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Most Popular Open Source Office Suites

Most Popular Open Source Office Suites

Now a days office suites are a necessity for every workplace ranging from a child's school to a business workplace. For this reason, many tech geeks are considering the use of free opensource softwares since they come completely free with full version unlike some of the free softwares which are free only during their
trial periods.  In the office softwares you might be familier to OpenOffice[dot]org which is one of the strong brand running in parallel to ‘Microsoft Office’ having major market share in the office related softwares.

Talking about the most popular office suites, we will be discussing about 5 office suites in this post, these are:
  1. Open Office.org
  2. Libre Office
  3. K Office
  4. Gnome Office
  5. IBM Lotus Symphony
Lets talk about each of them in details. First of all

1.  Open Office.org [Download Page]

This is one of the most popular open office suite and I am most fond of this software. Well going into the details of this software, this is free and opensource and is licensed under LGPL. It is supported on all well known operating systems like Windows, linux, mac, etc. If you generally have files which were to be viewed or generated in MS Office, then also it has no problem since it comes with inbuilt MS office compatibility support for doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, etc. Though you can export your documents into pdf but you can’t use the PDF import and modify feature, but don’t worry since you can download one pdf import and modify pluggin from the openoffice.org website and you will be able to do that work. Openoffice.org has a database manager too and provides encryption for the documents also. But this software don’t have an inbuilt email client and do not have a vector graphics editor.

2.  Libre Office [Download Page]

This is another popular office suites and faces tough competition from OpenOffice.org. Well this software is also free and open source and is licensed under LGPL. Libre Office runs on all the poular operating system like windows, Linux, Mac, etc. Like OpenOffice.org, it is also having compatibility support for various formats of MS Office file. In openoffice.org, we saw that it doesn’t have inbuilt pdf import or modify feature but Libre Office have both PDF export and import or modify feature inbuilt in its software. This also support Database manager, Vector based graphics editor and has encryption feature too. Only thing it lags in the presence of inbuilt email client.

3.  K Office [Download Page]

This is another software which is open source free software but instead of LGPL, it runs on GPL (Genuine Public License). Unlike other softwares which ran on all famous Operation system, this runs only on Linux based operating systems like Ubuntu. Currently it is having MS office support only for the documents under MS Office 2003 or previous version. It does not support MS office 2007 or higher version documents. Like Libre Office, it is also having both PDF import and export feature. It possesses both database manager and vector graphics editor, but lacks in encryption feature and does not have any inbuilt email client

4.  Gnome Office [Download Page]

Gnome Office is free and open source software similar to K Office under the license of GPL but unlike K office, it is supported by all popular operating system like Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. Like K office this software is also incompatible with the documents of MS Office 2007 or higher version. Like others it is having both database manager and vector graphics editor but does not have data encryption features. But currently this is the only open source software having inbuilt Email client.

5.  IBM Lotus Symphony [Download Page]

Lotus is an not an open source software but is free and is under proprietary license under IBM. This is supported by all the OS like Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. This software is also having MS office compatibity but it support only some common documents of MS Office 2007 or higher version. It is having PDF export feature but lags behind in PDF import feature. It also comes with encryption feature but neither it has a Database manager nor vector based graphics editor not any inbuilt email client.

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