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...Do you use Linux? Have you ever heard of OpenOffice.org? If you answered “yes” to first question and “no” to second, you are really rare individual!...
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Text processor
Let’s start with document processing software. I believe everyone needs to open some kind of text documents. Of course, usage of Office applications for plain text documents is like to break a butterfly on a wheel. But as soon as we start opening some formatted documents, we need something powerful. Each office package has text processor included. This is Open Office Writer, KOffice Word and Abiword...
Spreadsheet processor
Not sure about you, but spreadsheets are second, if not the first, in the importance list for my everyday work. Spreadsheet processors are included in all three office packages which I review here. They are Open Office Calc, KSpread and Gnumeric.
First impression is very important for all of us. That’s why you can be shocked when you first run KSpread (or any other KOffice application actually). KSpread has same panel organisation principle as KWord. This is unusual and requires some time to get used to. OOo Calc and Gnumeric has more “standard” screen layout.
Compatibility is very important nowadays, when same documents can be worked on by different teams on different continents. Unfortunately for KSpread, it is far beyond other spreadsheet processors here. Basically, it has problems opening MS Excel files. I tried several. None of them could be open. They all worked fine in OOo Calc though. KSpread could open same file if saved in .ods format by OOo Calc. Gnumeric takes much more time to open same MS Excel spreadsheet. But once loaded, it works fine...
Presentation program
Presentations are very important in different aspects of office life. Not talking about obvious thing like public performances. Be honest, which application do you think of when you need to create some simple diagram and add some comments to it? Or when you need to share your knowledge with colleagues in the way when some graphics, order and structure is required? Or if you want to add some animation in your “knowledge sharing” exercise. All these are examples when presentation software is helpful.
Unfortunately, there is no presentation program in GNOME. That is where 3 times 3 (three different application types from three different office packages) is equal to 8. There is older version of Gnome-native presentation program called Agnubis, and new project Ease. Both do not have binaries distributed at this time. Agnubis project looks abandoned at the moment, while Ease project is in too early stage...
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