14 DAY TRIAL // The first major LibreOffice update for the 5.x branch is around the corner, and it should land very soon, especially now that the third RC for LibreOffice 5.1 is available for download and testing.
If we were to ignore the release schedule for LibreOffice, it would still be easy to figure out when a new version is about to land judging by the size of the last changelog. The changelog for RC3 is pretty small, so it's clear that we are quickly approaching that launch. On the schedule, it's marked for Feb 1, 2016 - Feb 7, 2016, so we have an entire week.
LibreOffice 5.1 promises to fix a huge number of issues that have been reported by the community. The developer has also organized a couple of bug hunts, which have been very successful. It's impossible to list them all, but the last one is short.
LibreOffice 5.1 RC3 is now ready for testing
If you want to see what's new in LibreOffice 5.1, you can get the latest version from the PPA if you have an Ubuntu or Ubuntu-based operating system. To add the PPA to the system and to install this version is pretty easy. Just enter the following commands in terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/libreoffice-prereleases
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libreoffice
According to the changelog, the collate options in printing copies now works as it should, the decimal alignment is no longer lost in ODF files, printing multiple copies with "Collate" no longer results in multiple system print jobs, the sliders now move when OpenGL is enabled, and various other fixes have been implemented as well.
You can download LibreOffice 5.1.0 RC3 right now from Softpedia. Please keep in mind that it's a development version, and it's not meant for production machines.