LibreOffice Impress on Zoom

[fox]

I'm sure you've heard me rant many times about MS Office compatibility problems in native Linux software, so I'll tell you about one in reverse. I have to do Zoom lectures this fall, and was practicing on Ubuntu using Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, which is the latest version of that suite which runs well on Wine (or Crossover in my case). My presentation has some effects and when I tried it on Zoom (using screen share), it went horribly. When I switched to MacOS and ran it on PowerPoint 2019, it worked flawlessly of course. But not wanting to give up on Ubuntu, I opened the presentation in LibreOffice Impress and tried it that way. It was also flawless and all of the effects worked! I was impressed with Impress! Most of my problems with Linux office software have been on the word processing side, although I recall that some of my PowerPoint presentation slides did have problems in Impress. Maybe this has been fixed in updated versions or maybe there will still be some slides that don't render correctly in Impress. At any rate, I am now encouraged to try this for each of my presentations rather than automatically reverting to the Mac side.

[ssfc72]

Very good to know, thanks for sharing, Fox. :-)

[Jason]

Were you trying the slides at around the same time of day and to the same person? And were the resolutions the same? The reason I ask is that screensharing quality is highly dependent on resolution (and captured frame rate) and the internet connection for both users (and their resolution).

You're more likely to have better quality by using screen capture software which can also record audio to prepare the presentation in advance and then (somehow) share that video live. Then you can control the resolution and quality beforehand. I know how to record using screen capture software but not how to share that file recording to Zoom (directly, not via screensharing) so I can't help much there.

Can't do much about the internet connection unfortunately since yours could be fine but the student's connection could be iffy.

If your university offers it, I'd look into speciality software where you can run a lecture and show slides online in a web browser.

I'd also point out, and I hope this is taken as constructive criticism from one much less-experienced teacher to another well-experienced one, that effects might look good but really aren't that important. As a student and a teacher, I've never commented on, was impressed by or had my students tell me how much they enjoyed the effects. Now, if the effects are necessary for functionality and not just style, that's different. But you've had a lot more practice in this area than I so just take it as a suggestion and not a judgement.

In any case, glad it worked out for you in Ubuntu and LibreOffice. I'd be very curious if this works out on a regular basis.