Phenquestions
Office suites play a fundamental role for any business and can perform a broad range of tasks and improve the efficiency and productivity within the organization. Organizations spread out and share information by creating a file with the help of office suites. This information could be in any format like a text document, charts, graphs, presentations, or spreadsheets.
Microsoft Office suite works exceptionally well on Linux. Microsoft will not emancipate the office for Linux. There are two reasons. Firstly, you can't retail software on Linux. Secondly, nobody would purchase software on a free operating system. Thus, after using numerous office suites, we developed a list based on their features and facilities, as shown below:
1. LibreOffice:
LibreOffice is a well-liked and open-source office suite that is reliable, stable, and easy to use productivity suite utilized for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. LibreOffice is a lightweight suite and works very smoothly on Linux; this office is as secure as any other word processor namely, Open-Office or Microsoft office. It can be said that it is more secure and safe to use since it is open-source, and it would be hard enough to conceal vicious code in it. This office is available for installation for all operating systems, including Linux distributions from LibreOffice's website https://www.libreoffice.org/download.
2. Zoho Docs
Zoho Docs is another office suite available for Linux that can be a substitute for Microsoft office. It is a subscription-based service but free for a team of five people. Zoho Docs is a combination of three products: Writer, Sheet, and Show for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, respectively.
The notable feature of the Zoho office suite is that it securely stores every document on the cloud to make it accessible from everywhere; cloud storage size depends upon the subscription. Some other features include:
- Zoho lets you upload collections of files.
- It can even store files of larger sizes, including images and videos.
- It manages files in folders and subfolders.
- It allows you to generate password locks links.
- Zoho also comes with features like file recovery for deleted files.
To download Zoho Docs, visit their official website https://www.zoho.com/docs/desktop-sync.html.
3. SoftMaker Free Office
SoftMaker Free Office is another impressive alternative to Microsoft Office. Just like Microsoft Office, SoftMaker Free Office also consists of a complete set of programs such as a word processor, presentation-making, and spreadsheet applications.
SoftMaker Free Office is also a completely free suite for both individual and commercial users. Another remarkable feature of this suite is that it can open and save files in Microsoft Office formats like .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx.
The SoftMaker Free Office is a very easy to adapt office suite which gets updated regularly. In its latest version, a new toolbar has been added where users can access various functions conveniently. Moreover, SoftMaker Free Office permits the users to generate the PDF files of any document directly. Its up-to-date version can generate archival PDFs in PDF/A format.
Softmaker Free Office is compatible with Linux operating systems. To download it for Ubuntu, visit their official website https://www.freeoffice.com/en/tips-and-tricks-linux.
4. Apache OpenOffice
Apache OpenOffice is another office suite being used on Linux quite extensively. It is an open-source and multi-platform office suite and consists of a word processor program, a spreadsheet app, an application called impress (for the preparation of presentations), a drawing app (for drawing), a formula editor (for Math-related work), and a database management application. To install OpenOffice on Ubuntu, LibreOffice needs to be deleted first because OpenOffice cannot run in the presence of the former.
It is a multi-language suite that supports up to 41 languages. The default format of Apache OpenOffice is open document format (ODF). Apache OpenOffice is not able to save the file in Microsoft Office post-2007 office open XML formats but it can only import them. Visit https://www.openoffice.org/download/ to download it for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions.
5. WPS Office
WPS is also a preferable alternative to Microsoft office in Linux distributions. The acronym of WPS is the “Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets”. It is incorporated into three major components- WPS Presentation, WPS Write, and WPS Spreadsheet applications.
WPS is considered as a cross-platform productivity suite, which is compatible with Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, and Google Doc/Sheet. It supports numerous file formats like .dotm, .rtf .docx, .xlsx, .dotx, .html, .ppt, .pptx, .xls, .doc, .docm, .xml, .txt, and many more. Moreover, it includes features like spell check in approximately 10 languages and also provides the facility to generate PD's. It is also multi-platform, free, and can be downloaded from the official website of WPS Office. To download WPS for Linux visit https://www.wps.com/linux.
Conclusion:
In this post, we discussed five office suites, each one has its own feature- LibreOffice is a simple, lightweight office suite with numerous features, Zoho Docs is an elegant office suite that comes with the capability of cloud storage and management, SoftMaker Free Office is also open-source and allows user to generate PD's, Apache OpenOffice is available free of cost and also provides an interface in 41 languages, and WPS office is also free and supports a lot of file formats. After extensive use, we have found out that LibreOffice is preferably the finest office suite. LibreOffice is available free of cost and also allows the facility of spell check with full accuracy. Besides Linux, it is also compatible with Microsoft Windows and macOS.
