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An office suite simpler than LibreOffice
Linux users want a reliable offline office suite that handles Word and Excel files well, with a simpler interface than LibreOffice, and would pay.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay38%
- Want it local or private50%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted12%
- Want AI to do it0%
Share of the 8 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Never launchedNobody has launched this on Show HN.
Instead of: Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Google Docs
The idea, as matched
A polished desktop office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, slides) that runs natively on Linux and elsewhere, works offline, is fully compatible with MS Office files and is simpler than LibreOffice.
Jev first matched 10 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 8 of 10.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
Reader’s note. Two just want real MS Office on Linux.
- Feb 2025Wants real Word or Excel running natively on Linux Mint, without emulators or Windows VMs. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: What's your app idea that you don't have the time or motivation to build”
- Jan 2025Wants a feasible alternative to Microsoft Office with a better experience and privacy. Read it: a comment in “It's time to make computing personal again”
- Apr 2024Would pay for an offline Linux office suite replacing LibreOffice, which crashes and has bugs. Read it: a comment in “German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice”
- Feb 2021Would pay for a Linux document and spreadsheet suite that works well, replacing LibreOffice's clunky interface. Read it: a comment in “LibreOffice tells businesses: Get off Community version, you are hurting devs”
- Jul 2020Wants a way to use Office apps with a simplified feature set and less ribbon clutter. Read it: a comment in “LibreOffice: The Next Five Years”
- Jul 2019Wishes Microsoft would sell an Office that works on Linux. Read it: a comment in “Microsoft’s Q4 earnings and 2020 expectations”
- May 2017Asks for the best free alternative to MS Word. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: The best free alternative to MS Word?”
- Aug 2015Wants someone to build a LibreOffice-based product with better UX, as Firefox did for Mozilla. Read it: a comment in “An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice Team”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.