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The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 4.2 today, which "features a large number of performance and interoperability improvements targeted to users of all kinds, but particularly appealing for power and enterprise users".

LibreOffice 4.2

The new version brings better interoperability with Microsoft OOXML, a new monochrome icon set (not enabled by default), GNOME 3 Application Menu integration and more.

Here's a list of the most important changes in the latest LibreOffice 4.2:
  • round-trip interoperability with Microsoft OOXML, particularly for DOCX, as well as legacy RTF, has improved considerably;
  • a new import filter for Abiword documents has been added;
  • improvements to other import/export filters;
  • a new engine for Calc - massive parallel calculations of formula cells using GPU via OpenCL are now possible thanks to the new formular interpreter;
  • better integration with Windows 7 and 8, with thumbnails of open documents now grouped by application and a list of recent documents, both showing on the task bar, along with other Windows-specific improvements;
  • power and enterprise users on all platforms will like the new Expert Configuration window, which has been added to the Options tab;
  • new start screen with a cleaner layout that makes better use of the available space - even on netbooks - and shows a preview of the last ODF documents;
  • Writer: A New default template;
  • GNOME3 Application Menu integration;
  • support MATE and XFCE Desktops (native Open/Save dialogs);
  • a new set of icons has been included in LibreOffice 4.2. This icon set, named Sifr, was designed to reach the goal of having beautiful non-distracting icons to help the user concentrate on the document;

libreoffice 4.2 GNOME Shell application menu
GNOME 3 Application Menu integration
libreoffice 4.2 sifr icon theme
LibreOffice Sifr icon theme (not enabled by default)
libreoffice 4.2 start screen
New LibreOffice start screen

Of course, there are many other changes - for a complete list, see the official release announcement.


LibreOffice 4.2 in Ubuntu


Ubuntu 14.04: LibreOffice 4.2 is already available in the official Trusty Proposed repositories.

Ubuntu 13.10 and 12.04: LibreOffice 4.2 is available in the LibreOffice PPA.

Other Ubuntu versions: LibreOffice 4.2 can only be installed by downloading it from its website.

For those who are using Ubuntu 14.04 or have installed LibreOffice 4.2 from a PPA, if you want to use the new Sift icon theme, you must firstly install it:
sudo apt-get install libreoffice-style-sifr
And then to activate it, from the LibreOffice menu select Tools > Options > LibreOffic > View and select "Sift" under "Icon size and style":



Download LibreOffice 4.2



(available for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux (dep and rpm) as well as source files)