Last summer, German students Jenny and Tobias started a work placement organised and funded by the City of Munich. One of the most famous Linux deployments in the world, Munich began switching to Free Software across its desktop and server infrastructure in 2003, and completed the process ten years later. LibreOffice is included on all desktop computers, and the City manages its own development of the application, including training students on placements.

Tobias and Jenny talked with Sam Tuke about how they sped up LibreOffice significantly by reorganising its internal task management, with the help of their Mentor Michael Meeks, and the LibreOffice community. This work is a foundational technology for future improvements to our rendering model, converting it from immediate to deferred (ie. idle) rendering, which is necessary to get smooth double-buffered rendering without flicker. It’s great to see the investment from Munich improving the LibreOffice user experience for all.



About Jenny

Name: Jennifer Liebel

Jennifer Liebel Web nicknames: jeyli

jeyli Nationality: German

German Location: Munich Germany

Munich Germany Blog: Google+

Google+ Hobbies: personal fitness

About Tobias

Name: Tobias Madl

Tobias Madl Web nicknames: tobaem

tobaem Nationality: German

German Location: Neufahrn bei Freising, Germany

Neufahrn bei Freising, Germany Blog: Google+

Google+ Hobbies: sword fighting, bouldering, fire fighting