This kind of “social journalism” was a bit too obvious I would say. Right at the start it sounds like Libreoffice is somehow “legacy” too, whereas only Openoffice is almost dead actually.
Just make OnlyOffice work with NC shared document links and we will use it. This complaint has been standing for quite a while now, and I guess the reason for installing Collabora or OnlyOffice is mainly to target Google Docs so this is what you are competing against. I don’t think that either Collabora nor OnlyOffice stand a chance against MS in any serious office environment.
I have tried both and I can see that there are some valid points regarding the core basics in that comparison, but the lack of being able to edit a shared document via a link kills OnlyOffice for us.
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Collabora or OnlyOffice is mainly to target Google Docs so this is what you are competing against
Exactly. They should fight against their most important competitors instead against other OSS options. Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox Paper, Google Docs/G Suite, Apple iWorks, Zoho, Thinkfree and so on. The only way to do this is by having full feature parity plus advantages over them (selfhosting is one, but surely not enough).
I don’t think that either Collabora nor OnlyOffice stand a chance against MS in any serious office environment.
@budy Maybe you can give a few points where they really lack in comparison to Microsoft Office? Like for example: Collabora has better collaboration features, Onlyoffice supports OOXML better.
Well, I am not the one who put out this comparison, and my post only reflects my personal opinion, plus my experiences trying both on our company NC. Afaik, both rely on LibreOffice Onlice in th backened, at least this is what I saw in the docker container, I tried.
OnlyOffice clearly has it’s pros on the editor side and even collaborative work can be performed local to the NC server, but - and as I said, this where Collabora shines, not with external peers.
Regarding the comparison against MS Office, there are a couple of things to consider. The first and formost are fonts. Where as MS Office will work with a variety of fonts, either OnlyOffice as well as Collabora have some very limited font handling capabilities.
However, this doesn’t hold our users back from using Collabora for collaborative editing with external parties.
OO needs 4 GB from the start
2 GB is quite enough for the small team (~50 users)
4 GB is recommended for the servers with over 100 connections
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since when?
since 4.0
(we also would recommend adding 2-4 GB of swap)
for example, you can simultaneously create and edit ~100 docx files even on a small 2CPU/2GB server
you might need more resources for simultaneously opening large files or converting doc/odt to docx (ONLYOFFICE always converts them to docx, but it’s worth it, as you can always be sure that you won’t have any formatting issues)
@ibnpetr That sounds very interesting.
Do you see any chance to run this on a raspberry pi with 1-3 users max. ?
There would be only 1G mem available (plus swap)
Unfortunately current version of Document Server cannot be installed on a device with ARM processor.
ONLYoffice consists of 2 Linux server install components if you want to host it yourself: a document server (document editing) and a community server (collaboration) including mail component. You can install these components on a single host using docker containers. For best performance however it is best to install on 2 virtual private servers using plain installation rather than docker images.
Community server:
https://helpcenter.onlyoffice.com/server/linux/community/linux-installation.aspx
Document server:
https://helpcenter.onlyoffice.com/server/linux/document/index.aspx
There is a limitation to the number of simultaneous edit sessions the document server will allow, but it is fairly generous. If additional simultaneous edits are required (50) an enterprise license can be purchased.
There is a limitation to the number of simultaneous edit sessions the document server will allow, but it is fairly generous. If additional simultaneous edits are required (50) an enterprise license can be purchased.
Free version allows 20 simultaneous edits (every next editing session will fall back to “view” mode)
I was told by OnlyOffice via their github forum only today:
Pavel Lobashov
12:10 AM (10 hours ago)
To use mobile apps you should use ONLYOFFICE SaaS (onlyoffice.com or personal.onlyoffice.com), or CommunityServer or Enterprise Server.
We have no plans to support nexcloud in our mobile app
Given how many bad reviews this app has on the Play Store it seems to be problematic anyway:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onlyoffice.documents&hl=en
Yea that’s pretty nasty coverage for their mobile app.
As a workaround, using the Nextcloud mobile client and a mobile word processor could work. Some Office apps even allow the use of webdav directly, so they might be an option too.
Hello!
We are sorry for the difficulties everyone had using our app for Android. We are mainly focused on Documents for iOS, while the Android application was slowed down in development. We are planning to release the more stable and complete version in 2018.
We will inform you about the release whenever the official dates are available. However, now you can try Documents for iOS that features all editing functions, including collaborative editing and shows sufficient stability.
I tried both - Collabora (CODE) 3.0 and OnlyOffice 5.0.7 with 4-5 users working together. Both as Docker installations on an Ubuntu Server 16.04 with 32 GB of RAM, 8 core CPU and 1 TB HDD.
A big advantage of Collabora is the possibility to view or edit documents which are shared as links or in public folders shared as links. Up to version 1.2.0 OnlyOffice could only be used by logged in users and not by public guests. However, the latest release (1.3.0 and newer) also added viewing/editing of documents shared as public link.
Another advantage of Collabora is the way how it handles file types - you can open OpenDocument files as well as OOXML without any need of conversion, while OnlyOffice always converts files to OOXML first. At least you can export ODT/ODS in OnlyOffice if needed and OOXML is also not a problem in most cases.
Unfortunately there are still some issues with Collabora which made me to switch to OnlyOffice in the production environment:
-
Very often the connection to the server was not possible at all and there was only the well known message “Well, this is embarrassing, we cannot connect to your document. Please try again.”. I did not find any reliable solution - sometimes it worked, sometimes not. In total I think at least about 30% of all editing sessions didn’t work. I carefully followed all the instructions on how to set up the Apache reverse proxy integration etc. (including the latest ProxyPass setting for Apache using
ProxyPassMatch "/lool/(.*)/ws$" wss://127.0.0.1:9980/lool/$1/ws). -
Collabora runs mostly on the server - this makes it easier for the development process but this also means a lot of communication between server and browser and sometimes parts of the GUI didn’t update properly. The display on HighDPI devices (retina, 4K) is also not very nice - at least in spreadsheets - since the server part only generates a GUI for standard resolutions and not HighDPI.
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In Collabora is not possible to select values from a drop down list in spreadsheets - even though you sometimes (but not always) you even can see the drop down handle next to a cell, which is just a bitmap and not a clickable control. In contrast OnlyOffice allows you to select values using the context menu of a cell and it does not draw “fake” controls next to cells.
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In Collabora you can not create diagrams in spreadsheets and editing presentations is also very limited.
Collabora is on a good way and I will try newer versions again from time to time - but at the moment it still leaves a premature impression to me. OnlyOffice misses the public viewing/editing in shared links and you have to allow the conversion of your documents to OOXML before you can edit them. But besides that OnlyOffice looks way more complete and reliable at the moment.
Update: In Nextcloud 13 it seems that OnlyOffice 5.0.7 CE is not able to handle collaborative work with spreadsheets. You risk loosing your work when using it! This got fixed with release 1.3.0 of the Nextcloud app, which now also provides sharing/editing for public links.
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ONLYOFFICE has released version 5.1 of the editors that features a number of improvements around the whole suite. The most notable ones, however, are in the word processor:
- Table Of Contents tool and Navigation menu;
- Tabs: References and Collaboration (ex-Review tab, extended);
- Three new plugins: EasyBib for bibliography building, WordPress for publishing, and Macros.
Read more in the official blog for the details.
p.s. as @awelzel mentioned, yes, now editing via external links is supported too!
Update: Sorry for misleading you, EasyBib and WordPress plugins are not yet available for Document Server only, they require user portal.
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This is the feature that makes Onlyoffice useful for collaborative editing with external users. Great work, finally!
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I just updated the docker image for my Nextcloud instance and did some quicks test - works fine so far. The possibility to create/edit a table of contents in the document editor was indeed one of the things missing.
Thanks for the good work!
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