| The other big Linux office suites |
by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (March 13, 2006)
If you're new to Linux, you may be excused for thinking that there are only two note-worthy Linux office suites: OpenOffice.org and its commercial brother, StarOffice. Nothing could be further from the truth. By my count, there are three other significant Linux office suites.
The first of these is VistaSource Inc.'s ApplixWare 6.0. At one time, this was a well-known Linux office suite, but the company began to focus more on using ApplixWare as an application development system for real-time programs.
ApplixWare
Today, while the commercial ApplixWare continues to have a word processor, a real-time event driven spreadsheet, a programmable vector graphic tool, and a database interface, it's an office suite that's meant to be used as the front-end to business processes, not as an office suite onto itself.
For example, you can cross-link the spreadsheet with real-time trading data to create your own financial futures model. If you're in the business of creating business intelligence applications or the like, you should certainly kick ApplixWare's tires. Others, however, may want to look at one of the other choices.
That said, if you want to just try it out, you can. A trial version of the program and sample development code is available from the company. A newly-founded user-group can also help get you going with ApplixWare. The group's founder, for instance, recently published a how-to for getting ApplixWare running on Ubuntu.
The other two prominent office suites? KOffice, for KDE, and GNOME Office, for, you guessed it, GNOME.
GNOME Office
The GNOME Office suite is actually made up of three separate programs: AbiWord, Gnumeric, and GNOME-DB. These are, respectively, a word-processor, a spreadsheet, and a database.
Because they are three different programs, however, integration among them has been tricky at times. The most recent versions, though, have greatly improved this facet. I, for one, now wouldn't hesitate to bring charts from Gnumeric to AbiWord.
AbiWord 2.4.2 is perhaps the most mature of the family. I've used it myself and I've found it to be an excellent word-processor. It also is close, but not quite there yet, to having full read and write ODF (OpenDocument Format) support.
Another point in its favor is that AbiWord has been designed to run on just about any operating system you can think of. If you want a word processor that looks and acts the same on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP -- or even QNX Neutrino 6.2, Solaris, and Windows 95, for that matter -- AbiWord is your program.
Gnumeric is GNOME's answer to Microsoft Excel. It doesn't, however, try to be a drop-in replacement for Excel the way that OpenOffice.org 2.02's Calc does. So, you can forget about trying to get Excel macros and the like to run on it. It will, however, import and export to Excel formats.
Its creators also claim that it has some functionality that Excel doesn't have. Not being a spreadsheet wonk, I can't even begin to describe these. I will say, however, that Gnumeric runs as fast as Excel, or faster, on similar systems.
GNOME-DB is a database front-end and tool-kit rather than a complete, small database management system. From where I sit, it's more of a developer's tool than, say, a combination of MySQL and my favorite MySQL front-end, phpMyAdmin.
KOffice
KOffice is more of an integrated office suite ala Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org. The main package is made up of KWord, KSpread, and KPresenter. They're all good, solid applications, but they're not as full-featured as OpenOffice.org.
The KOffice suite also has a number of less well developed applications such as graphics tools, Krita and Karbon.
Bruce Byfield, at Linux.com, just did a fine job of giving an overview of all these applications. Just click on the links above, and you'll see what he has to say about them.
Overall, KOffice is a useful suite, but it's not quite as spiffy as OpenOffice.org.
That pretty much sums up my feelings about all the other major Linux office suites.
Still, each of them has its place. ApplixWare is an excellent interface for business processes, and the GNOME and KDE offices both fit like a hand in a glove in their respective desktop environments. For me, however, OpenOffice.org is now my office-suite of choice on both Linux and Windows.
 About the author: Ziff Davis Internet editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about technology and business since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the
way.
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