Debian 12 stable provides LibreOffice version 7.4.7.2. LibreOffice.org offers version 24.8.
I understand that Debian stable tries to provide stable versions of software. Does this mean the last 17 versions of LibreOffice were not stable?
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1 Answer
It means LibreOffice changed its versioning scheme last year, so there aren’t 17 releases between 7.4 and 24.8: 7.5, 7.6, 24.2, and 24.8 (25.2 is in preparation). Releases now use a date-based scheme (year using two digits, and month).
A given release of Debian generally includes the version of packages it ships as they were at the time it was frozen; for Debian 12 that was early in 2023.
Newer releases of LibreOffice are made available for Debian 12 in backports. Interestingly in light of your question, LibreOffice themselves recommend that users use the previous release, not the latest one:
The latest release of LibreOffice, recommended for technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users, which contains new features and program enhancements.
The more mature previous release of LibreOffice, recommended for corporate implementations and more cautious users. As such, the version is stable and is suitable for all users.
As things currently stand, Debian 13 will ship with 25.2.3.
- that is a slightly suboptimally understandable release schema from a user's perspective.Marcus Müller– Marcus Müller2025-01-15 11:05:02 +00:00Commented Jan 15 at 11:05
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- Well, what makes
24.8.xautomatically stable the moment25.2.0is released? Or is this just a thing where they change the text that recommends which version to use as needed. How would I, without checking the website each time, know which version I should use, without reading the website every single time, if knowing the current release isn't sufficient?Marcus Müller– Marcus Müller2025-01-15 11:28:24 +00:00Commented Jan 15 at 11:28 - (don't get me wrong, I understand the difficulty in making software so large stable, and in making it both reliable and allowing new features to be tested by a significant user base. It's hard. But this just feels like LO is not curating releases that are good or bad, it just assumes older releases are good. Which kind of contradicts the idea of gradual improvement, in practice)Marcus Müller– Marcus Müller2025-01-15 11:30:57 +00:00Commented Jan 15 at 11:30
- 1I think it’s more a case of giving more time for bugs to be fixed. In other words, 24.8 isn’t inherently less stable than 24.2, but 24.2.8 is more likely to be stable than 24.8.3. So really it’s a variant of the “avoid .0 releases” rule… And I get your point about it being suboptimal, but I also think the information is only relevant when choosing which release to download.Stephen Kitt– Stephen Kitt2025-01-15 12:32:43 +00:00Commented Jan 15 at 12:32