A new version of WPS Office for Linux is available to download.

WPS Office 2016 for Linux is the first major update to the popular free (as in beer) productivity suite in almost a year. It adds several new features, including remote file sharing, search functionality, and miscellaneous software performance.

It’s been a bumpy month for Kingsoft, the company which makes the software. Earlier this month it told its Twitter followers that future Linux updates were “on a halt”, and that it planned to open-source the software so that the community could pick up the slack. These tweets were subsequently deleted, with the company blaming blogs and news-sites for making things up.

Among the changes in the latest version:

Added WPS Office for Linux remote file sharing

Added search functionality for Writer, Presentation, and Spreadsheets

Optimized IO operations for improved WPS file access speed

Updated display effects of controls and fonts

Updated WPS export to PDF hyperlinks

Updated thumbnail preview effects in WPS Presentation

Why WPS Office for Linux?

WPS Office for Linux boasts “complete compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats” across its three core apps, which include Writer (a Microsoft Word analog) and Presentation (a Microsoft PowerPoint analog). There’s also a built in PDF reader, a wide selection of fonts, and various free templates.

But the bigly big lure above all is that WPS Office for Linux offers an ‘easy to use and familiar user interface’ — a translation of which reads: ‘it looks terribly similar to Microsoft Office’.

“Active Community Support”

“The WPS Office engineering team has been supporting the Linux community and has updated the latest Linux compatible software based on active community support,” Kingsoft say in the press release announcing the update.

“The company provides updates on a regular basis and is delivering on its mission to support users with the latest release. As Linux is an important platform for many thousands of organizations, WPS Office is ensuring continued support for users in the Linux community,” they add.

Download WPS Office for Linux

If you fancy helping Kingsoft celebrate ‘continued success’ you can download a copy of WPS Office 2016 for Linux from the WPS Community website.

Pick the installer that matches your Linux distro and architecture and then install as normal.

Be aware that the software is labelled as an “alpha” and, as such, may have issues and bugs.

Thanks Claudio!

Article updated June 18