In short – it crashes. I’ve installed this version on three different PCs – two running Windows 7, one running Windows 10 – and the result is the same on each. When I create a new text file in the Writer application, a crash dialog pops up prompting me to recover the document I’m trying to open. I recover it but the next time I try to open it, the same thing happens all over again.
The good news is that the latest pre-release edition (currently 5.2.1) appears to solve this problem. For all I know, it may have other problems – it is a pre-release edition, after all – but at least it doesn’t keep bombing out whenever I try to open a document. I haven’t found any online reports on the 5.2.0 crash problem, so I suppose it is just possible that there is some specific problem with each of the three PCs I tested it on. At any rate, if you encounter the same issue, I recommend that you too give the pre-release version a try. Downloads are available here: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/
Incidentally, while LibreOffice is a decent free office suite, it isn’t the only one. There are at least a couple of others (not counting LibreOffice’s close relative, Open Office) that are worthwhile trying out. I’ll be writing about a couple of these soon.
