This beginner’s guide explains the steps required to upgrade to the latest LibreOffice in Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Windows.
LibreOffice, used by millions of users worldwide, is the most popular free office suite today. It consists of a spreadsheet program (Calc), document processor (Writer), presentation (Impress), drawing (Draw), and Math module to help you with most of the office, business, academic, and day-to-day work.
LibreOffice can act as an excellent replacement for paid Microsoft Office suite due to its compatibility with proprietary file formats such as DOCX, PPTX, and XLSX. It is a fork of the Apache OpenOffice productivity suite and is actively developed by thousands of global contributors.
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Upgrade to Latest LibreOffice
LibreOffice recently changed its versioning methods from the Fresh and Still concept. Now, LibreOffice has a community edition and a recommended enterprise edition. This is because many businesses use the latest LibreOffice version with cutting-edge features, hampering the development effort. Hence the team suggested that business users get paid support from official LibreOffice partners for long-term support. You can read the blog post here.
That said, here are the current versions.
Latest LibreOffice Versions
- The current LibreOffice Community version series is LibreOffice 7.6.x.
- The LibreOffice stable recommended version for business is LibreOffice 7.5.x.
Upgrade to the Latest LibreOffice in Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Other Ubuntu Based distributions
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish have LibreOffice 7.5.x.
It is always wiser to stick to the LibreOffice version provided by the distribution. Moreover, unless you need the latest features, you should not upgrade. If you like to experiment, you can go ahead.
Via PPA
- You can install and upgrade to the latest Fresh version using the official LibreOffice PPA. Open a terminal and run the below commands in Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt update && sudo apt install libreoffice
- To downgrade LibreOffice and remove the PPA, run the below commands from the terminal sequentially.
sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:libreoffice/ppa
Via Snap
You can also have the option to install the latest LibreOffice as Snap via the below option. Snap packages can be used across supported Linux distributions as a standalone package. Thus, you can keep your existing installation of LibreOffice and still run the latest Snap version.
Remember that technically, you can run two versions of LibreOffice in parallel using one Snap version. However, ensure there might be slight file association issues and other problems. This applies to Flatpak as well.
Via Flatpak
Flatpak is another way by which you can have the latest LibreOffice alongside the distro-provided version. You can set up your system for Flatpak and download LibreOffice via the below link.
Download LibreOffice as Flatpak
Or, run below:
flatpak install org.libreoffice.LibreOffice
Upgrade for Windows
For Windows, you can’t upgrade directly from the existing installation. You can download the latest LibreOffice from this page and do the installation. During installation, your existing version will be uninstalled. Also, you may refer to this step-by-step guide to install LibreOffice for Windows:
How to install LibreOffice for Windows
Upgrade Troubleshooting
If you encounter any problems or system instability after the upgrade, it is better to do a clean install. So, you can download the latest copy from this link and install it. If you are using Ubuntu or Linux Mint, don’t forget to remove the stock version first before installing the latest version.
Finally, drop a comment below if you face issues while upgrading to the latest LibreOffice in Ubuntu Linux and others.
