDE
$26, Daniel Torkar
$26, Matei A. D.
$26, Nicole F.
$26, Tobias R.
$25 (51st donation), Linux Mint Sverige
$25 (10th donation), Mihnea Rădulescu
$25 (6th donation), John N.
$25 (2nd donation), Daniel W.
$25 (2nd donation), Marius V.
$25 (2nd donation), Sumanlal K.
$25, James A.
$25, John G.
$25, Kevin D.
$25, Kofi N
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$25, Rick L.
$24 (3rd donation), Cevad O.
$22, Oliver Ś.
$21 (107th donation), Johann J.
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$21 (20th donation), Marek S.
$21 (13th donation), Hermann W.
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$21 (8th donation), Rolf-Jürgen G.
$21 (8th donation), Thomas D.
$21 (6th donation), T.L. aka “T.L.”
$21 (5th donation), Jean-philippe P.
$21 (5th donation), Michele M.
$21 (5th donation), Mike E.
$21 (4th donation), Juan Francisco J.
$21 (4th donation), Lennart J.
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$21 (3rd donation), Curt S.
$21 (3rd donation), Gerard Gerritsen.
$21 (3rd donation), Luis M. M. I.
$21 (3rd donation), Marc C.
$21 (3rd donation), RAK
$21 (2nd donation),
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$21 (2nd donation), Dietrich R.
$21 (2nd donation), Frank B.
$21 (2nd donation), J M. P.
$21 (2nd donation), Mateusz M.
$21 (2nd donation), Wolfram R.
$21, Ambrogio C.
$21, Andreas S.
$21, Andrés B. A.
$21, Andrew P.
$21, Axel T.
$21, Besnik N.
$21, Brian K.
$21, Catherine S.
$21, Daniele A.
$21, Darren M.
$21, Elmar D.
$21, ETIENNE G.
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$21, Florian B.
$21, Frank T.
$21, Garry W.
$21, Jan V.
$21, Joan S.
$21, John F.
$21, Kai G.
$21, Lucian U.
$21, Luciano P.
$21, Marc W.
$21, Marcel A.
$21, mario H.
$21, Martin S.
$21, Miriam K.
$21, nicolas D. R.
$21, Orthopedie Schmidt
$21, Paula B.
$21, Peter G.
$21, peter R.
$21, Robert H.
$21, sami L.
$21, Sander R.
$21, Steven D.
$21, Tautvydas B.
$21, Thomas J.
$21, Tobias E.
$21, Tycho V. W.
$21, Ulrich V.
$21, Volcan Media SpA
$21, Yann G.
$20 (68th donation), Bryan F.
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$20 (17th donation), Edward A.
$20 (15th donation), John W.
$20 (14th donation), Robert D. aka “MacDhai”
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$20 (6th donation), Hans G. H.
$20 (6th donation), Ingo P.
$20 (4th donation), Charles Edge in Memoriam
$20 (4th donation), Michael G.
$20 (4th donation), roger
$20 (3rd donation), Dan R.
$20 (3rd donation), Derrick G.
$20 (2nd donation), Joe V.
$20 (2nd donation), Kalib B.
$20 (2nd donation), Mehmet Y.
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Good software needs good documentation. But how do we define “good” in this sense? And what does the future hold? Find out in episode 4 of the LibreOffice Podcast! (This episode is also available on PeerTube.)

When different systems, applications or organisations need to communicate with each other and actually understand what is being said, interoperability is key. It enables a hospital’s software to communicate with an insurance company, for example, or one vendor’s inventory system to synchronise with another’s logistics platform.

At the heart of many of these data exchanges is XML.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) may not be new or flashy, but it remains one of the most powerful tools for achieving reliable, structured interoperability across diverse platforms.

Why is interoperability so hard?

Systems are built using different programming languages, data models and communication protocols. Without a shared format or structure, exchanging data can result in a complex web of custom APIs, ad hoc conversions, and manual adjustments.

To get systems working together seamlessly, you need:

• A standardised structure for data.
• A way to validate that structure.
• A format that is language-agnostic and platform-neutral.

XML ticks all these boxes.

How XML enables interoperability

1. Self-describing structure

XML uses tags to clearly label data:

<customer>
   <name>Maria Ortega</name>
   <id>87234</id>
</customer>

This means that a receiving system doesn’t have to guess what each field means, as it is explicitly defined. This reduces the risk of misinterpretation and supports automated parsing.

2. Schema validation

Using XSD (XML Schema Definition) or DTD (Document Type Definition), you can define the rules that an XML document must adhere to, such as which elements are required, which data types are valid and what the structure must be.

This is critical for:

• verifying incoming data
• preventing malformed or incomplete exchanges
• ensuring consistency across multiple systems

3. Namespaces for avoiding collisions

XML namespaces prevent tag name conflicts when data from different sources is combined.

<doc xmlns:h=”http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/” xmlns:f=”http://www.w3schools.com/furniture”>
   <h:table>…</h:table>
   <f:table>…</f:table>
</doc>

Without namespaces, systems could misinterpret elements with the same name but different meanings.

4. Cross-platform compatibility

XML is plain text. Any system that can read a file can read it, whether it’s written in Java, .NET, Python or COBOL. This makes it ideal for long-term data exchange and integration between legacy and modern systems.

XML in real-world interoperability

Healthcare: HL7 CDA/FHIR

Hospitals, clinics, insurance providers and pharmacies rely on XML-based formats to exchange clinical records, billing data and prescriptions. HL7’s CDA (Clinical Document Architecture) is a strict XML schema that is used worldwide.

In government, XML is used for e-government forms and tax data.

Tax filings, business registrations and compliance documents are often submitted in XML format. This ensures consistent structure across various jurisdictions and software vendors.

Publishing: DITA and JATS

XML standards are used for modular content creation and journal publishing to allow interoperability between authors, editors, publishers, and archive systems, even if they are using different tools.

Finance: XBRL

XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) uses XML to standardise financial reports, enabling regulators, investors and analysts to automatically process and compare data from thousands of companies.

Summary

Interoperability isn’t just about convenience. It’s about accuracy, consistency and trust. XML’s rigidity helps to enforce that trust.

XML may not be trendy, but it remains the backbone of system-to-system interoperability. Its structured format, validation tools and long track record make it essential wherever precision and compatibility are non-negotiable.

If your systems need to communicate reliably and seamlessly across platforms, XML is one of the best languages they can use.

Following the example of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which is moving 30,000 PCs from Microsoft Office/365 to LibreOffice, the Danish Ministry of Digitalisation is doing the same.

Caroline Stage Olsen, the country’s Digitalisation Minister, plans to move half of the employees to LibreOffice over the summer, and if all goes as expected, the entire Ministry will be free from Microsoft Office/365 later in the year.

In a LinkedIn post, Olsen summarised the reasons for switching to LibreOffice:

We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely. Because far too much public digital infrastructure is today tied up with very few foreign suppliers. This makes us vulnerable. Also financially.

That is why we are now testing in parallel at the Ministry of Digitization how it works in practice when we work with open source solutions. Several municipalities are doing the same.

Not because we think it’s easy – but because we know it’s necessary to lead the way if we want to create more competition and innovation – and reduce our dependence on the few.

We in the LibreOffice project welcome this move, and look forward to seeing more governments and organisations getting control of their digital sovereignty and using public money for public code.

In my last article, I mentioned XML several times, perhaps assuming that all users had a basic understanding of it. Rereading it, I realised that an introduction to XML was needed for non-technical users, those who use XML every day without realising it, when they open a document, check the weather, place or receive an order online, or issue a digital invoice. XML works silently behind the scenes.

But what exactly is XML and why should it matter to non-techies? I will try to explain it in simple terms.

XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language, a way of organising information in a format that is easy for both people and computers to understand, helping different applications communicate and exchange data using a common language. Put simply, XML is a digital container that clearly labels information.

For example, this is a shopping list in XML format:


<groceryList>
  <item>
    <name>Bread</name>
    <quantity>1 loaf</quantity>
  </item>
  <item>
    <name>Milk</name>
    <quantity>2 litres</quantity>
  </item>
</groceryList>


Labelling helps computers and software understand exactly what each piece of information means.

In a hyperconnected world like ours, where apps and systems share data, XML allows that data to move between very different systems, such as credit card management apps and online shops. Without a common language like XML, communication between these systems would be much more complicated and slower, or even impossible.

So, XML is integrated into most everyday activities, even though it is completely hidden from users:

• All documents created by all office suites use XML, in some cases to facilitate transparency and interoperability, and in other cases to create a hidden layer of complexity with the aim of preventing transparency and interoperability.
• All apps that provide weather forecasts obtain updates by reading XML data issued by weather agencies.
• Almost all e-commerce applications use XML to manage communication between the website, the payment system, the bank and the shipping service.
• All blogs and news sites use XML to automatically transmit new content to readers.

XML is clear and easy to read because it organises data in an orderly manner with labels that are understandable to both humans and computers; it is flexible, as it is not limited to a single type of information and can be customised for different scenarios, from cooking recipes to flight schedules; and it is compatible with all platforms.

To appreciate the value of XML, you don’t need to have a deep understanding of the language, just know that it exists and that – when used properly, as in the case of the ODF format – it has the potential to help users achieve and protect their digital sovereignty.

Of course, it is equally important to know that XML can be used in exactly the opposite way, as is the case with Microsoft 365’s OOXML format (and previously Office), to limit users’ digital sovereignty and perpetuate lock-in through artificial file complexity.

In summary, XML is a silent enabler that ensures that users’ apps, services and data all speak the same language.

The next time you open a document, check your favourite news site or follow an online delivery, remember that XML is working silently behind the scenes to ensure that everything runs smoothly. And try to imagine a digital world without XML, where a single company controls the data and, through it, the users.

Here’s our summary of updates, events and activities in the LibreOffice project in the last four weeks – click the links to learn more…

• We started the month with Episode 3 of the LibreOffice Podcast – this time looking at Quality Assurance (QA) in Free and Open Source Software. Watch it below – or on PeerTube.

• Then we announced the winners in the Month of LibreOffice, May 2025, providing information on how to get sticker packs. We’ve been sending out stickers and merchandise in the last few weeks, with a bit more to come!

• On June 6, we announced LibreOffice 25.2.4, the fourth minor update to our latest stable branch. All users are recommended to upgrade.

• Next, we posted another section from The Document Foundation’s Annual Report, “LibreOffice for End User Privacy”.

• The end of Windows 10 is approaching, so it’s time to consider Linux and LibreOffice! That’s the message behind the “End of 10” campaign, which we’re supporting.

• In the middle of the month, we posted news about a new tutorial added to the wiki, showing how to create colour wheels with LibreOffice.

• Throughout June, we posted various articles about ODF, the Open Document Format used by LibreOffice (and supported in many other office suites): An Analysis of the adoption of the Open Document Format; Understanding ODF compliance and interoperability; and A technical dive into ODF.

• Then we reported back from an event: LibreOffice at the Linux Arena in Pordenone, Italy.

• Before LibreOffice there was OpenOffice, and before OpenOffice there was StarOffice. And how was StarOffice developed? We talked to Stefan Soyka, who worked on the suite in the early ’90s, and has some entertaining stories to tell

• New LibreOffice merchandise is here! We updated our Spreadshirt shop with new designs and many extra items. Buy something and support LibreOffice – some of the proceeds go back to the project!

• Registration is now open for the LibreOffice Conference 2025. Join us from 4 – 6 September in Budapest – we’ll have technical talks, workshops, social events and more…

• And finally, we announced the new LibreOffice 25.2 user guides – awesome work from the documentation team.

Keep in touch – follow us on Mastodon, X (formerly Twitter), Bluesky, Reddit and Facebook. Like what we do? Support our community with a donation – or join our community and help to make LibreOffice even better!

The LibreOffice community has great news: the Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and Math User Guides are now available for version 25.2!

Yes, you read that right! With every new LibreOffice release, our Documentation Team works hard to keep up — and this time, we’ve shortened the gap between the software launch and the guides’ publication even more.

These user guides are the ultimate reference for anyone using LibreOffice — whether at home, at work, or at school. From spreadsheets to presentations, from text documents to complex equations: it’s all covered, clearly and accessibly.

The work is 100% community-driven! Jean Weber led the Writer guide, Peter Schofield coordinated the Impress, Draw, and Math guides, and Olivier Hallot headed the Calc guide.

Big thanks also to Dione Maddern, Celia Palacios, Ed Olson, B. Antonio F., Mike Kaganski, and Vasudev Narayanan for their valuable contributions.

Each new edition is more than just an update — it’s a chance to improve clarity, add the latest features, and deliver the best experience possible for end users. These guides complement the built-in LibreOffice Help and are perfect for deepening your knowledge.

The guides are available now for free download in PDF, ODT (OpenDocument format), and HTML (for online reading). And soon, you’ll be able to order printed copies via LuLu Inc.

Get your guides now:

• documentation.libreoffice.org
• books.libreoffice.org

Artwork: Eliane Domingos

Registration is now open for the LibreOffice Conference 2025! Join us from 4 – 6 September in Budapest We’ll have technical talks, workshops, social events and more…

Click here to learn more, and register

To write this article, I went beyond the limits of my technical knowledge, which is that of an advanced user who has studied standard formats and their characteristics in depth, to understand why standard formats – one of the pillars of digital sovereignty – and proprietary formats – their opposite, and one of the biggest obstacles to digital sovereignty – are not perceived as a problem by most PC users, who continue to use Microsoft’s proprietary formats and place the access and availability of their content in the hands of the US company.

To try to remedy this problem, I will try to explain as simply as possible, using non-technical language (which may shock developers, but this article is not aimed at them), some technical features of the Open Document Format (ODF), which make it the cornerstone of an open and vendor-independent ecosystem for office documents, defending the digital freedoms of all users and the governance of their content.

I will begin by explaining how to unpack an ODF file, which is nothing more than a set of XML files and other files (for images and videos) contained within a ZIP folder, in order to examine its internal components and, in particular, the content.xml file, which is the one that contains the body of the document (i.e., the user’s intellectual property).

The aim is not so much to assess conformity (compliance with specifications) and interoperability (the ability to exchange files consistently between tools), as these aspects will always be dealt with by specialists, but rather to understand the advantages for the user of the open and standard format over the closed and proprietary format (which is falsely standard, since it was approved by ISO/IEC in defiance of “their” definitions of standards).

For this reason, I will make a brief concluding digression on the characteristics of the OOXML (Office Open XML) format used by Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365, again to clarify to users the risks they face and the harm they do to themselves and other users when they use DOCX, XLSX and PPTX formats, as well as the ‘gift’ they are giving to Microsoft, to whom they are effectively entrusting the management and future of their content.

Analysing an ODF file

Take any document you have created with LibreOffice. For convenience, I recommend starting with a text document created with LibreOffice Writer, with the ODT extension. Before doing anything else, duplicate the file, because an error in the procedure could make it unreadable, and move the original to another folder.

Rename the copy, replacing the ODT extension with the ZIP extension, without deleting the dot. The file icon will become that of a compressed file. If it becomes white or empty, you have done something wrong or deleted the dot. Check all the steps until the icon becomes that of a compressed file.

At this point, right-click on the icon and select “unzip” or “expand” to extract the contents of the compressed file into a folder with the same name as the file without the extension.

The folder will contain the following items:

• the META-INF folder, which will contain the manifest.xml file
• the Thumbnails folder, which may contain the thumbnail.png file
• the content.xml file, which contains the body of the document
• the styles.xml file, which contains the style definitions
• the meta.xml file, which contains the file metadata (author, creation date, last modification date, etc.)
• the settings.xml file, which contains the application settings

Each XML file within an ODF document must comply with the RelaxNG XML schema, or REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation, created by OASIS in 2001 and 2002, which is simpler – and therefore more accessible to non-technical users – than other XML schemas. The packaging rules are defined by the OpenDocument Packaging specifications.

In addition to schema validation, it must meet a number of conditions.

• Structural compliance: the elements of the ZIP and manifest.xml files
• Functionality compliance: all standard and optional functionality (metadata, styles, tables, graphics, etc.)
• Formula compliance: spreadsheet formulas must be compatible with OpenFormula semantics
• Security compliance: ODF profiles, encryption, digital signature

The manifest.xml file contained in the META-INF folder must list all the files in the ZIP file, with their media type:

<manifest:manifest xmlns:manifest=”urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:manifest:1.0″>
     <manifest:file-entry manifest:full-path=”/” manifest:media-type=”application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text”/>
     <manifest:file-entry manifest:full-path=”content.xml” manifest:media-type=”text/xml”/>
     <manifest:file-entry manifest:full-path=”styles.xml” manifest:media-type=”text/xml”/>
     <!– thumbnails, settings, etc. –>
</manifest:manifest>

Simply omitting a file or making an error in the description of its media type is enough to make the ODF file structurally non-compliant.

ODF: the importance of the content.xml file

To understand the user benefits of an open standard format such as ODF over a proprietary format, even one that is theoretically open such as OOXML, a quick analysis of the content.xml file of ODF files and its equivalent in OOXML files, which differs depending on the file type (and this alone is a sign that the development of OOXML did not take user needs into account at all, but focused on artificially increasing complexity), is sufficient.

Let’s take a first example, based on one of the most famous phrases in the history of world literature, namely “to be, or not to be, that is the question” uttered by the protagonist of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

The content.xml file of a text document containing only this sentence is 32 lines long: the first 18 provide references to all the standards used (such as X-Forms and MathML), list the fonts used in the document styles, and define the styles (in this case only one, given the length of the text and the absence of formatting).

The next 13 lines are as follows:

<office:body>
     <office:text>
          <office:forms form:automatic-focus=”false” form:apply-design-mode=”false”/>
          <text:sequence-decls>
               <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level=”0″ text:name=”Illustration”/>
               <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level=”0″ text:name=”Table”/>
               <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level=”0″ text:name=”Text”/>
               <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level=”0″ text:name=”Drawing”/>
               <text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level=”0″ text:name=”Figure”/>
          </text:sequence-decls>
          <text:p text:style-name=”P1″>To be, or not to be, that is the question</text:p>
     </office:text>
</office:body>

The first lines define the body of the document and the fact that it is a text. The following lines are declarations that, in this case, do not add anything, but in other contexts would provide information about other elements of the document.

The key line is this: <text:p text:style-name=‘P1’>To be, or not to be, that is the question</text:p>, which defines a paragraph, declares its style (P1) and provides the content: To be, or not to be, that is the question. Clear and readable by any user, who now has the keys to access the document and manage its contents, i.e. the product of their brain.

Of course, more complex documents and contents would correspond to a more complex content.xml file, but always respecting the readability of the contents and the simplicity of the XML schema.

OOXML: what happens inside the file

Let’s see what happens in the case of the same document saved in DOCX format, closed and proprietary, and artificially complex. The file is called document.xml and not content.xml, and this – obviously – would not be significant if it were not a further sign of the complexity of the format, given that in the case of Excel the file is called workbook.xml and in the case of PowerPoint it is called slide1.xml, and so on.

The document.xml file of a text document containing only the phrase “To be, or not to be, that is the question” is 41 lines long: the first provides references to all the proprietary elements used (such as wordprocessingCanvas, VML and WordML), and all the subsequent lines relate to the content:

<w:body>
     <w:p xmlns:wp14=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordml” wp14:paraId=”2DC08235″ wp14:textId=”776AF5CB”>
          <w:r w:rsidR=”6B254FF6″>
               <w:rPr/>
               <w:t xml:space=”preserve”>To be, or </w:t>
          </w:r>
          <w:r w:rsidR=”6B254FF6″>
               <w:rPr/>
               <w:t>not</w:t>
          </w:r>
          <w:r w:rsidR=”6B254FF6″>
               <w:rPr/>
               <w:t xml:space=”preserve”> to be, </w:t>
          </w:r>
          <w:r w:rsidR=”6B254FF6″>
               <w:rPr/>
               <w:t>that</w:t>
          </w:r>
          <w:r w:rsidR=”6B254FF6″>
               <w:rPr/>
               <w:t xml:space=”preserve”> </w:t>
          </w:r>
          <w:r w:rsidR=”6B254FF6″>
               <w:rPr/>
               <w:t>is</w:t>
          </w:r>
          <w:r w:rsidR=”6B254FF6″>
               <w:rPr/>
               <w:t xml:space=”preserve”> the question</w:t>
          </w:r>
     </w:p>
     <w:sectPr>
          <w:pgSz w:w=”11906″ w:h=”16838″ w:orient=”portrait”/>
          <w:pgMar w:top=”1440″ w:right=”1440″ w:bottom=”1440″ w:left=”1440″ w:header=”720″ w:footer=”720″ w:gutter=”0″/>
          <w:cols w:space=”720″/>
          <w:docGrid w:linePitch=”360″/>
     </w:sectPr>
</w:body>

Obscure and unreadable. I challenge any user to reconstruct a text of any complexity from an XML document like this, if the original file is damaged. In the case of ODF, we were able to reconstruct even documents of hundreds of pages, or presentations of dozens of slides, because the content was readable by any user, even non-technical ones.

Let’s try to imagine the size of the content.xml file and the document.xml file if, instead of Prince Hamlet’s sentence, there were all 5,566 lines of the entire tragedy, in the original version written by William Shakespeare. In this case, the difference speaks for itself: content.xml is 5,598 lines long (32 lines more than the text), document.xml is 93,289 lines long (87,723 lines more than the text).

File complexity as the new lock-in strategy

This file complexity is intentionally hidden from the user, who sees a normal-looking document on the screen and has no idea that they are writing a file on their hard drive or in the cloud that has characteristics very similar to those of the proprietary files used in the last century, which are unreadable without the software with which they were written.

A user who believes they have made significant progress in terms of digital sovereignty because they use a format they believe to be open and standard but which, on the contrary, is even worse than the binary formats of the 1900s – which were nothing more than the writing of what was in memory – because, being based on XML, it is the offspring of an algorithm that can be modified remotely with a routine update (as happens in reality, where the same document is written in DOCX format but with a completely different XML syntax each time, based on parameters known only to the vendor, i.e. Microsoft).

So, it is an even more closed and proprietary format than the binary formats it replaced in 2006. The latter, being the result of writing what was in memory to files, were predictable and could be emulated, while OOXML is unpredictable due to the algorithm, and therefore almost impossible to emulate without constant study of its many evolutions.

OOXML is a theoretically open and standard format, which in reality is closed and proprietary, and represents the latest evolution of the lock-in strategy that underpins all Microsoft products for individual productivity, defending an estimated turnover of over $25 billion per year, with an estimated net profit of over $20 billion per year (all figures are estimates, as analysts’ figures are no longer available and are probably lower than the actual figures).

Perhaps the time has come for supranational organisations, central and local governments, and probably also individual users, to open their eyes and take a simple step forward towards digital sovereignty, i.e. the governance of documents and their content independent of the commercial choices of a single company, by adopting ODF and abandoning OOXML.

A few years ago, we had started a series of interviews (mitch and schumaml). More were planned, but things don’t always go as planned.

Well let’s try again! Today we are interviewing Sevenix, the digital artist who contributed the very cool splash screen image (which appears when starting GIMP) for the GIMP 3.0 series.

This interview was held asynchronously and remotely with questions from myself, Liam Quin and Alx Sa.

Wilber (GIMP team): Hello Sevenix! Could you introduce yourself?

Sevenix: Hello! My name is Fredrik Persson and I’m a programmer located in Sweden in my late thirties. I like music, movies and video games with the latter being one of my major points of artistic inspiration. Most of my drawings, even if not necessarily related to a specific game, take a lot of inspirations from the games I enjoy. One game in specific was actually the reason I got into digital artwork at all.

W: You use GIMP for illustrations. Is this a hobby? Do you use GIMP for a living?

S: I use GIMP for a lot of things but my main use would probably be creating illustrations, or digital artwork, yes. Ever since I was little I enjoyed drawing vast landscapes and simply filling them to the brim with little details. I use GIMP as a hobby, and while I have taken commission works earlier, I tend to not these days. The way I work is rather slow and heavily dependent on my inspiration over several months. Taking on projects that are not based on my own inspiration as well as demanding deadlines, it was simply not an enjoyable experience for me.

W: Could you talk a bit about your workflow please?

S: Funny thing, most who read this would probably expect me to be good at drawing, but truth is, I’m really not. I would consider myself below mediocre when it comes to real life drawing. I’ve always had the will and compulsion to draw, but I was never really any good at it. As such, I belong to a rather small minority who produce my artwork, not with a drawing tablet and pen, but with keyboard and mouse.

W: You work with fairly large images - what sizes are typical, and do you need to do anything special in your workflow to handle them?

S: Since I work with digital art, my main focus has always been to create wallpapers for desktops. As such I started off making regular 16:9 images in 1920x1080 pixels (HD) which during the later years I have increased to 3840x2160 (UHD). That being said, this resolution and aspect ratio is only my final aim. Sometimes websites etc. will use some different aspect ratio which I would have to adhere to, and I found it easier to create my work with this in mind from the start, rather than try to add more to the image afterwards. Print on Demand sites like Displate for example create prints in a 1.4:1 ratio. So, the first parts of all my work is to create an image that would fit a Displate 1.4:1 print. My next step is to immediately make sure to add guides or framing to make sure I do most of my detail work inside the areas which will later become the 16:9 wallpaper. This way I get a resulting image that is a 16:9 wallpaper, but with the option to extend the image to a 1.4:1 without having to create anything new.

W: You told us that you only use a mouse (no graphics tablet). Why is that?

S: One of the major advantages with digital work compared to conventional is that you can undo steps. Whenever I need to draw a line or arc, I can literally have infinite amount of attempts to get it just right. I try once and see if I’m happy with the result, if not, I do a quick Undo and try again. I mentioned that I’m bad at actual drawing and ever since I came to accept that I’ve started considering the work I do less of “drawing”, and more of “Brute Forcing Pixels”.

I believe using a graphic tablet could be great if you like it and it’s a skill you already have, but I equally believe that achieving a similar skill and familiarity with a mouse isn’t much harder. I suppose an answer to this question in it’s simplest form would be: I do my work with keyboard and mouse, because it’s how I learned to do it and it’s what I feel comfortable with.

W: Your art uses a rather specific art style, could you tell us a bit about it?

S: I can try. The way I got into actual art was trying to replicate the art of the game Fallen London. They use rather simple shapes, fog and lights. Creating more of a Silhouette of their objects rather than actually drawing them. They also tend to use images with very few colors, which is also something I’ve taken with me. This way I was able to create expansive landscapes by placing layer after layer on top of each other. This results in an image that is hard to describe digitally but when people ask I tend to describe it as a Digital Paper Diorama, which I find very apt.

The way I tend to work consists of really just a few techniques, repeated for each of my “layers”

1. I Create a new Layer Group and name it with a number. This layer group will contain everything I need for one segment of my image.
2. I draw my silhouetted landscape on a layer in this group, this is my Base layer.
3. I add a linear gradient ontop of the base layer and make it apply to only the layer below it by setting the clipping option of the layer to Clip to Background.
4. I add another layer group inside the layer group. This one I name “Lights”. It consists of a base layer as well which are the shapes. but in order to easily be able to change the color of these lights I make another layer ontop of it and naming it Color, similarly setting it to only apply to the Lights layer below it. Once I feel satisfied with this layer I duplicate it and run a Gaussian Blur on it, making it create a glow bloom on the light sources.

I replicate this Group Layer structure for each of the “layers” I need in my images. I usually end up with around 10 to 20 of these groups in my images. And while the above list is the base of them, many become more advanced as I need things added.

What’s important to me with this structure is the fact that it’s very easy to go back to it and edit it. At any point in my workflow I want to be able to determine that “This part here on layer 3 doesn’t really work with this great tree placement on layer 13”. At those points I don’t want there to be anything to stop me from going back to Layer 3 and change it to how I need it to be.

As I see it, the more non-destructive editing I do, the less I become tied down to decisions I made 10 hours back in my workflow.

This does create some rather large files, but as long as my computer can handle it I feel it’s a crucial part of my workflow.

Just for an example, the latest piece I did was a piece related to Remedy Entertainments Alan Wake games. The whole project took some 15h of work time and ended up with some 170 individual layers.

W: Is there any of your illustrations that hold a special place in your mind?

S: There are many, I could pick a lot out of my early work that were the point where I felt like I was actually happy with my results, and eager to show them off. But instead I will pick a piece I named Land of the Cherry Blossoms.

This was probably the first real piece I did that was not simply based on other works. Up to this point I had made most my work by trying to replicate styles, testing out techniques and basing it on already existing lore. This piece was the first time I made something that felt like it was me putting something on the canvas that was all me.

There are a lot of inspirations in this piece of course. A classic Japanese setting in pink with Sakura trees are in no way mind-bending. But it was mine, straight out of my head, and piled on with all the thousands of small details I like adding to my work.

This was also one of my first pieces to become really popular on Print on Demand sites, providing me with visions of a potential future where I could actually do this for a job.

All of this. The positive feedback, the actual small amounts of money it brought in, not to mention the joy I felt with creating it, really put this piece as one of the most impactful of my digital artist career.

W: What do you think of the latest GIMP 3 series?

S: I really like it! There were some issues in the very earliest releases but they were fixed fast and I now moved over to using 3.0 for my regular, daily work. It looks much more modern to start, but what really wins me over are some long awaited features such as non-destructive editing.

W: Any specific feature in 3.0 that caught you by surprise?

S: Multi-layer selection. When I first heard about it being added to GIMP I had no idea how perfectly it would fit into my workflow. The ability to save selections allow me to easily select all of my “color” layers of the color I want to replace, then simply fill them all with my new color.

In the old workflow I had to change one layer first, then click every other layer one by one, repeating the same action on each of them. Even providing I was happy with the end result, this was still some 20 or 30 actions I had to do manually.

In 3.0 I can do all that in just 4 actions!

W: What are your favorite features or main reasons why you appreciate GIMP?

S: I enjoy the fact that it is open source and free. I say that as someone who would never have gotten into image editing or digital art unless I would have been able to simply download it and start trying.

W: What are the features you really wished GIMP had, or things you’d like to see improved or changed?

I’ve been using the 2.10 version since I started with digital art, and as such there was always the continuous rumors about a 3.0 version arriving sometime in the far future. It wasn’t till I actually got into the GIMP community that I realized that the 3.0 version really didn’t seem that far off at all. Ever since then I’ve followed the development and believe it or not, just about everything I wished for seems to be implemented in 3.0. Multi-layer select, Non-destructive editing. Just such a simple thing as the decision to change the default Paste functionality from the very beginner hostile Paste as Floating Layer was great.

There are of course things that still can improve, and definitely things I could see myself using if they were implemented. And if you forced me to mention one I think it would be something similar to Adobes Smart Objects. Being able to add another GIMP image into your current GIMP image.

W: Apart from contributing to the project with illustrations, you also help with moderation on Discord. Could you talk about it?

S: I was very happy when I found the Discord. GIMP is an advanced program and in that it can be very hard to navigate when you are new. Joining the community on Discord allowed me access to a quick way to throw out “stupid” questions whenever I got stuck. Issues that would usually provide me with enough frustration to simply stand up and walk away from my computer suddenly just took a quick question in a chat channel, a cool head, and some patience.

As for the moderation. I’m a person who enjoy finding things I like doing. And as I get better at them, I really enjoy helping others find that same joy.

In GIMP, most of the time when you get stuck it’s usually because of 2 or 3 common issues. Maybe you got a checkbox active that you shouldn’t. Maybe you accidentally set your layer to 0% opacity. Maybe you happened to set the Mode of your brush to Screen.

In either of those cases, you learn each time you figure it out. And with some help that goes much faster. As soon as I had gotten stuck enough times, I was able to help answer literally half the questions that were asked in the Discord channel. And people were always so appreciative. Most of the times those that get help there also end up posting the results of their work a bit later, and it’s awesome to know we were part of making that happen.

I say We because I’m in no way alone in this. While I was later promoted to a moderation role in the discord, the moderation itself has always been quite easy. What really impressed me is how popular the Discord server has become. These days it’s frequented by so many people that you hardly got a chance to answer questions unless you literally pounce at them the moment they appear.

My work as a moderator is a very easy one, all thanks to the absolute amazing community in there that crave to help others, improve their own work, or show off their latest creative works.

W: Any closing remarks for this interview?

S: Thanks for picking me for this. As I mentioned earlier, I love talking about and sharing my passions. Combining not only Digital Art but the general history and development of GIMP into the same interview could literally have me talking for ages.

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A few links to know more about this artist:

• Sevenix’ DeviantArt page
• Buying prints from Sevenix

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Bonus: here is the alternative banner version of the GIMP 3.0 splash image, also contributed by Sevenix for irregular promotion of the software on the Microsoft Store (it is designed so that it can be cropped for various form factors and with space left on the left for the software’s name and some additional text):

Get cool LibreOffice merchandise – and support our projects and community! We’ve updated our Spreadshirt shop with new designs, and part of the sales go to The Document Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind the suite.

Click here to visit the shop

In keeping with our new release schedule, we’re proud to announce GIMP 3.1.2, the first development version of what will become GIMP 3.2! This release contains a number of new features that we’ve been working on in-between bugfixes for GIMP 3.0. We’re looking forward to your testing and feedback as we continue adjusting and tweaking the code and design of them.

Our new development splash screen was created by Ville Pätsi and commemorates our recent visit to the 2025 Libre Graphics Meeting

Note that a development release is not ready for production use. It might crash. If it didn’t have problems it would be 3.2 already. So please do test, but understand this is a feature release for early adopters and for the more adventurous!

Theme colors for Brush, Font, and Palette¶

Brush previews in GIMP are printed on a white background. For grayscale brushes, we use black to represent the brush stroke. Since the Brush dockable displays many brush previews side by side, it can create a distractingly bright section if you’re using the Dark or Gray themes, especially in grid mode.

We now have a toggle to make brush previews rendered with the theme foreground and background colors instead. This means that in dark mode, the brush background will be a darker color while the brush itself will be lighter. The fonts dockable also has this toggle, and palette displays will automatically use the theme colors. Note that this is a cosmetic change only and does not affect how you create brushes.

Default Colors	Theme Colors

Brush preview before and after theme color toggle - GIMP 3.1.2

Auto-match Windows and Linux OS theme¶

GIMP defaults to the Dark mode version of our Default theme on first load. Thanks to the hard work of several contributors (Hari Rana, Niels De Graef, Isopod, and Jehan), we know have an additional “System Colors” color scheme so that GIMP matches your current OS theme preferences on Windows and Linux (provided your OS supports the portal). GIMP’s theme will also automatically update if you change your system preference.

You can of course still explicitly set a color scheme in Preferences or the Welcome Dialog if you’d prefer to use a scheme that’s different from your OS.

If you’re a macOS developer and are interested in adding support for this feature on your platform, please reach out!

New Paint Mode: Overwrite¶

New contributor Woynert implemented a new paint blend mode called Overwrite. It allows you to directly replace the pixels over the area you paint, without blending the transparency values of the brush and the existing pixels in that area.

This new mode is particularly useful for pixel art, when you want to overwrite your target opacity over the source opacity, and is mostly targetted at the Pencil tool. With the brush tool or other paint tools, some interpolation of opacity and color will still happen for softer transitions as this is what is usually expected with these tools.

For these non-pencil use cases, we are still tweaking the algorithm and we welcome feedback. For the pencil tool use cases though, the sharp overwrite of color and alpha is pretty much what is expected from this mode.

Note also that this new mode is only available as a paint mode (in particular, you won’t find it in the list of layer modes or effect modes).

New Text Outline Option¶

There’s a new setting in the text tool to control the direction of the text outline. You can have the text outline grow inward, outward, or in both directions!

Non-destructive editing¶

Co-Maintainer Michael Natterer spent several days during the Libre Graphics Meeting, going over the non-destructive filter code in order to clean it up and refactor it. While this is mostly behind-the-scenes work, this should reduce bugs and make future development and maintenance much easier.

Building on this work, GIMP now supports adding non-destructive filters to channels! The Channels dockable now shows the same Fx column as the Layers dockable, so you can edit, rearrange, delete, and merge filters on channels just like you can with layers.

CMYK¶

The CMYK Color Selector now calculates and displays the Total Ink Coverage of the selected color. This is useful when printing, as depending on the printing system and the media used, there may be a limit on how much ink can be applied.

File format support¶

We have added support for several new formats and improved some existing ones. Are there image formats you need? Let us know and we can investigate whether we can add them.

ART Raw Loader¶

We’re adding support for using ART (AnotherRawTherapee) as a Camera Raw loader in GIMP, in addition to our existing support for darktable and RawTherapee. If you have ART already installed, GIMP should automatically recognize it and use it to load Camera Raw format images for further editing. If that doesn’t work for you, please reach out and let us know!

Krita Palette¶

By request, we’ve added a new option to export to Krita‘s .kpl palette format from GIMP. You can do this by choosing Export as from the menu in the Palette dockable.

Photoshop Patterns¶

Jacob Boerema has added support for importing Photoshop patterns! You can put Adobe .pat files in the GIMP pattern folder and automatically load them in the same way as GIMP’s own .pat files. We have tested this feature with RGB and grayscale Photoshop patterns, but if you run into any issues with your patterns, please let us know (and include the pattern file)!

Photoshop Curves and Levels presets¶

You can now use presets from Photoshop’s Curves and Levels filters in GIMP’s Curves and Levels filters! When you use these filters, choose Import Current Settings from File... from the Preset menu and select your .acv or .alv preset respectively. If your preset doesn’t work with those filters, please let us know (and include the preset files)!

PSD/PSB¶

Alx Sa has implemented initial support for exporting PSBs, Photoshop Large format. It is very similar to PSDs - the main difference is that you can export images up to 300,000 pixels wide and tall instead of PSD’s 30,000 limit. Thanks to Ville Pätsi for their initial testing. If you work with very large images (or PSBs in general), we’d appreciate your testing and feedback!

Also, our PSD/PSB importer now recognizes legacy Drop Shadow and Inner Shadow non-destructive filters. These will be converted to GIMP’s non-destructive Dropshadow filter so you can edit and adjust them after opening the image.

APNG¶

GIMP can now import APNG animations. People building or packaging GIMP should note that we used the standard libpng for this, not a patched version, so no changes are needed.

OpenEXR¶

We’ve now added support for loading multi-layer OpenEXR images. For instance, if you export a multi-view image from other software such as Blender, all views should show up in GIMP as individual layers.

JPEG 2000¶

We have had import support for JPEG 2000 images for many years. Steve Williams of Advance Software implemented an export plug-in for their own use and shared a GIMP 3 compatible version with us. We have merged it into the existing JPEG 2000 loader, so now you can both import and export JPEG 2000 images!

Playstation TIM¶

Andrew Kieschnick originally developed a GIMP 2 plug-in to load and export Sony Playstation 1 TIM textures and images. We have updated the code to be compatible with GIMP 3 and incorporated it as a standard image plug-in.

OpenRaster¶

OpenRaster is a file format intended to help share layered images between graphics editors (such Krita, MyPaint, and Scribus). In addition to the standard format (which GIMP already supports), there are two official extensions to remember which layers were selected and which ones were content locked. GIMP now supports exporting and importing both.

Over The Air Bitmap¶

We’ve added import support for Nokia’s historical black and white Over-the-Air Bitmap format. (Hey, ImageMagick supports it too!)

Jeff’s Image Format¶

As promised in our April news post, we have added import support for the GIF variant known as Jeff’s Image Format (.jif).

AVCI and HEJ2¶

Daniel Novomeský has added support for importing Advanced Video Coding (AVCI) still images. They’ve also added support for exporting HEJ2 images, which is an HEIF file that contains a JPEG 2000 image.

UX/UI¶

Denis Rangelov, Reju, Michal Vašut, and other designers have been working on a number of UX/UI updates for GIMP 3.2 in the UX repository. While the larger changes are still being designed and reviewed, we have been implementing several of their quality of life fixes:

• We found several instances where the Foreground Selection algorithm would run when switching to another tool, even if no selection had been made yet. This caused an unnecessary lag, so we adjusted the algorithm to avoid running in those cases.

• A few more areas where the system theme could conflict with GIMP’s theme were found and fixed. In fact, a few of these glitches were found while taking screenshots for this news post!

• The Palette dockable now automatically selects the next swatch when you delete a previous one, allowing you to quickly delete several swatches by just clicking the Delete button repeatedly.

• The state of the “Merge Filter” checkbox for non-destructive filters should no longer be affected if you apply a filter that currently has to be destructive, like Lens Blur. In prior versions, applying a destructive filter would always enable the checkbox for other filters, even if you had turned it off before.

• “Lock pixels” now generates an undo step in undo history, just like “Lock Position” and other locks.

Notable bug and regression fixes¶

Unique Color Count¶

The Color Cube Analysis plug-in was removed from GIMP 3, as most of its functionality already exists in the Histogram dockable. We say most, because one feature was missed - the display of how many unique colors the image has. Thankfully, Google Summer of Code student Gabriele Barbero has reimplemented this feature! You can enable it by checking “Compute unique colors” in the Histogram dockable. The count will update live as you edit the image.

Additional Fixes¶

Some image formats do not allow images to have transparent sections. This can be confusing if you’re not familiar with all the details of the image you imported, especially when rotating or applying a filter with transparency such as Color to Alpha. We now detect if a filter or transformation would require transparency, and automatically add an alpha channel to the layer to prevent unexpected distortions.

Jacob Boerema implemented a fix for ZDI-CAN-25082, which potentially affected loading certain DDS images on a 32-bit machine.

In the 3.0.4 news post, we implemented a fix for transparency padding when pasting a selection to other programs. Cheesequake extended this fix to also cover copy and pasting full layers to other programs. Please let us know if you notice any other related regressions!

Estecka fixed a bug where editing filters on a hidden layer would automatically cause the layer to reappear.

The legacy Jigsaw filter has been updated to work on transparent layers. While it’s not a non-destructive filter, this fix should allow you to apply it to a separate transparent layer and then use it as an overlay for your image.

Plug-in/Script Developers¶

We’ve added a new API to create a GimpCoordinates widget in the auto-generated dialogue. gimp_procedure_dialog_get_coordinates () will connect two numeric parameters with a chain link and a unit type dropdown. You can see an example of how it’s used in our Tile plug-in, or in our GimpUi API documentation.

Due to an oversight, unsigned integer parameters did not generate widgets in GimpProcedureDialog despite being functionally this same. This has been corrected, so now gimp_procedure_add_uint_argument () will create input fields automatically just like gimp_procedure_add_int_argument () does.

Also, Jehan added a new default behavior to the GimpChoice parameter type. If you make one with only two options, the auto-generated dialog will display radio buttons instead of a dropdown menu. You can of course override this default with gimp_procedure_dialog_get_widget (), but we think this will help save people some clicks for simple options.

Build Process¶

Bruno Lopes continues their hard work to improve our build and packaging processes. A few of the highlights:

• Our build system now automatically generates a list of image formats that GIMP can open on Windows. This means rather than manually maintaining (and often forgetting to update) a list, the installer and MSIX will associate all supported images as we implement them, like the ones mentioned in this news.

• Our Linux builds now have a similar method of auto-generating image format associations via their mimetype too. We hope to implement this feature for macOS builds as well in a future update.

• All previously non-portable build scripts of GIMP repository have been made POSIX-compliant. This means that it’s now easier to use these on platforms like BSD. Bruno has also implemented more checks in our CI pipelines to prevent non-portable code from being reintroduced in the future. Even though most of these utility scripts will not be used on daily basis by packagers (we ported the important .sh scripts used by Meson to .py scripts since GIMP 3.0.4 development cycle), this makes our builds truly cross-platform.

Release stats¶

Since GIMP 3.0.4, in the main GIMP repository:

• 42 reports were closed as FIXED.
• 55 merge requests were merged.
• 302 commits were pushed.
• 12 translations were updated: Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Dutch, Galician, Georgian, Norwegian Nynorsk, Persian, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian.

29 people contributed changes or fixes to GIMP 3.1.2 codebase (order is determined by number of commits; some people are in several groups):

• 14 developers to core code: Jehan, Michael Natterer, Alx Sa, Jacob Boerema, Bruno Lopes, Christoph Reiter, Estecka, Gabriele Barbero, Hari Rana, Ondřej Míchal, Philip Zander, cheesequake, lloyd konneker, woynert.
• 9 developers to plug-ins or modules: Alx Sa, Bruno Lopes, Jehan, lloyd konneker, Jacob Boerema, Advance Software, Anders Jonsson, Daniel Novomeský, Natanael Copa.
• 12 translators: Luming Zh, Martin, Yuri Chornoivan, Ekaterine Papava, Alexander Shopov, Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Nathan Follens, Anders Jonsson, Danial Behzadi, Emin Tufan Çetin, Jordi Mas, Yago Raña.
• 1 theme designers: Alx Sa.
• 2 contributors on other types of resources: Jehan, Bruno Lopes.
• 11 build, packaging or CI contributors: Bruno Lopes, Alx Sa, lloyd konneker, Jehan, Advance Software, Christoph Reiter, Michael Natterer, Natanael Copa, Sam James, woynert, Ondřej Míchal

Contributions on other repositories in the GIMPverse (order is determined by number of commits):

• Our UX tracker had 3 reports closed as FIXED.
• ctx had 186 commits since 3.0.4 release by 1 contributor: Øyvind Kolås.
• gimp-data had 10 commits by 4 contributors: Jehan, Bruno Lopes, Ville Pätsi, Alx Sa.
• The gimp-test-images (unit testing repository) repository had 2 commits by 1 contributor: Jacob Boerema.
• The gimp-macos-build (macOS packaging scripts) release had 18 commits by 2 contributors: Lukas Oberhuber, Bruno Lopes.
• The flatpak release had 7 commits by 2 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Jehan.
• Our main website (what you are reading right now) had 26 commits by 3 contributors: Alx Sa, Jehan, Bruno Lopes.
• Our developer website had 20 commits by 3 contributors: Bruno Lopes, Lloyd Konneker, Jehan.
• Our 3.0 documentation had 40 commits by 9 contributors: Kolbjørn Stuestøl, Alevtina Karashokova, Nathan Follens, Jacob Boerema, Alx Sa, Matthew Leach, Alevtina, Anders Jonsson, Yuri Chornoivan.

Let’s not forget to thank all the people who help us triaging in Gitlab, report bugs and discuss possible improvements with us. Our community is deeply thankful as well to the internet warriors who manage our various discussion channels or social network accounts such as Ville Pätsi, Liam Quin, Michael Schumacher and Sevenix!

Note: considering the number of parts in GIMP and around, and how we get statistics through git scripting, errors may slip inside these stats. Feel free to tell us if we missed or mis-categorized some contributors or contributions.

Team news¶

Our Google Summer of Code students are making great progress with their summer projects!

Gabriele Barbero is making some much-requested improvements to our on-canvas text editor. In their test branch, they’ve made the style editor moveable, and each text layer remembers its editor’s position when you switch between them. With a little more polish and bug-testing, this feature should show up in a future 3.1 development release!

Ondřej Míchal has created a GEGL Filter Browser prototype in their own test branch. This involved a lot of research, as there any a number of edge cases and formats to account for. When finished, this feature will be very useful for script and plug-in developers, especially with the new filter API that lets them create and apply any effect available in GIMP!

Shivam is working on a website to list and display third-party GIMP extensions (the rebirth of the GIMP registry that older creators may have known). A first version of the script to generate extensions’ web pages from their metadata has already been merged.

Around GIMP¶

We printed stickers of the new Wilber logos for the 2025 Libre Graphics Meeting.

You can use this file if you’d like to print your own Wilber stickers. You can also request reimbursement if you’re planning to print enough to hand out at a local event or GIMP User Group meeting. Note that we are still working out the procedure for these requests, but we encourage you to reach out and discuss your idea.

Downloading GIMP 3.1.2¶

You will find all our official builds on GIMP official website (gimp.org):

• Linux AppImages for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
• Linux flatpaks for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
• Universal Windows installer for x86 (32 and 64-bit) and for ARM (64-bit)
• Microsoft Store package for x86 and ARM (64-bit)
• macOS DMG packages for Intel hardware
• macOS DMG packages for Apple Silicon hardware

Other packages made by third-parties are obviously expected to follow (Linux or *BSD distributions’ packages, etc.).

There is no development release for the manual, but you can continue to use the existing GIMP 3.0 documentation from GIMP 3.1.

What’s next¶

This first development release contains many new features we’ve been working on during 3.0 development. Our main focus for GIMP 3.2 on the roadmap is developing two new types of non-destructive layers - linked layers and vector layers. We hope to share more information about these in future news posts.

This faster pace release schedule also proves to be quite stimulating and relies on years of infrastructure and procedure preparations. So far, it looks like it works quite well!

While we remind that this is a development version and therefore we advise against using it for production, we also really welcome feedback and bug reports. At every first stable release in a new series, too many bugs are discovered. GIMP is a community, first and foremost. The software will improve because many people participate! Now that we are starting the development releases for a brand new stable series, we are really relying on everyone so that the upcoming GIMP 3.2 can be as stable and good as possible.

Don’t forget you can donate and personally fund GIMP developers, as a way to give back and accelerate the development of GIMP. Community commitment helps the project to grow stronger!

The Open Document Format (ODF) is an open standard format for office documents, which offers a vendor-independent, royalty-free way to encode text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.
However, to realise its potential, it is necessary to understand the concepts of compliance – the degree to which an implementation adheres to ODF specifications – and interoperability – the ability to exchange and view ODF files without loss of fidelity or functionality across different applications and platforms.

ODF is an XML-based file format that has been standardised by OASIS and ratified by ISO/IEC 26300. Milestones include:

• ODF 1.0 (2006): the initial version defining the basic document types: text (.odt), spreadsheet (.ods) and presentation (.odp).
• ODF 1.1 (2012): updates to formula specifications and accessibility improvements were made, but it was never submitted for standardisation.
• ODF 1.2 (2015): introduces digital signatures, RDF metadata, and OpenFormula for standardising spreadsheet calculations.
• ODF 1.3 (2020): an extension of security features, including improvements to encryption and import/export conventions, as well as a clarification of compliance clauses.

Each version has strengthened the role of ODF as a universal interchange format, ensuring that documents remain readable and editable in all programs, both now and in the future.

Definition of compliance

Compliance refers to the extent to which a given software implements the ODF standard. It comprises several levels:

1. Structural compliance: ensures that file archives contain the expected XML files (e.g. content.xml, styles.xml and meta.xml), in accordance with the ODF Packaging specifications.
2. Schema validation: verifies that the XML content matches the applicable ODF schemas (Relax NG or W3C XML Schema). This prevents a <draw:image> element, for example, from appearing where only text is permitted.
3. FeatuSecurity profilesre compliance: supports the required features (styles, tables, charts and metadata) and the correct implementation of the optional features required by the application (digital signatures, encryption and change tracking).
4. Formula compliance: for spreadsheets, adherence to OpenFormula specification ensures that formulas behave consistently across different applications.
5. Compliance statements and profiles: applications often declare their compliance levels (e.g. ODF 1.2 Part 1: OpenDocument Schema). Some define profiles, which are subsets of the full standard tailored to specific industries or workflows.

Non-compliant files risk becoming unreadable or displaying incorrectly in other applications. Validating ODF schemas and integrating compliance tools enables developers and users to guarantee the longevity and accuracy of documents.

The interoperability landscape

Even when two applications claim ODF compliance, disparities can arise.

• Rendering differences: variations in character substitution, line spacing or image placement can slightly alter the layout.
• Functionality differences: for example, an editor may support digital signatures, but implement them in a way that causes signatures to be rejected when files are exchanged.
• Use of extensions: some applications use proprietary extensions (e.g. custom XML blocks) that others do not recognise, which can result in data or content loss.
• Metadata management: different handling of document properties, such as author, version history or custom metadata, can hinder workflows.

To achieve strong interoperability, systematic testing is required.

1. Automated schema validation: tools such as ODF Validator can check thousands of files against ODF schemas in batches.
2. Feature compliance suites: OASIS provides test suites that cover every aspect of the ODF specification, including basic document elements and encryption profiles.
3. Round-trip testing: save a document in application A, open it in application B and save it again, then reopen it in application A to detect any differences.
4. Visual regression testing: use headless rendering engines (e.g. LibreOffice in server mode) to generate PDFs or bitmaps for pixel-level comparison.
5. Community reports: projects such as ODF Plugfest bring vendors together to exchange test files and submit interoperability reports.

Best practices for ensuring compliance and interoperability:

1. Adherence to the core standard: avoid proprietary extensions unless they form part of an agreed ODF profile.
2. Early and frequent validation: integrate schema and conformance testing into CI/CD pipelines for document-centric applications.
3. Prioritise OpenFormula: when creating a spreadsheet, use standard functions and avoid vendor-specific formula syntax.
4. Adopt the Flat ODF format: the Flat ODF format (.fodt, .fods and .fodp) stores the entire document in a single XML file, making it easier to compare, validate and process in scripts.
5. Document compliance statements: indicate the ODF version supported by the application, as well as the schema, encryption and signature parts.
6. Participate in plugfests and community testing: real-world feedback is valuable, so it is important to participate in interoperability events and contribute to public issue trackers.
7. Make smart use of metadata: use ODF metadata elements (e.g. dc:meta, RDF blocks) to ensure the consistency of document properties when transferring between tools.

Looking ahead: ODF 1.4 and beyond

Although ODF 1.3 has addressed many functional issues, the ecosystem continues to evolve.

• Accessibility improvements: better support for tagged PDFs, ARIA roles and semantic markup.
• Native cloud editing: harmonisation of ODF with collaborative protocols (e.g. WOPI and CMIS) to enable real-time co-authoring.
• Extended multimedia management: richer multimedia support is incorporated (e.g. video and embedded web components), while maintaining interoperability.
• Security profiles: standardisation of profiles for high-security environments (e.g. government or healthcare), combining encryption, signatures and content redaction.

Conclusion

ODF compliance and interoperability are fundamental to document longevity, workflow resilience, and user trust. By adhering to ODF schemas, testing across multiple applications and adopting community best practices, organisations can safeguard their content against vendor lock-in and format degradation. As it continues to mature, ODF is set to remain the foundation of open, accessible and durable office documents.

LibreOffice is the successor project to OpenOffice(.org), which in turn was based on StarOffice, a proprietary office suite developed in the 1990s. Learn more about the history here! And let’s hear from Stefan Soyka, who worked on StarOffice from 1990 – 1992…

When did you join Star Division, and what did you work on?

I came from Berlin to Hamburg to work for Marco Börries in his Star Lab in spring 1990, together with my friend and study mate Stefan. Both of us joined the project more or less at the same time and shared the same first name, which caused some confusion at first.

The situation in Hamburg needs some explaining if you are new to it. The Writer application that is the foundation of what we use today is not the first Star Writer – but thesedays it is often referred to as Star Writer 6 or Star Writer Graphic. Marco’s company Star Division, based in rural Lüneburg not far from Hamburg, had developed and sold with considerable success a text processing application with the same name, that was an MS-DOS application based on a home-grown graphics framework. A team of freelance programmers was working on it under the lead of Sven-Ola Tücke.

This was also the tool we used to write the first drafts for specifications, by the way.

The old Star Writer had a solid fanbase and sold quite well even after Star Lab started in Hamburg. So it is fair to say that the money we burned in Hamburg was earned in Lüneburg.

Marco, however, had the right feeling that graphical user interfaces were already around and taking up speed. The future (that is the time we live in now) would belong to applications running on the main graphical user interface platforms at this time, being Microsoft Windows, the X Window System and macOS. Of course there were voices that argued that graphical user interfaces were only hampering productivity and real pros would always use the command line. That may sound a bit funny today, but I took it all in my heart.

When I arrived there, development had pretty much advanced in the compatibility layer named Star View, that allowed portable programming of both operating system functions and graphical user interfaces. There was, however, no application yet. Because I had worked on a C++/X Window System project on the ODA standard (ISO 8613, Open Document Architecture), I had some background on this and formed with some others the core of the Star Writer project team.

Tell us about the office location and team back then!

The offices of Star Lab at that time were at Heidenkampsweg, near Berliner Tor, in Hamburg in a quite modern building. I remember the adjacent gas station; many of us were heavy cigarette-smokers at that time, and I sometimes went there at night to get the next pack.

Dirk Bartels supervised the daily operations. He had a software company back in Berlin and he expected benefits from the Star View portability layer for his own products. His personal secretary was Marita, if I remember the name correctly, a lovely young woman, I think the only one in the project at that time. When I joined the team, there were about twenty people working there including administrative staff.

Andreas, a good-natured guy with intense freckles, managed the Star View project. Almost all the coding however, at least for the Microsoft platform, was completed by Thomas – a very young man who was incredibly well-organized and productive, the type of coder who writes a screen full of statements that compile instantly error-free. He also virtually lived in the offices. The staffing for this platform was good; the other platforms had fewer developers. I remember Dirk, a shy young man who did the Macintosh port. One day, he showed us that all output appeared like upside down. It turned out that the Macintosh uses a y-origin different from the Microsoft platform (top left, I think). That gave him certainly some headaches.

Michael, a freelancer from Lüneburg, sometimes visited Star Lab in his tiny, first generation Mazda MX-5, that he could barely fit into. He was the only engineer who contributed to both the “classic” Star Writer with Sven-Ola Tücke, and Star Lab. He introduced the first Star Basic macro language. For the Windows platform, it had been worth thinking about a Star Writer application programmers interface or component object model (OLE at that time, but was just emerging in 1991 with Word and Excel), but with portability above all, this did not come to pass.

The team at this time was Euro-centric at least – effectively most staff members came from nearby. Another great developer in the Star View team, however, was Eddy McGreal, an Irish guy, whom I saw by incidence recently in a software product presentation he held. Can’t stop hacking.

Armin kept the business in order. He was also working on internationalisation. When he married, he invited all mates to comes and celebrate. It was in a small town in the moors, I don’t remember the name, but we had a great time. When we went back to Hamburg in the morning – hopefully at least the driver was more or less sober.

In the Star Writer team, Jürgen was the most productive programmer, about two meters tall with a sad face. Playing handball was his first priority, if he was not hacking. He did incredible work under the hood, like importing exotic files from other text processors, and never complained or missed a deadline. I think we never gave him enough credit for what he achieved.

Despite all the good work, the Star Writer project did not meet the expectations in the time when I was there. Later, I spent many thoughts on why we were not more successful in the beginning, because it felt like a wasted opportunity to me. It was not for the lack of ambition: there are folders full of splendid concepts and intricate specifications. But none of us had a good blueprint of the best way to start this enormous, complex task, I believe.

What was the toolset and development process like back then?

The object-oriented programming paradigm had evolved into the first C++ standard and implementations. Before I came to Hamburg, a pre-compiler was used, on Sun Workstations at least, to generate standard K&R C code, that was fed into the platform native C-compiler. The result was not always predictable or free of errors, but luckily, at Star Division, we had the one-step Microsoft C++ compiler, so we were a step ahead at this point.

Star View, however, was a huge library and the Microsoft linker had a hard time (and needed a long time) to do the static linking. When it came to a code freeze, that is the integration of the stable versions of all projects, Stefan used an egg timer so that he didn’t miss the time when the linker had finished, to see if there were problems with the linking or not. It took so long, you could easily forget it. If it failed, it needed fixes and another round. The whole process needed much time, until Stefan one day found out that someone had tackled the problem with the Microsoft linker and had released a better implementation that did the job in a fraction of the time.

Another paradigm that came up at the time was the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. It says, in short: what you see is only a volatile transformation of the model. The controller, like someone typing text into the application or a report generator producing table data output into a document, changes the model, which in turn from time to time updates the view.

Many in the project and even in the management were not comfortable with this procedure, because it appeared to make a simple thing unnecessarily complex. The argument was like: “This is meant to be a WYSIWYG text processor, and we need nothing beyond what the user sees on the screen, so let’s store this”. Nobody wanted to look at a document any different from before, when he or she opened it again – maybe on a different machine were fonts were missing or the display had a different resolution. There was a lot to explain and no proof that either concept was superior. What’s more, nobody could tell reliably and by their own experience, what adopting the MVC pattern for a text processing application meant in practice, and how the code would look like.

Then, the Unicode standard was evolving and a controversial debate started about what that meant for our plans. Speaking of 16-bit Unicode only, two aspects were unsettling: the same document would need twice the memory compared to 8-bit characters (we had no concept for memory management then and kept the whole document in RAM all the time, which obviously still needed some reworking). At that time, the model was using zero-terminated C strings for text paragraphs for the comfort of using the standard C string libraries.

Turning to Unicode, we would have to say goodbye to that and rewrite the functions we needed. It probably had not yet dawned everyone, that C strings would not suit the requirements of text attributes and formatting anyway.

UTF-8 strings, on the other hand had the downside that it was complicated to find out, how many character positions the output would use. Building substrings from UTF-8 strings is also a delicate matter, because the string can not be cut at any position without creating invalid UTF-8 character sequences.

Most of the developers working on StarOffice later will certainly be surprised, what basic considerations were moving us at the start, but man, this was all serious stuff.

StarWriter 3.1 (screenshot courtesy of WinWorld) and modern LibreOffice

Do you still use LibreOffice today, and do you have any contact with old Star Division team members?

Sorry to say that I have no contact any more with my has-been workmates. I left Star Division somewhat frustrated because it took so long for the good concepts to materialize and also, because I felt, I was not the right man to promote that. But I also had a pregnant girlfriend (now my wife) in Berlin, which was even a better reason to say good-bye.

Frankly, I was relieved and amazed to see the first product. It was not free at that time. I don’t think it really paid for Marco before it went to Sun Microsystems – anyway there was no free download. With my Zyxel 14.400 baud modem, it had taken a long time anyway. I got versions on batches of CDs from time to time from my friend Stefan, though, who was still with the project.

I was not so happy with the application at first, because at that time it was a monolithic “desktop” with all applications in its belly (like Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw, I believe), which took ages on my machine to load. I would have loved to see more collaboration in it: at that time that would meant an e-mail client and calendar.

Sometimes I thought to myself, “If I had to decide …” but ended with a sigh :“There would be no Star Writer to this very day”. In fact, it would be another interesting story, which changes it took to finally make it happen.

I never had Microsoft Office for myself (I like Microsoft Publisher for the themes and the artwork that came bundled with it, but somehow Pokémon Druckstudio was an acceptable replacement). I had to buy a Microsoft licence for my children though, because teachers did not expect that someone would not have access to Microsoft Office, and I was hesitant to end my child’s learning career over this.

I use LibreOffice almost every day now. It has all I need, and probably much more.

I use LibreOffice for my everyday correspondence, and less often I use it to create PDF files for printing. I have a nice set of Star Basic macros, and a good document template I load all the formatting from, to create a good-looking A5 format book from a text file or a website, in no time at all. Creating PDF files is very easy in LibreOffice, yet it has some uncommon features that come in very handy at times, like the option to export also blank pages (that would usually be omitted). Believe me, you don’t want to go to print without the blank pages.

The E-books that I create from the same document (printing is a bit out of fashion) have no frills (they could have, of course) but they are nice to read. I confess that I find it very convenient to load them into my Kindle account, from which I can read them on any device that comes near to me.

Well, I’m not a young man anymore, I like to say that before anyone else does, and programming to empower users (with more luck in later projects) is still my passion to this day. The StarOffice project has been with me more or (sometimes) less all the way, a bit like a child I gave up for adoption at an early age.

TDF says: Thanks to Stefan for the insights into the early days of StarOffice – and we’re happy to hear that he’s still using LibreOffice today!

Marco Marega writes:

Hi, I’m Marco, an Italian translator and Member of The Document Foundation. Twice a year I take part in an event in Pordenone to promote LibreOffice within the stand “Linux Arena” of the PNLUG Linux User Group. It’s inside a local fair, part of which is dedicated to technology, makers, electronics and so on.

For the event from April 25 – 27 we had a LibreOffice stand with a 32″ monitor, showing an Impress presentation about LibreOffice on a loop. At the stand I met different interested people – some of whom I already know since they visit the fair regularly, while others I saw for the first time.

There is always curiosity about LibreOffice, and this time I noticed an increasing demand about AI integration and related plugins. The LibreOffice coffee/beer mats were very much appreciated by visitors to the stand.

The Pordenone Linux User Group invited other associations to share the stand, so there were also:

• Trieste Linux Users Group, with a nice game to learn bash commands while trying to deactivate a bomb
• Odoo group, presenting the ERP/CRM/…
• Bergamo Linux Users group presenting OpenWRT and some other projects (Emiliano Vavassori is one of them)
• A Blender expert
• Another member who uses openSUSE for multimedia production
• A corner where volunteers helped visitors to install Linux on their PCs, or to solve little problems

The next edition of the event will be on 22 – 23 November.

🌐 Translations

• Updated Turkish translation using Weblate by @weblate in commit
• Updated Hungarian translation using Weblate by @summoner001 in commit
• Updated Italian translation using Weblate by @Wiccio in #804

Over the course of its 20-year history, the ODF standard has been adopted, or at least recommended, by numerous supranational bodies and several countries on almost every continent. However, this does not necessarily mean that the ODF standard is used in accordance with these decisions, which are often laws in their own right, as Microsoft’s substantial lobbying and misinformation campaigns aimed at protecting its revenue of around $25 billion generated by the proprietary OOXML format (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX) encourage the use of the latter. This is despite the fact that the disadvantages for national systems, communities of citizens and individuals are very easy to demonstrate: loss of control over content, interoperability problems and dependence on the commercial strategies of a single vendor.

The information in this post is based on my research into sources relating to the adoption or recommendations for the use of ODF. I began compiling this collection of documents around 2010 and continue to update it annually. Over the last twelve months, I have also used artificial intelligence in my research, which has helped me find some articles.

Unfortunately, formal adoption or recommendation of ODF does not guarantee its actual use in accordance with the law. For example, the latest version of Italy’s Digital Administration Code explicitly prohibits the use of OOXML because it is not a standard, yet this decision is largely ignored by public bodies.

SOVEREIGN BODIES

NATO requires all 28 member countries to use ODF as the standard format for document exchange.

UN and NGOs: UN organisations favour standard and open formats to ensure that all documents remain accessible and do not depend on expensive or restricted tools. This is why ODF is used for reports, policy drafts, and collaborative documentation between teams.

European Commission: has taken a strong stance in favour of open standards and promotes the use of formats such as ODF in documents through its open source software strategy. The European Parliament, the European Commission and the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) have integrated LibreOffice and ODF into their internal workflows to ensure greater transparency and language neutrality.

EUROPE

Belgium: Since September 2007, all Belgian federal government departments have been required to accept and read ODF documents, and a memorandum has established ODF as the standard for the exchange of office documents within the federal public administration.

Denmark: From 1 April 2011, the Danish Parliament has mandated the use of ODF by state authorities for the exchange and archiving of documents, whereas previously agencies were only required to accept ODF documents. In recent weeks, articles have claimed that the Danish government will formally migrate to open-source software and, therefore, to ODF. We are, of course, seeking confirmation of this project.

Finland: The Ministry of Justice and other ministries have adopted ODF as the main document format.

France: The Référentiel Général d’Interopérabilité (RGI) recommends ODF as the preferred format for office documents in public administrations. Agencies are therefore encouraged to use ODF for creating and archiving text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Germany: The German Council for Information Technology Planning, representing the federal and state governments, has committed to making ODF the standard for document management in public administration by 2027. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and several federal courts already use ODF exclusively. Several federal states and municipalities have also switched to ODF-compatible office suites, such as LibreOffice and Collabora Online. ODF is cited as a core element of Schleswig-Holstein’s digital sovereignty strategy.

Italy: The Digital Administration Code only allows ODF in its guidelines for public administration, as OOXML does not meet the open standard criteria contained in the document’s glossary.

Netherlands: The Dutch government mandates the use of open standards, including ODF, for all data exchanges in the public sector, and adoption is monitored by an active political community that supports implementation.

Slovakia: All public authorities must be able to read and use ODF for electronic communication and publication of documents, including those with electronic signatures.

Spain (Andalusia and Extremadura): These regions require government agencies to use ODF (or PDF/A for static documents) for communication with each other and with citizens.

Switzerland: Government agencies are recommended to use ODF for document exchange with citizens or other agencies.

United Kingdom: In 2014, the British government adopted ODF as the sole standard for sharing and collaborating on editable documents across the public sector. The Home Office has a formal ODF adoption plan and does not reject ODF documents from citizens or businesses.

AMERICA

Argentina (Province of Misiones): The use of ODF is mandatory within government administrative organisations.

Brazil: Since 2010, proprietary formats have been prohibited in the federal public administration and ODF has been the standard for all office documents. It is mandatory in federal IT policies and is widely used in ministries and state governments. SERPRO (the federal data management service) ensures that national document workflows comply with the ODF standard.

Uruguay: public documents must use ODF for editable files and PDF for fillable forms and non-editable documents.

Venezuela: all federal government organisations must use ODF 1.0 for editable documents.

ASIA

India: India’s policy on the adoption of open standards for e-governance includes ODF as the preferred format for all federal and state services, particularly where vendor neutrality is critical for affordability and scalability.

Taiwan: The Ministry of Education has introduced ODF-compliant tools in all schools, and local governments use LibreOffice for daily administration.

AFRICA

South Africa: South Africa’s MIOS (Minimum Interoperability Standards) policy aims to ensure a future-proof digital government and access for all. It promotes open standards and lists ODF as an accepted format.

CASE STUDY

Monaco: In 2013, the city of Monaco made headlines when it migrated 15,000 desktops to Linux and OpenOffice/LibreOffice, adopting ODF. Despite positive results and significant cost savings, the project faced strong political opposition backed by the Microsoft lobby. In 2017, part of the migration was cancelled. This case is emblematic because it highlights the complexity of vendor lock-in and demonstrates the pressure that public institutions face from proprietary vendors to maintain a monopoly that is detrimental to the institutions themselves and their citizens.

Regina Henschel writes:

Susanne Mohn asked on the German-language user’s mailing list how to create a colour wheel with LibreOffice. It was not about the colours themselves, but about the geometry. How do you create a circle or ring with equally sized sectors?

Very different solutions were proposed. Susanne Mohn, Harald Berger and I (Regina Henschel) have created a page in the LibreOffice Wiki so that these do not remain hidden in a thread. Due to the development process, some sample files are in German, but the page itself is in English.

Colour wheels can be used to create “doughnut charts” of data. Have fun exploring!

https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2025/

Right after Inkscape Summit in Nuremberg, from May 28th to the 31st, the team attended to the Libre Graphics Meeting 2025, also in Nuremberg. It was a great opportunity to learn and share, and a unique experience to see how Inkscape contributes to the Libre Graphics scenario globally.

LGM 2025 featured a series of talks and workshops, covering aspects of creative software development, demoing real use cases for libre graphics, and pushing boundaries of technology as a platform for creative experimentation. From graphic design to embroidery stitching, XML editing to retro video game UI emulation, Inkscape showed up as an important part on the arts, design, and maker communities.

Ink/Stitch — Talk

https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2025/program/ink-stitch/
Daniel K. Schneider gave an excellent overview around embroidery stitching as a durable and versatile artistic expression, with many areas of application. All existing embroidery machinery use proprietary file formats and require expensive software. Ink/Stitch is an Inkscape extension that offers a full-fledged, cross-platform embroidery digitizing platform. It is based entirely on free and open-source software. In the past year, Ink/Stitch had 225 thousand downloads. It's user base have an active community of 10k+ french speaking users in a Facebook group.

Daniel mentioned that one of Inkscape's advantage for building Ink/Stitch is that it is already familiar to the makers community, from other activities (like laser cutting). Inkscape's drawing conventions can be used to define stitch types (a thick stroke translates to satin stitches, for example), which is interpreted and converted by Ink/Stitch into real embroidery patterns. It is super cool to see Ink/Stitch converting SVGs and simulating the output.

How to Run a Film Festival on Libre Graphics — Talk

https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2025/program/how_to_run_a_film_festival_on_libre_graphics/
Marc Rodrigues organized and ran the first LusOFest — Festival for Portuguese-Language Film in Offenbach am Main. Lusofest 2025 featured work from 6 countries and received 6 film makers. It's more than 350 visitors were able to attend to 3 feature films exhibitions and watch 40 out of 500+ submitted short films. As stated by Marc, "Organising a film festival is 90% communication". Marc covered the importance of advertising and rooting for people to come for your festival. All communication and promotional materials, were done entirely with FOSS. And as mentioned by Marc, Inkscape was the obvious choice for all the Graphic Design work, producing printed post cards, social media postings, and more.

Inkscape UI Vision Going Forward — Talk

https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2025/program/inkscape_ui_vision_going_forward/
UX designer Henrique Perticarati walked through the design process for an Inkscape UI vision work, and how this proposal gained traction with the community. Henrique proposes that a friendlier UI would be more inviting to new users, and a larger user base would lead to more contributions. He also pointed out that tools like Blender, GIMP and Scribus had recently gone through UI redesigns, and that there's momentum in the community for a UX-led transformation. This vision work helped Henrique to build trust with Inkscape's community and start collaborating with other members (Yotam Guttman, Wen-Wei Kao, Adam Belis, Mike Kowalski) around the future of Inkscape UX. During the talk, Henrique covered some insights about UX related users' interests, based on analysis of Gitlab issues. These insights will help determine further research and UI explorations. Stay tuned for news around the UX initiative!

CapyPDF — Lightning talk

https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2025/program/lightning_talks_thursday/
Jussi Pakkanen had a 10 min lightning talk about CapyPDF, a low level library for generating PDF files.
It exposes all PDF object specifications, nothing more, nothing less. CapyPDF is also the basis for the upcoming Inkscape CMYK-capable PDF exporter we've been all waiting for (our own Martin Owens is one of the project collaborators).

Other mentions to Inkscape

• Neil C Smith stated that Inkscape is his "favorite XML editor" in his excellent talk "Libre Designers and the Software Apocalypse". https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2025/program/libre_designers_and_the_software_apocalypse/
• In a lightning talk, Inkscape contributor Felipe Sanches showed how he uses Inkscape to create awesome retro UIs for MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator). https://libregraphicsmeeting.org/2025/program/lightning_talks_friday/

After four days of exchanging knowledge and experiences with the community, we are excited about getting back to work!

The Document Foundation and LibreOffice support the international campaign @endof10 https://endof10.org/

The countdown has begun. On 14 October 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. This will leave millions of users and organisations with a difficult choice: should they upgrade to Windows 11, or completely rethink their work environment?

The good news? You don’t have to follow Microsoft’s upgrade path. There is a better option that puts control back in the hands of users, institutions, and public bodies: Linux and LibreOffice. Together, these two programmes offer a powerful, privacy-friendly and future-proof alternative to the Windows + Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

The real costs of switching to Windows 11

The move to Windows 11 isn’t just about security updates. It increases dependence on Microsoft through aggressive cloud integration, forcing users to adopt Microsoft accounts and services. It also leads to higher costs due to subscription and licensing models, and reduces control over how your computer works and how your data is managed. Furthermore, new hardware requirements will render millions of perfectly good PCs obsolete.

This is a turning point. It is not just a milestone in a product’s life cycle. It is a crossroads.

The new path: Linux + LibreOffice

These two programmes form the backbone of a free and open computing environment based on open standards. For individual users, public administrations, schools and businesses, this combination offers more than enough: it is mature and secure, and is already in use worldwide for mission-critical workloads. Furthermore, using open standards protects users against any attempts by software developers to control them.

Here’s what this alternative offers:

1. A modern, stable and unrestricted operating system, accessible to all users thanks to intuitive distributions that allow each user to choose the configuration that best suits their needs. It also offers regular updates, long-term support versions and communities where people can help each other and develop their digital knowledge together.
   Unlike Windows 11, Linux works with all personal computers that ran Windows 10, meaning there is no need to replace your old PC. Those with even older computers can also find a suitable version of Linux, extending their useful life and reducing electronic waste.
2. LibreOffice is a complete office suite offering word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawing and database tools. It respects freedom and data because it is based on an open, standard document format (ODF), and is compatible with Microsoft’s proprietary formats (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX). This gives users control, as Microsoft cannot decide to end support at any time, as it is doing with Windows 10.
   LibreOffice is supported by a global community of volunteers, consultants, and companies who provide free and paid professional support, ensuring the ongoing development of the software and the prompt resolution of security and operational issues. There are no licence fees, telemetry or vendor lock-in.
3. Both Linux and LibreOffice are based on transparency. This means that all documents saved in the standard format will always be available because the format is open, and all documentation is available online. They also do not require a user licence subscription that protects the software vendor more than the user, and which contains incomprehensible legal clauses.
   Both the operating system and the software are managed by foundations, not companies. All activities, including development, quality assurance, problem-solving and the release of new versions, take place in public because users have the right to control the quality of the digital tools they use and entrust with their content.

What does migration look like?

Replacing Windows and Microsoft Office is not as difficult as it seems, either at an individual or corporate level. Many organisations around the world have already done so, and many others are planning to do so right now, precisely because they no longer want to be subject to the commercial strategies of Microsoft and its partners.

These are the key steps:

1. Start by testing Linux and LibreOffice on a second partition of your PC (for individuals) or in less critical departments (for companies).
2. Check the compatibility of your software configuration with Linux and LibreOffice; most office tasks can easily be transferred or adapted with minimal effort.
3. Build documentation to learn how Linux and LibreOffice work and organise training if necessary.
4. Find a consultant who can help with the migration process, such as someone certified by the Linux Professional Institute or The Document Foundation (for LibreOffice).

This is not a radical change, but rather a gradual, tailor-made transition depending on user needs.

It is important to start immediately

Microsoft is forcing users’ hands, but it is also opening a door. Now is the time to challenge your assumptions and take back control of how your personal computers work, how long they last, and most importantly, how your content is managed.

Linux and LibreOffice are not just alternatives; they are superior choices that most users have not considered until now because they trusted Microsoft — perhaps too much. This trust has been betrayed by the decision to abandon a functioning operating system such as Windows 10, purely to sell more products and lock users in further, which cannot be justified by any technological assessment.

Here’s how to get started:

• Choose Linux: https://distrochooser.de/
• Try LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/
• Find events and support for Linux: https://endof10.org/

The end of Windows 10 does not mark the end of choice, but the beginning of a new era. If you are tired of mandatory updates, invasive changes, and being bound by the commercial choices of a single supplier, it is time for a change. Linux and LibreOffice are ready — 2025 is the right year to choose digital freedom!

The Document Foundation and LibreOffice support the international campaign @endof10 https://endof10.org/

LibreOffice stands out as a privacy-respecting open source office suite. Unlike proprietary alternatives, the software is designed with privacy, user control and transparency in mind.

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2024 – we’ll post the full version here soon.)

Introduction

Concerns about end user privacy in the digital world have grown significantly over the past two decades, with and increasing awareness of data collection, user tracking and online surveillance. Many proprietary applications, including office productivity tools, often collect vast amounts of user data, in most cases without clear user consent.

All this has been clearly documented by Shoshanna Zuboff in her book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which is defined as a new economic strategy that uses the activities and experience of the individual as a free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, profiling and selling.

In this context, open source software differs substantially because respect for the user and for privacy are part of the ethical principles that guide the development of all applications. And LibreOffice stands out as the only office suite – open source or not – that respects privacy. Unlike proprietary alternatives, LibreOffice is designed with privacy, transparency, and user control of content in mind. The software does not collect telemetry data by default, does not include intrusive tracking functions, and allows users to work completely offline.

The following is a list of LibreOffice features and settings which help ensure end-user privacy, making the software a preferred choice for individuals, businesses and government institutions that prioritise data security.

No data collection or telemetry by default

One of the most significant privacy benefits of LibreOffice is its lack of telemetry by default. Unlike proprietary office suites that constantly send usage data back to their developers, LibreOffice does not collect or send any personal data without the user’s consent.

1. There are no background processes that track document usage, keystrokes or user activity.
2. LibreOffice does not create a unique user ID or track document interactions like some proprietary office suites do.
3. There is no built-in cloud storage requirement, ensuring that files remain on the user’s device unless manually uploaded elsewhere.

Optional telemetry with user consent

LibreOffice offers an optional telemetry feature, but it is entirely opt-in and requires explicit user consent. The collected data will only be used to improve the functionality of the software and will never be shared with third parties.

Full offline functionality

Unlike cloud-based office suites such as Google Docs, Microsoft 365 or Apple iWork, LibreOffice is a fully offline suite.

1. No forced cloud storage: documents remain on the local computer, reducing the risk of unauthorised access.
2. No dependence on an Internet connection: users can work in completely isolated environments.
3. No third-party server involvement: documents are never stored on a corporate server unless explicitly uploaded by the user.

For security-conscious organisations such as government agencies, law firms and healthcare providers, this offline capability ensures that sensitive documents never leave the internal network.

Open Document Format (ODF) for privacy and transparency

LibreOffice uses the Open Document Format (ODF) as its default file format. Unlike proprietary formats such as Microsoft’s DOCX, XLSX and PPTX, ODF is an open standard, which means:

1. It does not contain hidden tracking elements or embedded metadata that can leak user information.
2. It guarantees the integrity of the data in the long term because the format is fully documented, and the documentation is publicly available. Furthermore, the documentation corresponds to the format currently used by the software, unlike what happens with Microsoft 365 where the documentation is stuck at 2008.
3. It does not contain proprietary encryption mechanisms that could be exploited for surveillance or unauthorised access.

Control over metadata

Metadata can contain sensitive information such as: author details, document history, and editing timestamps. LibreOffice allows users to remove all metadata before sharing a document to ensure that private information is not inadvertently shared with external parties.

Strong encryption and password protection

LibreOffice provides robust document encryption to prevent unauthorised access. Users can protect their documents with strong passwords and encryption settings. This prevents unauthorised users from opening or modifying the file.

In addition, LibreOffice supports GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) encryption for users who require public key cryptography to secure their documents.

No cloud lock-in: freedom to choose storage

Unlike Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, which force all users to store documents in their respective cloud ecosystems, LibreOffice allows full control over file storage. This flexibility ensures that no third party can access user data without explicit permission.

Users can:

1. Store files locally on their hard drive or external storage.
2. Use self-hosted cloud services such as Nextcloud or ownCloud for increased privacy.
3. Store files on USB drives, encrypted partitions or private network servers.

Macro security and malware protection

Macros are often used in office documents for automation, but they can also be exploited to deliver malware. LibreOffice includes robust macro security settings to protect users.

1. By default, LibreOffice blocks macros from untrusted sources.
2. Users can only enable macros if they are signed with a trusted certificate.
3. The security level can be configured to prevents malicious actors from using macros as an attack vector.

Transparency and open source code

One of the biggest privacy benefits of LibreOffice is its open source nature. Unlike proprietary office suites that operate as black boxes, LibreOffice’s source code is publicly available and regularly audited by the security community. This level of transparency and user control makes LibreOffice a trusted alternative to closed-source office suites.

1. No hidden spyware: because anyone can inspect the code, LibreOffice cannot contain hidden trackers or surveillance tools.
2. Independent security audits: governments, cybersecurity experts and researchers can verify LibreOffice’s privacy claims.
3. No forced updates: users have complete control over when and how they update LibreOffice, avoiding unwanted feature changes or telemetry settings.

Conclusion

LibreOffice is the most privacy-conscious office suites available today. With no telemetry by default, full offline functionality, strong encryption, metadata control and open source transparency, it provides users with a secure and private environment for document creation and collaboration.

For individuals, businesses and governments concerned about privacy and digital sovereignty, LibreOffice is a reliable, free and ethical alternative to proprietary office suites.

As privacy concerns continue to grow in the digital age, LibreOffice remains committed to ensuring that users retain full control over their data: a core principle that sets it apart from many commercial alternatives.

Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or make a donation. Thank you!