Office software

[mJayk]

Hello all,

Quick question, I mainly use latex for word processing. For some uses however an office suite would be nice, I know Libre office is included and I have no dislike to the package I just want to know what else is out there / what peoples thoughts on different office packages are.

Cheers

Matt

TLR ; what other office suites are there apart from libre / whats best iyo.

[Lars Noodén]

There is also Abiword for word processing and Gnumeric for spreadsheet. I would recommend LibreOffice over either. There is also the whole Koffice suite. That is well worth looking at and it has many specialities not found in other suites. It's been a few years since I've used Koffice so I can't say one way or another about it other than to recommend looking at it.

[cwsnyder]

Apache OpenOffice.org is still available, and some people like it better than LibreOffice, but others don't like its Apache license.

Personally, I like Abiword/Gnumeric, although it isn't a complete, integrated office environment.

Google Docs and Zoho Office are available on the web, and Microsoft's own offerings are usually targeted for early assimilation on WINE.

[weasel fierce]

There's a whole KDE office package, but I don't have a lot of experience with it.

On a slower machine, Abiword all the way. It does all the basics, without being overly painfull. For day to day stuff (writing, exporting PDF's with images etc), libreoffice is pretty solid, and broadly supported.

[MisterGaribaldi]

Meh. None of these apps is as good as MS Word, I hate to say, both in terms of doing research papers for college or for document and formatting compatibility. I hope that, one day, this will not be the case anymore.

[weasel fierce]

Not everyone cares about MS office compatibility mate.

edit: and to be honest, I don't remember the last time an office document didn't open correctly. I don't use excel so I might be oblivious to stuff there.

[monkeybrain2012]

Meh. None of these apps is as good as MS Word, I hate to say, both in terms of doing research papers for college or for document and formatting compatibility. I hope that, one day, this will not be the case anymore.

I don't know what college you are talking about and what discipline, but in the science departments of most reputable universities nobody uses MS office to do research or write papers. Latex rules. In the humanities probably, but I doubt that you have to use MS words to write a paper on human sexuality or some such and there is no replacement

[Bucky Ball]

Meh. None of these apps is as good as MS Word, I hate to say, both in terms of doing research papers for college or for document and formatting compatibility. I hope that, one day, this will not be the case anymore.

I've just completed a degree and am now doing honours and have used ONLY Open/Libreoffice throughout with the Zotero plugin for references (that's nearly six years now). Problem free. I can do everything I ever did in Word/Office. Suits my purposes but perhaps not for everyone's.