The Document Foundation announced the LibreOffice 25.8 release, which features various improvements, new features, and most importantly, the addition of a universal document viewer, improvements to Writer, new features in Calc, and much more.
In this release 160 developers participated, with a collaborative model that reflects the essence of free software: 40% of the changes came from companies linked to the project, such as Collabora and Allotropia; 41% were made by The Document Foundation team itself; and the remaining 19% were contributed by more than XNUMX independent volunteers.
LibreOffice 25.8 main new features
Among the most notable improvements, LibreOffice now includes a universal viewer mode allowing open any file in read-only mode, completely disabling editing tools. This feature is enabled using the advanced "ViewerAppMode" setting, designed for those who need to view documents securely without the risk of accidental modification.
Another new feature in LibreOffice 25.8 is the Introduction of PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000-2) export with support for AES-256 encryption, advanced structures and the PDF/A-4 standard. Also A hybrid mode is implemented to embed ODF documents within PDFs, as well as a revamped export interface. Additionally, the suite now offers an experimental encryption mode for ODFs using AES-GCM and Argon2id algorithms, ensuring greater security and better metadata management.
On the security front, this new version is enhanced with support for SHA-384, AES-192, and improved compatibility with signed PDFs in Adobe Reader. The suite also has improved change control management, large table handling, and the loading of multilingual documents.
As for compatibility, This release drops support for Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, and 32-bit systems on Windows, while macOS will no longer support macOS 10.15 starting with the next version, leaving only macOS 11 and later.
Writer improvements: formatting, speed, and change tracking
Writer received optimizations that allow documents to open 30% faster and with more efficient memory consumption. Added New line break rules, advanced alignment options paragraph, word and character count indicators in the heading browser, as well as tools to manage and restore documents with tracked changes.
Calc: new features
LibreOffice Calc has introduced a long-awaited improvement to its Import Text dialog box, used primarily to handle CSV files. Now, the Users have the “Always show when importing” checkbox, which is enabled by default and allows you to decide whether this dialog box will be displayed every time an import is performed. If disabled, Calc will automatically apply the last saved settings, significantly speeding up the workflow.
Additionally, if you ever need to access the options box again, you can do so using the new "Edit filter settings" checkbox in the file opening dialog. This feature is similar to the familiar "Save file" checkbox, offering greater consistency in how you manage filters and advanced settings.
Calc also improves the flexibility of conditional formatting. Starting with this version, Operators used within icon sets can be customizede, which gives greater control to users who work with complex spreadsheets and require visual indicators tailored to their own criteria.
Another new feature is the addition of the "Clear AutoFilter" option directly to the cell context menu. This improvement makes it easier to clear filtered data and streamlines the management of large volumes of information in spreadsheets.
One of the most significant updates comes with the addition of new features that expand the data analysis and manipulation capabilities. These include CHOOSECOLS, CHOOSEROWS, DROP, EXPAND, HSTACK, TAKE, TEXTAFTER, TEXTBEFORE, TEXTSPLIT, TOCOL, TOROW, VSTACK, WRAPCOLS and WRAPROWS.
Impress and Draw: More control in presentations and graphics
Impress adds support for embedded fonts in PPTX, new options in the slide sorter and the ability to copy content from master slides. In Draw, for its part, highlights improvements in the display of margins and clearer management of graphic objects.
Finally, if you are interested in being able to know more about it, you can consult the details in the following link
How to install LibreOffice on Linux?
First We must first uninstall the previous version if we have it, This is in order to avoid later problems, for this we must open a terminal and execute the following:
sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice*
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoremove
Now we will proceed to go to the official website of the project where in your download section we can get deb package to be able to install it in our system.
Done the download we are going to unzip the content of the newly purchased package with:
tar -xzvf LibreOffice_25.8.0_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz
We enter the directory created after unzipping, in my case it is the 64-bit:
cd LibreOffice_25.8.0_Linux_x86-64_deb
After we enter the folder where are the LibreOffice deb files:
cd DEBS
Y finally we install with:
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
Si you are using a system that has the support to install rpm packages, You can install this new update by obtaining the rpm package from the LibreOffice download page.
Obtained the package we unzip with:
tar -xzvf LibreOffice_25.8.0_Linux_x86-64_rpm.tar.gz
And we install the packages that the folder contains with:
sudo rpm -Uvh *.rpm
In the case of Arch and its derived systems We can install this version of LibreOffice, we just open a terminal and type:
sudo pacman -Sy libreoffice-fresh