[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Try Calligra 2.4 for a New Microsoft Office Alternative here

[GetReal]

Note: The windows version of this suite is still a Beta! I think not mentioned in the article.

[linuxrants7xpg]

I gave it a brief try, and my initial impressions based on less than 10 minutes of use is this: The actual suite seems pretty nice. I'm not a big fan of KDE, and despite the fact that I have it installed, it doesn't seem to show up anywhere for my Gnome environment. Trying to start it manually from my command line just gives me a crash dialog. That's rather disappointing because despite the fact that the application works nicely, I won't switch to KDE just to have it. I'll continue to play around with it but at this point, it's not for me.

[norwegianreader]

Calligra homepage says:"Please note that these packages are not yet suitable for daily use. They are meant as a proof-of-concept of work in progress."
I just installed it, and I think it looks and seems to work ok (I am no expert though) Seems that ODT and HTML are the only options for saving.

[xyberviri]

I hate to say it but after using office at work for some 14 years, every free alternative is just that. Nothing ever comes close to the real tool with out a ton of hopes to jump though. really your only savior is having never used office products so you dont know what your missing.

word processing not so much, but excel, that stupid calc program by libra/open office was junk compaired to it, same with googles version

maybe they are better now but not the last time i tried it.

[linuxrants7xpg]

xyberviri, on 16 April 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

I hate to say it but after using office at work for some 14 years, every free alternative is just that. Nothing ever comes close to the real tool with out a ton of hopes to jump though. really your only savior is having never used office products so you dont know what your missing.

word processing not so much, but excel, that stupid calc program by libra/open office was junk compaired to it, same with googles version

maybe they are better now but not the last time i tried it.

That all depends on when the last time you tried it was. One thing you can almost be certain of with this type of software: If you haven't tried it this year, you're probably out of date.

[nonseq]

xyberviri, on 16 April 2012 - 06:12 AM, said:

I hate to say it but after using office at work for some 14 years, every free alternative is just that. Nothing ever comes close to the real tool with out a ton of hopes to jump though. really your only savior is having never used office products so you dont know what your missing.

word processing not so much, but excel, that stupid calc program by libra/open office was junk compaired to it, same with googles version

maybe they are better now but not the last time i tried it.

I have been pretty vocal about the deficiencies in LibreOffice- especially in Calc and Base so, to be fair, I recently downloaded it again and spent a little time with it over the weekend. The formatting problems in Text are still there and both Calc and Base haven't improved much at all. They may be fine for those with less demanding requirements but for actual production, to do real work that is compatible with my clients it won't do the job, at least not for me.

It was worth a shot but it has become apparent that the team working on the project has priorities that do not reflect mine or my clients.

[JasonBeesen]

I've been using Calligra through the entire 2.4 Beta cycle, and I wouldn't use anything else.

If you're used to the MSO paradigm, of course its hard to break the habit, but Calligra uses a much more advanced idea of what an office package should be: in short, the "different applications" are simply different interfaces on exactly the same Grande Office Engine (which is called "Flake"). For example, the presentations package has all the drawing, painting, and text editing features of the vector graphics, painting, and word processing interfaces respectively, but the features and interfaces are optimised to the individual functions.

It's like, imagine Word, with Illustrator and Corel Painter features inclusive.