OpenOffice could be in trouble with competition brewing from upstart LibreOffice, which was released in version 3.3 on Tuesday. LibreOffice will replace OpenOffice in Ubuntu 11.04, which is codenamed Natty Narwhal, and is due in April.

There have been doubts around OpenOffice ever since Oracle acquired Sun. Oracle has dropped support for many of Sun's previous open-source efforts, including the OpenSolaris OS. There were fears that they would drop OpenOffice, so The Document Foundation started working on Libre Office.

LibreOffice is an OpenOffice clone, with similar programs and a similar installation process.  There are some features to adopt more files and insert more graphics, but nothing especially backgrounded. The program is available on The Document Foundation's website:

Is it worth trying? If you are happy with OpenOffice, stick to it. If you need a change in scenario, LibreOffice is worth trying.