Looking to update LibreOffice on my Ubuntu 24 desktop I land on the download page, which shows “latest stable release” is 26.2.1 while the 25.8.2 is described as “our previous release which we are maintaining for a few more months”. My conclusion as an average user: download "latest/stable 26.2.1"
But I don’t want to be coming back again for .deb files, so I’m thinking I’ll add whatever PPA is available with the latest stable release… I get to the “Fresh PPA”. Then, I read the long warning text that says: “In general**, this PPA [which points to version 28.5.2] is not for the average user** to install without a closer look”. That doesn’t sound like me… but it’s also phenomenally confusing.
After a while I search for “libreoffice latest stable” release on my mobile and land on the release notes, which are different from the wiki release notes linked in the download page. Here, the description is clear: 25.8.5 is “mature” and 26.2.1 is “for technology enthusiasts, early adopters and power users”. I’m not a power user, just need the thing to work, hopefully with all the latest features that are stable, so download 25.8.5 is the new conclusion.
Still hoping to update without manual downloads, I look to flatpak, which points to… [version 26.2.1]. There is no explanation about the version but a warning about it being “potentially unsafe” (most likely a completely unwarranted “life may cause death” kind of danger warning, but hey…)
Finally, I go to see what snap has to offer, which I had learned to instinctively avoid. It shows “latest/stable/25.8.5.2”.
After this very much unintended odyssey, I gather that 25.8.2 is currently the really stable version at least in my sense of the word; I’ll probably use snap just because I don’t really understand what’s going on with that PPA.
Overall, I think there’s a serious need to clarify on the downloads page what type of users should be downloading which version.
