

A typical desktop computer user will almost always need an office suite. A typical Windows user has to empty their wallet just to pay for that over-priced Microsoft Office. A typical Linux user will just use the office suite that comes with their distro free of charge.

There are actually 5 known free and open source office suites that work best in Linux. They are:







GNOME Office

GNOME Office is an office suite for GNOME desktop environment. The integration between various applications in the suite is rather loose, and therefore many consider GNOME Office to be merely a collection of desktop productivity applications written for the GNOME environment rather than an office suite in the usual sense.



GNOME Office consists of:



* AbiWord - word processor

* Evolution - groupware and e-mail application

* Gnumeric - spreadsheet

* GNOME-DB - software that provides database connectivity





HERE

Learn more about GNOME Office



KOffice

KOffice is an office suite for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). KOffice applications use OpenDocument as their native file format when possible and the suite is released separately from KDE and can be downloaded at the KOffice homepage.



KOffice includes the following components:



* KWord - word processor

* KSpread - spreadsheet application

* KPresenter - presentation program with image and effect support

* Kivio - programmable flowchart drawing program

* Karbon14 - vector drawing application with a variety of drawing and editing tools.

* Krita - bitmap graphics manipulation program

* Kugar and KChart - integrated report and chart generators

* KFormula - integrated mathematical formula editor

* Kexi - integrated data management application, designed as a Microsoft Access or FileMaker competitor.

* KPlato - project management application that can create Gantt-style charts



KOffice 1.6.3 is the current official KOffice release.





HERE

Learn more about KOffice



OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org (OO.o or OOo) is a cross-platform office application suite that supports the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office '97–2003 formats, Microsoft Office '2007 format, among many others.



OpenOffice.org is a collection of applications that work together closely to provide the features expected from a modern office suite. Many of the components are designed to mirror those available in Microsoft Office which includes:



* Writer - word processor similar in look and feel to Microsoft Word and offering a comparable range of functions and tools

* Calc -

* Impress - presentation program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint

* Base - database program similar to Microsoft Access

* Draw - vector graphics editor comparable in features to early versions of CorelDRAW

* Math - tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor



OpenOffice.org (OO.o or OOo) is a cross-platform office application suite that supports the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office '97–2003 formats, Microsoft Office '2007 format, among many others.OpenOffice.org is a collection of applications that work together closely to provide the features expected from a modern office suite. Many of the components are designed to mirror those available in Microsoft Office which includes:* Writer - word processor similar in look and feel to Microsoft Word and offering a comparable range of functions and tools* Calc - spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel with a roughly equivalent range of features* Impress - presentation program similar to Microsoft PowerPoint* Base - database program similar to Microsoft Access* Draw - vector graphics editor comparable in features to early versions of CorelDRAW* Math - tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor



Siag Office

Siag Office is a tightly integrated office suite for Linux. It consists of the spreadsheet Siag, the word processor PW, the animation program Egon, the text editor XedPlus, the file manager Xfiler and the previewer Gvu. It is known to be extremely light-weight and hence to run on very old (such as 486, 16MB systems) systems reasonably well. Because it is kept light-weight, the software lacks many of the features of office suites like OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office. Siag Office is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.



The components of the Siag Office suite are:



* Siag - the spreadsheet based on X and Scheme (specifically using home-grown variant SIOD).

* PW (Pathetic Writer) - X-based word processor

* Egon Animator - X-based animation development tool







IBM Lotus Symphony

IBM Lotus Symphony is originally released in July 1984 as an integrated software application for DOS. IBM revived the Symphony name for a new office suite that was first released free of charge in 2007. Symphony supports the OpenDocument format (ODF), as well as Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite formats, but not the Office Open XML format used by Microsoft Office 2007. It can also export Portable Document Format (PDF) files.



IBM Lotus Symphony is a set of applications comprising of:



* IBM Lotus Symphony Documents -

* IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets - spreadsheet program

* IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations - presentation program



IBM Lotus Symphony is originally released in July 1984 as an integrated software application for DOS. IBM revived the Symphony name for a new office suite that was first released free of charge in 2007. Symphony supports the OpenDocument format (ODF), as well as Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite formats, but not the Office Open XML format used by Microsoft Office 2007. It can also export Portable Document Format (PDF) files.IBM Lotus Symphony is a set of applications comprising of:* IBM Lotus Symphony Documents - word processor * IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets - spreadsheet program* IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations - presentation program



Learn more about IBM Lotus Symphony HERE