LibreOffice 6.4 has arrived for Linux (and other platforms) and is one all users will want on their desktops. Why? Two words: Productivity and compatibility. The developers have gone out of their way to make a number of tasks (such as saving spreadsheets and presentations) faster.

The 6.4 release adds new features and tweaks, making the office suite considerably more efficient. For example, the LibreOffice Start Center now includes thumbnails of previously edited documents, making it much faster to locate the file you want to work on.

One previous feature that has been drastically improved is the redaction tool (which was only recently introduced to LibreOffice). Prior to 6.4, using the redaction tool was a bit of a challenge. Now, LibreOffice has a new automatic redaction mode that allows users to quickly mask any and all data that matches a specific word, phrase, or expression. The auto redaction tool allows you to add and save words, phrases, and expressions as targets and then apply them to any document. This way you can save specific phrases you have to frequently redact so that they can be easily applied to documents you work with.

Finally, the developers have spent considerable time and effort perfecting the compatibility with MS Office documents. In fact, the Document Foundation now claims LibreOffice enjoys “almost perfect support for .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx files.”

Other new features and improvements, found in LibreOffice 6.4 include:

• Built-in QR code generator, so you can quickly add QR codes to documents.
• Table panel included in the Writer sidebar, for faster table creation.
• Comments can now be marked as resolved.
• Much improved help system.
• Ability to enable/disable the sending of crash reports.