6 of the Best Free Linux Office Suites
An office suite is a collection of related software for
business and other uses. The software is distributed together in a
single package, with a consistent graphical interface, and with strong
interaction between the different components.
The types of software included in an office suite typically
consist of word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, database and
much more. For many users the office suite (together with a web browser
and email client) represents the cornerstone of their computing
day. A high quality office suite is therefore a necessity for any
computing
platform.
The market heavyweights in this software field are Microsoft
Office (non-free proprietary
software available for Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X) and
OpenOffice.org, the latter of which is released under a freely
distributable license
and is available for Linux and many other operating systems. However,
there are a number of other strong office suites
that are available for Linux. If necessary, it is also possible to run
Microsoft Office under Linux in a number of different ways (e.g. using
virtualisation software such as VirtualBox,
VMware)
or Windows
compability layers such as Wine
and CrossOver Office.
This article selects 6 of our favourite office suites which
run under Linux. Please be aware that three of the entries (Google
Docs, Zoho
Office Suite and Lotus Symphony) are released under proprietary
software licenses, but all of the software listed below is available to
download for no charge. Large software corporations recognise the
importance of challenging Microsoft's dominance over the office
suite. We have software developed by Sun Microsystems, Google Inc,
and IBM.
Now, let's explore the 6 Linux office suites at hand. For
each title we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot
of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis
of its
features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.
| Office Suites |
| OpenOffice.org |
Sun Microsystems' multiplatform and multilingual office
suite |
| Google
Docs |
Web-based
online office suite from Google, Inc. |
| Zoho
Office Suite |
Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentations,
and groupware |
| Go-oo |
Derived
from OpenOffice.org; includes patches refused by Sun |
| Lotus
Symphony |
Intuitive office productivity software |
| KOffice |
Integrated
office suite for KDE, built with KOM/OpenParts |
|
|
Return to our complete collection of Portal
Pages.
Last Updated Sunday, July 03 2011 @ 07:26 AM EDT
| 
