Last Updated on December 30, 2022 by pg@petergamma.org
In the Ubuntu Touch OpenStore Apps, on October 10th 2021, a Word processor for Ubuntu Touch was released:
the LightP Word Processor
which is an offline document editor by Nicolás Colla, a simple word processor for Ubuntu Touch, semi-compatible with the .rtf format:
https://open-store.io/app/lightp.collaproductions
It can also be found on Nicolás Collas GITHUB page:
https://github.com/nicolascolla/LightP
About a year ago, we installed LibreOffice on the Pinephone. It took us about a month with the support of the Pine64 forum, which was excellent, and we worked every day a little bit on it. A reviewer form New Zealand reported to have used a PinePhone for a year, and he reported, that he used his Pinephone every day to edit files with LibreOffice on it. But we do not know of anybody who confirms that he follows his practice and uses the Pinephone with Libreoffice daily to edit files.
But a year ago, we also wanted to edit daily our files with Libreoffice on the Pinephone. But after we managed the installation after about a month, we had several issues with LibreOffice on the Pinephone, which we reported in the Pine64 forum.
Alaraajavamma in the Pine64 forum reported, that at least more than a year ago, LibreOffice worked better with Flatpak version (vs. the apk version). If she remembers correctly there were some issues with menus when using the apk version. For her, Libreoffice is a too heavy app for the Pinephone, and she is using Abiword and Gnumeric. She wrote, that Libreoffice is a perfect proof of concept app for the Pinephone. Everything kind of works but it is not usable on phone screen and when using an external display it is quite laggish. She said it is daily driver ready but you don’t want to daily drive it. She used Libreoffice only with an external display.
She said, everything works kind of. I asked her if she did not have the issues I had, and I asked her on what disto she installed LibreOffice.
She installed it on PostmarketOS and Phosh – stable release more than a year ago. The official repo (apk) libreoffice did not work. There was issues with menus so she decided to try the Flatpak version.
Link to installation instruction for Libreoffice flatpak version:
With the Flatpak version everything worked, but it was just so damn laggish so she decided to choose abiword and gnumeric.
Softmaker has their special applications for Android which are derived from the desktop version and are touchable. Maybe Softmaker office also work in an Anbox on Linux phones.
But is Anbox not just Android on a Linux phone, with the same disadvantages Android has, as for instance not be able to write to the external SD card? Then we would not choose Softmaker in an Anbox. We did not test yet the following options, we invite you to test it yourself:
1. Test to run Softmaker Office in an Anbox on a Linux phone
2. Test the Flatpak version of Libreoffice. Alaraajavamma says LibreOffice is is not usable on the phone screen, even the Flatpak version. But can the big menus not be adapted? If everything works, as Alaraajavamma says, can we not simply control it with keyboard short cuts as a temporary workaround, for instance? Libreoffice is a very popular application. Or is it not worth it to adapt it, since there are better options?
3. Test Abiword. Alaraajavamma uses it on the Pinephone.
4. Test Gnumeric. Alaraajavamma uses it on the Pinephone.
According to her user report, Alaraajavamma is an experienced and professional Linux phone Office user, and her experience is very precious for us personally. To test Abiword and Gnumeric on the Pinephone seems promising to us, since we suffered for another year, because we did not have a satisfying solution for Office on a real Linux phone. We did not have the time yet to test and install the above software configurations ourselves.
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