LibreOffice in Flatpak format

Flatpak is a cool new way of distributing images of Linux applications that run on a wide range of different distros, and run there in a secure way.

Starting with LibreOffice 5.4.2, Flatpak builds of LibreOffice Fresh are now provided on Flathub (direct link to download org.libreoffice.LibreOffice.flatpakref).

Until LibreOffice 5.4.3, we also provided (x86-64–only) Flatpak builds directly through the TDF infrastructure (direct link to download old LibreOffice.flatpakref). Those old versions used a “fresh” Flatpak branch name, while (for technical reasons) the Flathub versions use a “stable” Flatpak branch name. When you switch to the new Flathub versions, you can remove the old version on the command line with

flatpak uninstall org.libreoffice.LibreOffice//fresh

A few items to note:

  • The LibreOffice Flatpak is using LibreOffice's GTK3 backend, which should offer the most complete set of features in LibreOffice, including support for Wayland.  Older versions of the LibreOffice Flatpak were based on the GNOME runtime, but starting with LibreOffice 6.0.3 it is based on the smaller freedesktop.org runtime, which should not have any negative impact on functionality.

  • Starting with LibreOffice 6.0.3., localization data is offloaded to an org.libreoffice.LibreOffice.Locale extension. Installation of it should be handled transparently by the Flatpak infrastructure.

  • Help content is available as an org.libreoffice.LibreOffice.Help extension.  You probably need to install it manually.  (And, at least for now, it contains help content for all localizations, so is rather large.)

  • At this time, there is no Flatpak version of the LibreOffice Software Development Kit (SDK).

  • Bugs only appearing in the Flatpak version should be reported to Flathub.