LibreOffice: Why is it good for Open Source and Linux?

Ubuntu is the most famous version of a Linux operating system. Linux is Free, stable, easy-to-use and open source. Yet for the past twenty years it has received less attention than any other operating system. Whatever the reasons may be, the problem is that most software is written for Windows or Mac systems.

Microsoft Office suite for instance, is a great product and one of the main reasons a company will not move to Linux, even though it would be cheaper to do so. The only alternative to MS Office, so far, was OpenOffice.Org. And MS Office runs best on Windows making it necessary for Companies to invest in it.

Yet, recently the Document Foundation was created for the very purpose of providing support to the newest open source Office suite called LibreOffice. For those who only use Windows because of MS Office, LibreOffice can liberate you and help you move to Linux proper.

What does LibreOffice have to offer? Exactly what MS Office offers and maybe a little more. It gives you freedom to change any part of the software, if you have a mind to. But even for new users it’s easy and intuitive. It has been built to look similar to MS Office to reduce the learning curve for new users. And it performs the very same functions as MS Office.

Writer

Unlike MS Office it has Writer instead of Word. Other than the change in its name everything else is the same as Word. It does everything from typing simple letters to writing whole books with columns, charts and pictures.

Calc

This is Excel on Linux. It deals with all spreadsheet work. It takes care of any needs of a Data Entry professional.

Impress

In other words, PowerPoint. The websites best explains it as, “Impress is a truly outstanding tool for creating effective multimedia presentations. Your presentations can be enhanced with 2D and 3D clip art, special effects and transition styles, animations, and high-impact drawing tools.”

Draw

Draw is a simple drawing tool much like paint, yet with more power and a lot more features. It has also been designed for technical drawings, general posters, and many other complex sketches.

Base

Very much like MS Access, Base is a full-featured desktop database front end used for tasks such as – keeping track of collections of objects; maintaining customer information databases; maintaining student grade and curriculum databases; storing survey information and experimentation data; storing population and census data; producing monthly financial reports in companies and organizations; managing audit, quality assurance and production data.

Math

According to their websites it is, “The Easy Way to Insert Equations and Formulas in Documents.” It is a standalone app for simple and complex formulas which can also be called up in presentations, articles, drawings or spreadsheets.

Note: In many ways LibreOffice is the same as MS Office and yet they are different. One major difference is that MS Office files end with a .doc or .docx (Office 2007 and 2010) which denotes its format type. LibreOffice, as it is based on OpenOffice.Org, uses the open format and has .odt at the end of the file name. When saving a file in LibreOffice choose the type of format you want to save the file in. LibreOffice can read any type of file format. MS Office, on the other hand, cannot. So saving in a .doc or .docx format is the safest bet as not everyone has a Linux system.

LibreOffice is free, intuitive and user-friendly. It can access more file types than any other office suite. It is customizable and stable which means that it can be readily deployed in any Company. It is constantly updated to keep up with the newest technological advancements. These are done by a community of contributors who freely give their time and money to develop this project. And the best part is it runs best on Linux.

Interested? Look here for more: http://www.libreoffice.org/features/

And for the brave who want to take a spin with this Office suite, you can download the most recent, stable, LibreOffice release (3.3.3) here: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/