Document creation and management suites play a vital role in personal and professional spheres of life. A sizable variety of premium office suites is available to tackle your Linux computing needs, posing a solid competition to the old-faithful Microsoft Office.
There are at least eight documentation suites with differential features, which aren’t as costly as their Microsoft counterpart. If you’re looking for some usable, worthy alternatives to MS Office, you must check out the options listed below.
LibreOffice is one of the most perfect, freely available alternatives of MS Office. The suite comes with Writer for editing documents, Impress for presentations, Draw for vector-drawing, along with Base, a database software, a calculator, and a mathematics formula editor.
LibreOffice uses a default XML-based, open-type document format (ODF) to enhance the quality of your docs. You can open LibreOffice documents on any OpenOffice derivative software. These include support for PDFs, raw text, rich text, Apple Pages, and Microsoft Word format types.
On LibreOffice, you enjoy compatibility for old, nearly-discontinued, legacy formats, going all the way back to ‘97. The desktop-style suite is exceptionally collaborative since LibreOffice extends support through its LibreOffice-based Collabora writing suite on Android and iOS.
Download: LibreOffice
WPS Office is a multi-award-winning open-source office suite solution for standard document formats. WPS stands for Writing, Presentation, and Spreadsheets, but it is quite the proverbial jack of all trades within the free office suite domain.
It is highly compatible and stable across all versions of Linux. WPS is rather collaborative, given its ability to integrate seamlessly with WPS Cloud, allowing you to access your WPS Office files from any computer or mobile device on the go.
WPS offers a free plan for personal use and a premium plan for business users. WPS, as an alternative, is trusted by over 20,000 brands, as the suite augments your workflows with Microsoft 365, Google Docs, and Adobe templates.
Download: WPS Office
OnlyOffice ensures that you never miss out on essential document suite tooling, especially if you go open-source. This high-rated suite boasts collaborative and cloud-integrated assistance (for a streamlined, cross-platform workspace) with well-documented API and WOPI support.
OnlyOffice works on all major OS platforms and not just Linux. This all-in-one suite comes with feature-packed spreadsheets, presentations, documentation, and form creation/editing tools. It comes equipped with a plugins library that transforms rich documentation editing.
The premium OnlyOffice Workspace suite’s privacy, security, and backup perks are an excellent addition to your workflow. It curates collaborative documentation workflows for SMBs, large enterprises, academics, developers, confidential government documentation, nonprofits, research, and home use (free version).
Download: OnlyOffice
SoftMaker Office is a free MS Office alternative that simplifies your document creation process and enhances your productivity on Linux. This office suite permits you to share and edit a broad range of document formats as compared to some other premium writing software.
SoftMaker offers a breezy UX with customizable menus. It provides a stable performance even when you’re dealing with legacy formats or rich content files. You’ll find the MS Office-like user interface of SoftMaker Office welcoming.
The tool extends support to Windows and macOS. You can opt for the free version for personal use or the subscription package to avail multi-device support and other extended features.
Download: SoftMaker Office
Calligra Office prides itself as an office and graphic art suite powered by KDE Linux. It offers some of the following segments for the end-users:
- Words: A word processing and desktop publishing tool
- Sheets: Offers formulas and charts for detailed data analysis
- KEXI: A visual database management tool equipped with advanced queries and data processing capabilities
- Karbon: Assists you with vector art design
- Stage: To work on presentations
- Plan: Designing projects/task management
The free suite provides moveable dockers, embeddable objects, and uses the ODF format as default for cross-editing on other office suites.
Calligra is not limited to KDE; it’s also available for other Linux distros, Windows, macOS/iOS, and Android.
Download: Calligra Office
WordPerfect hands you a resourceful MS Office alternative for everyday use on Linux. The word processing tool is a part of the WP office suite, consisting of Quattro Pro for spreadsheets, CorelCENTRAL for task planning and scheduling, Tellix for web publishing, and Paradox for database management.
The synonymously titled, Presentations is another nifty addition to the WP office productivity suite. WP for Linux offers a uniform, relatively fast, and stable UX across all distros and premium OS platforms, given its Wine library integrations.
WordPerfect syncs well with all common type documents and open-source formats. Its unending support for HTML, XML, PDF, and RTF types is an added plus point, especially, if your work involves dynamic webpage editing.
Download: Word Perfect
Zoho Workplace is a cloud-based workplace ideal for enhancing collaborative business documentation productivity. The tool’s comprehensive cloud SaaS also takes care of your storage woes.
Zoho Workplace uses AI augmentation and automation to make your workflows more efficient. The workplace suite consists of an email manager, IM chat application, file manager, word processor, presentations, and spreadsheet-maker, amongst many other applications.
Zoho promotes an efficient ethic of context-based business solutions. You will find departmentally segregated solutions for marketing, finance, sales, etc. You can seamlessly jump from one device to another instead of limiting yourself to a Linux desktop.
Download: Zoho Workplace
If you want an office suite to give MS Office stiff competition, you have to consider Google Docs. Docs is a word-processing extension of the Google Workspace, which is free for personal use. You can use Sheets for spreadsheets, along with Google Forms, Slides, and Drawings, all within the Google Workspace.
Google Docs has an intuitive and familiar UI that supports a range of standard type, open-source formats. It can directly mail your documents and share them with different privacy parameters. The other tools in the workspace are equally collaborative and cloud-augmented.
Download: Google Docs
Working With MS Office Alternatives on Linux
Microsoft has dominated the world of technology for decades. There are a lot of alternatives in the market, each of which promises to be better than MS Office’s suite of products.
If you are a Linux user or are working on a Windows or Mac device, you might want to check out some alternatives to the paid subscriptions provided by Microsoft.
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