I’ve used the Xwindows version of localc for several years now but since discovering that there is a version that will run in text mode I’m wondering if I can use one then the other on the same spread sheets.
Most of my usage on the computer is in text mode VTs, hence the question.
Thanks,
Mike
What is, in your opinion, “Xwindows version of localc”? What is “a version that will run in text mode”? From where have you discovered that? A suspicion is, that you confuse things, and think that the command line mode of the application is some “separate version”, but maybe you think about a (experimental) build mode for headless-only binary without dependency on XOrg. Some more extensive description would be nice - not “I’ve used the Xwindows version of localc”, but “I’ve used LibreOffice from my distro “A” package management system (or from TDF download site), which runs in GUI mode”; accompany the “since discovering …” with “from this web page”, etc.
OK, more info:
mike@RPID:~> uname -a
Linux MikesPI 6.1.93 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Dec 8 02:37:53 CET 2025 aarch64 GNU/Linux
Version: 25.2.3.2 (AARCH64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 520(Build:2)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.1; UI render: default; VCL: x11
Locale: en-US (C); UI: en-US
Debian package version: 4:25.2.3-2+deb13u2
Calc: threaded
Curently running Devuan excalibur on a Raspberry PI.
This on a command line VT:
mike@RPID:~> localc
Failed to open display
This is the reason I think there are separate versions:
mike@RPID:~> grep 'Package: libreoffice-calc' packages.available
Package: libreoffice-calc
Package: libreoffice-calc-nogui
Mr. Kaganski you seem pretty knowledgable about LO.
Are you suggesting you have a version of calc that will run both in a gui and in a non-gui terminal?
Thanks,
Mike
If you use LibreOffice on a headless system, than what exactly would you expect from starting Calc on it?
We have a CLI; and while some of its arguments are for GUI (e.g., starting a specific component, or opening a given document), others are explicitly for headless operations (see e.g. --headless and --convert-to).
You use Linux. I advise you to familiarize yourself with your chosen distro’s package management philosophy. E.g., Debian (which packages are used in your system, too) is obsessed with “fragment it ad nauseam to avoid bloat” approach; checking file list of libreoffice-calc vs. libreoffice-calc-nogui shows that the latter is a strict subset of the former (note that metadata files there are unrelated to the actually functional files, metadata files are of course different). The -nogui variant is the same program, stripped from libraries that allow to show GUI.
Yes you can. And in this case, it’s just the same program.
If I understansd correctly localc does not have a text mode implementation.
If so that’s sad. The first spreadsheet for a PC was in the dos days before Windows or Mac existed and the omportant things a spreadsheet does have nothing to do with the way it is displayed.
When I tried installing libreoffice-calc-nogui it wanted to remove libreoffice-calc so I declined.
I guess you’ve answered my question.
Thanks,
Mike
@Villeroy I would have liked to test that, but unfortunately I can’t get the dependencies needed to build it on arm64.
You understand it correctly. And in fact, here you finally asked the real question: you explained your expectations / needs. Everything before was just asking wrong questions, with an assumption that you correctly guessed what the -nogui is 
Exactly. That’s why you can do anything with spreadsheets (and text documents, and drawings) headless, using API
While LibreOffice will not run in Text-Mode, there may still be other tools available:
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