After Formatting my PC, I decided to try other office suites Except our Open Office which is Free and MS Office which is Paid one. I believe these two office suites are most common among us. In this post I’ve reviewed four free, Offline and excellent Office Suites and they are Libre Office, OxygenOffice Professional, IBM Lotus Symphony and Calligra Suite (K Office). Check out now.
Free Office Suites – Microsoft Office Alternatives
Libre Office
Libre Office is a Free Office Suite developed by The Document Foundation as a fork of OpenOffice.org. The aim of Libre Office is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements. LibreOffice also provides extensions that can be added to LibreOffice Suite to increase productivity. One more benifit of this free office suite is that it’s available in a large number of languages, with more being added continually. And Yes, It is compatible with all MS Office extensions.
The Components of Libre Office are same as Open Office. Libre Office includes:
- Word Processor – LibreOffice Writer
- Spreadsheet Program – LibreOffice Calc
- Presentation Program – LibreOffice Impress
- Database management Program – LibreOffice Base
- Vector Graphics Editor – LibreOffice Draw
- Mathematics Tool – LibreOffice Math
- Supported OS: Windows/ Linux/ Mac
- System Requirements: 256 MB RAM, 1.5 GB Free HD Space
- File Size: 214 MB
Visit LibreOffice Download Center
Oxygen Office Professional
It means OpenOffice suite plus Extras, It is not the classic Open Office suite. OxygenOffice Professional is a free and open source enhancement of the official OpenOffice.org. The OxygenOffice Professional Team has modified the source of OpenOffice.org and bundled lot of extras with it. More than 3,400 graphics are included, both clip art and photos. These pictures are integrated into the gallery and can easily be placed into any OxygenOffice document. Several templates and sample documents are included, as well as over 90 fonts. The extras are integrated by default in the installation of OxygenOffice Professional, but they are optional, so the user can decide what parts to include and what parts to leave out. These extra templates, fonts, and graphics are free for both personal and professional use.
Basic Components are same as Open Office:
- Word Processor – Oxygen Office Writer
- Spreadsheet Program – Oxygen Office Calc
- Presentation Program – Oxygen Office Impress
- Database management Program – Oxygen Office Base
- Vector Graphics Editor – Oxygen Office Draw
- Mathematics Tool – Oxygen Office Math
Features of Oxygen Office Professional:
- SVG support
- 3D transitions
- Rich fields support
- Startup performance
- Unix systray quick-starter
- Calc solver
- Improved Excel interoperability
- VBA support
- Mono integration
- GStreamer integration
- Text Grid rendering
- Improved EMF rendering
- MS-Works import
- WordPerfect Graphics import
- Lotus Word Pro import
- Supported OS: Windows/ Linux/ Unix
- System Requirements: 256 MB RAM, 2.5 GB Free HD Space
- File Size: 533 MB (Size may differ with newer versions and Updates)
Visit Oxygen Office Download Center
IBM Lotus Symphony
IBM Lotus Symphony is a suite of applications for creating, editing, and sharing text, spreadsheet, presentations and other documents, and is currently distributed as freeware.
IBM Lotus Symphony consists of:
- IBM Lotus Symphony Documents, a word processor
- IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, a spreadsheet program
- IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations, a presentation program
Here, you may think that It has limits because only three programs are available in IBM Lotus Symphony, A Word Processor, A Spreadsheet and A Presentation Program. But my answer is No, by using IBM Lotus Symphony you can also create Lotus Documents, Designs, Drawings, Graphics, Calculations, What-if Calculations, Arranging data, Dynamic charts etc.
Symphony supports the OpenDocument formats, as well as the binary Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite formats. It can also export Portable Document Format (PDF) files and import Office Open XML files. IBM Lotus Symphony is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. It is based on Eclipse Rich Client Platform from IBM Lotus Expeditor for its shell and OpenOffice.org 3 for the core office suite code.
Features of IBM Lotus Symphony:
- VBA scripts support
- ODF 1.2 standard support
- Office 2007 OLE support
- Brand new sidebars containing enriched property sections and panels across different editors, with support of sidebar panel management to show or hide sidebar panels
- Ability to customize toolbar content and layout
- Ability to create new business cards and labels
- Ability to insert OLE, audio and video files
- Master document support
- Support of Live Text
- Enabled file encryption and password protection with Microsoft Word and Excel files
- Support for “Open in new window”. Users can use Command+~ on Mac OS and Alt + Tab on XP/Vista to switch windows
- New clip art gallery
- More template files
- Support of VML images in OOXML files
- Support of more parameters for protecting spreadsheet files and sheets in VBA API
- Support of separate downloads of spell check dictionary addons for 22 languages for Windows OS users
One Feature I really liked in IBM Lotus Symphony is ‘Tabbed Workspace’, you can work by creating multiple Tabs, Just like web browsers.
- Supported OS: Windows XP/ Vista/ 7
- System Requirements: 512 MB RAM, 800 MB Free HD Space
- File Size: 258 MB
Visit IBM Lotus Symphony Download Center
Calligra Suite (KOffice)
Calligra Suite is an office suite created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. It contains applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, databases, vector graphics and digital painting.
Calligra uses the OpenDocument format as its default file format and can import other formats, such as Microsoft Office formats. Calligra relies on KDE technology and is often used in combination with the KDE Software Compilation.
Components of Calligra Suite:
- Word Processor – KWord
- Spreadsheet Program – KSpread
- Presentation Program – KPresenter
- Database management Program – Kexi
- Vector Graphics Editor – Karbon14
- Mathematics Tool – KFormula
- Flowchart Drawing – Kivio
- Digital Painting Tool – Krita
- Chart Objects – KChart
- Project Management Application – KPlato
OS Supported: Windows/ Linux/ Mac OSX
