LibreOffice 4.4 Is out! GREAT!!!

Yes, as soon as I read here that The Document Foundation had made a new release of LibreOffice available, I rushed to download it to give it a try.

You can find out what's new, from the technical viewpoint, about this suite here .  Let's see...it comes with a nice sidebar...it has better OOXML support (I don't care about that as I use ODF), and it even added textboxes.  Well, texboxes are something I never needed and I actually find them annoying, but others may think they're handy... Still, I am more interested in knowing if this new release could meet my needs.

Japanese input support! Wow! I thought I'd never see it again on this old system!

I installed LibreOffice 4.4 on my old Mepis 8 desktop system.  I had given away my hope of using Japanese input on LibreOffice because the suite did not support my old input method editor.  In fact, I had to keep an old copy of OpenOffice (3.1.1) around for the times I needed to type in Japanese.  I was greatly surprised when I could indeed type hiragana, katakana and kanji on LibreOffice!

What was next?  Customization might be another aspect to check...
I don't remember this feature on LO 4.3...  Now you have a handy theme selector to change the appearance of the office suite!  I entered "cat" and hit the "search" button...and sure enough, I got several matching themes.  That was easy!  At the end, I chose a theme I happen to like quite a lot!  :P

I still need to test Impress, Calc, and the other applications.  But I have to install first LibreOffice 4.4 on my laptop.  After all, that is the device in which I use Impress.

But while I do that, why not giving a little donation to The Document Foundation?

After all, LibreOffice is keeping me free from preying office subscription fees and from locking my data into the silly OOXML format.  I must add that it has saved me from the horrendous, unproductive ribbon madness! 

I hope all those who like LibreOffice made a donation, big or small, to this great project.