Do you know that LibreOffice looks pretty on Zorin? The developers apparently made excellent effort so that its appearance looks well shaped as from its desktop, its start menu, to file manager, every app looks pretty, and this includes the office suite. I present you here short videos and simple reviews of these beautiful combination for our computing. Enjoy!
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About Zorin OS and LibreOffice
Zorin is a free computer operating system from Ireland that is user friendly. It is a complete, fast, virus resistant alternative to Windows or MacOS. It is available in several editions and purchasable as bundle in PC or laptop. Zorin appearance is known as GNOME but unlike the original one it is modified with nicer look and feel. Zorin includes LibreOffice built-in. Download Zorin.
LibreOffice is an office suite software that is free as in freedom for everyone. It is developed by German organization The Document Foundation based on OpenOffice.org. It works just like and compatible to other office suites such as Microsoft Office. It gives users word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, diagramming, and equation editor. LibreOffice is preinstalled in many operating systems including Ubuntu, Fedora, and Zorin. Visit official website.Overview
Overall it looks like below with Zorin OS version 15 Core Edition.
Notice the toolbars and the smoothness of every window border. I can confirm this runs very flawless. Note that I run this on my old Pentium computer in live mode - so if you have better computer you will have it better too. Everything looks okay starting from colors to shapes, from button to button. It does not suffer mismatched colors like on other systems we may experienced. And personally I like the rounder corners and drop shadows as always. So far I see that this composition is smoothest after I have made elementary and Ubuntu ones. Video below portraying Writer use in just two minutes:
Start menu entries look like below:
They are not the original icons. Zorin has its own icon set just like other distros do the same thing. However, we long time LibreOffice users can still recognize. It looks refreshing to us who reviewed distros and -perhaps bored to- saw same things over and over again.
Taskbar tooltip looks like this:
See beginning video. Once you hover cursor on a minimized LibreOffice, slowly its window preview appears in small form, and additionally it shows a blue close button once you move your hover slightly upwards, and these moves unhide the minimized window with sleek animations which hide it again once you hover downwards. Try it.
Alternative tab hotkey switcher looks like below:
Among computer users, pressing Alt+Tab keys is a quick way to jump between one to another one application. All computer systems namely Windows, MacOS, and also Zorin OS have that. For the latter one, the switcher looks like above. Notice that they are displayed only as icons and not as actual window previews - that in turn will be lower in resource consumptions.
Split screen looks like below:
Notice the word processor on left and presentation editor on right. They look harmonic with their colors as if they are one window. On Zorin, you just need to drag a window to the either left of right edge to resize it half a screen automatically. This helps we work in comparative methods.
PDF document exported viewed as below:
Notice the word processor on left and pdf reader on right (the latter one is a Zorin app and not a part of this office suite). Note that LibreOffice is able to export every document as pdf instantly thanks to the pdf button on the toolbar. Any document can be opened with LibreOffice then can be saved as pdf including Microsoft documents and beyond. Fortunately, Zorin included the reader already and once again its looks and feel are in harmony with LibreOffice. In addition, once splitted in two, either window can still be resized horizontally as you can see in this picture and the one before.
Accessibility mode looks like below:
This one is computer screen with Contrast Color feature enabled part of Accessibility feature. This is an excellent feature for our brothers and sisters who experienced visual impairments and color blind. This helps them look at things on screen and ease them distinguishing one item to another. And Zorin did this nicely as picture above showing. Notice the dropdowns, they are clearly distinguishable to other buttons. Notice the enabled toggles, they are black, as opposed to white items that dominates the screen that means unselected/disabled.
Dark theme:
Not missed here, Zorin supports black mode too and LibreOffice here still looks good with it. Try it by configuring Zorin Appearance program from start menu. Notice Writer and Impress here painted in black with bright text. For most users and me also, dark theme is not the first option, but I want to show you that I am sure even programmers will like it.
Writer:
This is our word processor displayed as is. Notice the toolbar style is familiar and similar to most computer users, it resembles Word 2007, and this new technology is called Notebookbar.
Calc:
This is our spreadsheet displayed as is. Notice the difference in number of tabs on toolbar compared to Writer above? Notice the different buttons available on the main toolbar? Notice the formula input box? Well, everything here looks nice.
Impress:
This is our presentation editor displayed as is too. I selected built-in template named Vivid with bluish white accent. Apparently it is a match to the system appearance. When I tried this template on Ubuntu and elementary OS, I couldn't get these colors as matched as Zorin's.
What do you think?
O dear reader, what do you think? Grab Zorin OS here first and then try it out even without installation to see this pretty LibreOffice. For I myself also write this article that way and I am satisfied. I think for education and school, so I think Zorin is ready to be used there especially after knowing this. Compared to Ubuntu, it got advantage thanks to its look & feel redesign to suit most computer users and compared to elementary OS, it also got advantage for including LibreOffice preinstalled. I am excited to see everyone's opinion about this. Finally, dear readers, you can send me comments on my Mastodon too. Congratulations to The Document Foundation and Zorin Group for this awesome approach!
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.