Kubuntu & Calligra

[StephanG]

Hey guys,

As a long time Kubuntu user, and KOffice/Calligra fan, I was quite excited to see that they decided to give Calligra a little more limelight and install it by default.

However, I can't help but wonder if it was a little premature. As much as I love Calligra, I still regularly find myself having to go back to Libre Office for the final touch, which mostly makes use of it's ability to save the file as a ".doc". (Although with Microsoft's Office having support for .odt, this is quickly becoming less of an issue.)

So I was wondering if anyone out there using Kubuntu has given it a spin, and what your thoughts are. Is it premature, or do you think it's ready, or just the right amount of premature for an "after LTS release"?

P.S. I've been using Kubuntu 12.10 since Alpha 3, and at that stage they were still considering using Calligra. As a result, I have both LO and Calligra, so I don't know if they decided to axe LO on the final release or if it's also included on the default install.

[lykwydchykyn]

I've been keeping an eye on KOffice/Calligra development for years, and on one hand I don't think it's ready for prime time; on the other, if they don't get some folks using it and putting it through the paces, it will never be ready.

The only downside is that, for some reason, people who try Kubuntu/KDE don't generally seem to understand that they can run any applications they like, even if they aren't KDE applications, so you'll probably see a lot of comments like this:

"I tried Kubuntu, but Calligra couldn't open my Word docs so I went back to Ubuntu".

[PaulW2U]

I have a spreadsheet (.ods format) that started life as an Excel file. It was migrated to and developed in OpenOffice/LibreOffice but currently fails to open correctly in Calligra Sheets. It's only 66kB in size but contains about 17 worksheets. In order to make it usable I have to reformat every virtually every worksheet by correcting colours, fonts and column sizes and suffer load/save times of around a minute as I try to save my changes. As LibreOffice contains some functions that Calligra doesn't the spreadsheet is never going to work correctly anyway.

I haven't tried Calligra Words but until Sheets starts working properly for me I'll be sticking to LibreOffice.

[smellyman]

I

The only downside is that, for some reason, people who try Kubuntu/KDE don't generally seem to understand that they can run any applications they like, even if they aren't KDE applications, so you'll probably see a lot of comments like this:

"I tried Kubuntu, but Calligra couldn't open my Word docs so I went back to Ubuntu".

I think it's the opposite problem. KDE people run everything

Gnome and GTK people stay in their GTK boxes.......

[lykwydchykyn]

I think it's the opposite problem. KDE people run everything

Gnome and GTK people stay in their GTK boxes.......

Well, that's kind of my point. People who are trying KDE (presumably being used to GNOME/Unity/etc) tend to reject it because one of the KDE applications isn't up to snuff, and they have this idea that they need to run all KDE applications if they use a KDE distro. So you will often see on this forum when KDE is discussed, "I tried KDE once but I didn't like Konqueror/rekonq/kmail so I went back to GNOME/Unity".

People who have actually used KDE for a long time generally get the idea that they can run any browser or other software they want to.

[smellyman]

Well, that's kind of my point. People who are trying KDE (presumably being used to GNOME/Unity/etc) tend to reject it because one of the KDE applications isn't up to snuff, and they have this idea that they need to run all KDE applications if they use a KDE distro. So you will often see on this forum when KDE is discussed, "I tried KDE once but I didn't like Konqueror/rekonq/kmail so I went back to GNOME/Unity".

People who have actually used KDE for a long time generally get the idea that they can run any browser or other software they want to.

ahhh....

exactly

[StephanG]

Gnome and GTK people stay in their GTK boxes.......

Well as a KDE user, I have to admit that whenever I have even half of a reason, I will prefer to go with a KDE app over a GTK one. There's just something attractive about the idea that this app "was written with your DE in mind".

I think a big part of the equation is that many of the most popular apps such as Firefox, Libre Office, and Gimp are seen as "GTK apps", even though Firefox and LO don't really use GTK. And this idea was especially reinforced a year or two back when when Firefox used the Gnome save as dialogue box, and Libreoffice only really had Gnome integration.

Again, it's much better now, but what I'm trying to get at, is that I think KDE users quickly have to make peace with the fact that they need non-KDE programs, while Gnome users can exist with the illusion that all their apps are GTK-based for a much longer time.

[MadmanRB]

I always had issues with Koffice/Calligra thuis is why I either use Libreoffice or abiword.