Today we wanted to write our second blog on the topic of open source desktop applications and the focus is on Productivity Software. We are all familiar with Microsoft Office, but it seems that Microsoft has gotten into a rut of building new releases that change the look and feel of the application but really add no functionality. After all, what additional functionality do we really need in a productivity suite? We think most of us had what we needed with Office 2000! Why do they keep making us learn a new interface? Because they are in the software business to make money and if they are not releasing new software it really hits the bottom line! Let us introduce OpenOffice, or should we say our favorite fork of OpenOffice, LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org).
LibreOffice is a free, open source, full productivity suite of applications that runs on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. It consists of six feature-rich applications – Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math, and Base – and is a viable replacement for both personal and business applications. We will only touch on these applications very briefly since LibreOffice is free so you can download and try it for yourself. Lets start with the three applications that tie directly to Microsoft Office. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word, Calc is a spreadsheet application similar to Microsoft Excel, and Impress is a multimedia presentation creation utility similar to Microsoft Powerpoint. Draw and Math do not tie directly to Microsoft Office applications but are still worthy of talking about. Draw lets you build diagrams and sketches from scratch and Math is a simple equation editor. Finally, Base is the database front-end of the LibreOffice suite similar to Microsoft Access.
Although LibreOffice has its own document formats it can also open and save files in most proprietary formats as well, such as Microsoft Office. So no need to worry, you can still create a document and save it in Microsoft Office formats to send to friends and colleagues! So if you are getting sick of the constant upgrades/licensing, constant interface changes, and do not use the additional functionality of Microsoft Office, think about trying LibreOffice. We think you will be impressed.
Today we have only discussed one Productivity Application because it stands out as a great contender to Microsoft Office, but there are literally thousands of other projects that fit into this category, so do some more digging and you will be surprised at what you find. Don’t miss our next blog post covering open source utilities . . . . follow us on LinkedIn, become a friend on Facebook, or sign up for our email Subscription!
