In July, Manjaro Linux decided to ditch the popular LibreOffice office suite in favor of FreeOffice de softmaker. This decision brought with it a lot of criticism from those who prefer to use open source software.
- Manjaro I listen to your community and modify the decision to include FreeOffice as the office suite by default. As of the next release, users will be able to choose whether to install FreeOffice or LibreOffice from the installer Manjaro.
FreeOffice it is a free suite but it does not have open source. It is a limited version of the premium office suite from softmaker, famous for being fully compatible with Microsoft Office. Both versions are available for Linux, but you need to pay to use the Premium.
- Manjaro has clarified that there was no money exchange in the decision to include FreeOffice as the default office suite on your system.
On the other hand, softmaker has reported that users can now save files in specific Microsoft Office formats such as DOC, XLS, PPT and ODT. This feature was added as part of the agreement with Manjaro.
There are few distributions that are determined to include only open source software, Manjaro it is not one of them. Manjaro is more focused on its regular users being able to perform their tasks without going into much detail.
In the end the best decision is to give the user options, those who fervently support open source software will use LibreOffice, while those who want to have software privative, but more stable in theory they can choose FreeOffice.