Unlike Microsoft Office (MSO), LibreOffice (LO) is not a set of independent applications grouped under a larger Solution Name. Libre Office applications have been designed/developed to share as much code as possible. There is several advantages this bring to the table including

1. LO installation occupies less disk space than an MSO.
2. Greater speed on the same machine.
3.  Greater similarities between applications, in terms of windows, dialogs, menus, etc.

2. Multiplatform and programmed anti obsolescence

It works on many platforms including any distribution of Linux, Windows and Mac. It is also possible to run it on old hardware (up to Windows 95), something unimaginable in the world of proprietary software that forces us to constantly update our hardware and operating systems far beyond really necessary. Without going any further, the latest versions of Office seems to not be compatible with Windows 7, Windows XP, and Vista.

3. Extensions

The philosophy of free software development allows programmers to work to improve or expand the functionality of free applications through extensions. The extensions are software plug-ins that are installed as extras to the standard LibreOffice that is downloaded, and that add some additional functionality to the suite, either for a particular use (Writer, Calc, Impress, …), or for All applications. Gradually, the best extensions are incorporated into the standard package, although there are always specific improvements that are distributed separately. This had speed up features being added, as extensions does not have to wait for the next release cycle of the product.

4. Security

When MSO has a security flaw of any kind, users are not usually aware of the problem. The company’s traditional opacity translates into a total lack of information, except for extremely serious cases. When a patch or update for MSO appears, the user still does not know exactly what the problem was, simply a solution is offered. In contrast, the LO community, like that of most free software applications, is much more transparent in this regard.

5. Stability

MSO works correctly with more or less small documents. However, when we work with files of thousands of pages it usually hangs. In contrast, LO is much more capable of handling documents from thousands of pages or with large amounts of images. The main limitation is in the RAM available in the system we are using.

6. File Formats

MSO works with proprietary file formats, so the total compatibility of these files can only be ensured if you have the correct version of Microsoft software. On the contrary, LO uses files in Open Document (ODF) format, an open and standard file format for office document storage approved by ISO / IEC organizations as standard ISO / IEC 26300: 2006 Open Document Format for Office Applications.