If anything, it would be seeing a surge because of AI. LibreOffice cli is the go to method for doing office documents -> pdf -> image rendering for agent doc rendering feedback.

Yep. I use it locally for rendering PDFs via LLM tool use.

how does it compare to using pandoc, which is what I currently use for rendering PDFs via LLMs?

Came here to say this as well. It's the obvious all-encompassing free office document processing suite and LLMs know how to utilize it well.

Codex bundles it with the desktop app as well for the same purpose.

Highly doubt this. Do you have a source or numbers on that bold claim?

https://simonwillison.net/2026/Sep/1/codex-libreoffice/ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527396

(and I can also just add that it's my go-to tool for that exact use-case, and used it in a dozen different client projects)

Not sure what is "bold" about that claim, soffice is used in a ton of "document generation skills" and as soon as those tools start making into people's CI pipelines there will inevitably be spikes in download activity.

https://github.com/anthropics/skills/blob/main/skills/docx/S...

Tbh I wonder if it's related to AI at all, or just a consequence of Microsoft being institutionally unable to ship working software anymore and people are finally tired of spending so much money for such garbage products.

Buddy of mine tried to use some Exchange tools to troubleshoot a mail flow issue this morning. Puts in his query parameters (start/end date, and a user's email address). 1774 results, and the table below that shows "No data available." It'd be fucking comical if his company wasn't spending tens of thousands per month on their 365 infrastructure that's seemingly broken in new and exciting ways every. single. fucking. day.

> Switching to the monthly view

I'd hardly consider fluctuations between 2.2 million and 3.3 million dowloads "flat".

Also, the metric used in the article was "downloads in the first week after a new release", which apparently broke a record. Regardless of the reason behind that record breaking number, switching to monthly dowloads to see if there is a sudden surge in popularity seems like the wrong metric.

I wouldn't say that's flat at all, if you switch to the "architecture" graph it gives a clearer picture without the between-version artefacts of dips that don't exist: https://stats.documentfoundation.org/downloads#month,arch

What matters more than the peaks are the floors, which are clearly increasing.

What methods do these "downloads" include?

Standard Linux software is often obtained through package management. Is LibreOffice self-updating? Is an update counted as a "download"? What about the torrents, Snap, Microsoft Store...?

https://www.libreoffice.org/download-other/