Office Applications

"Office" applications include word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs. Of course the most widely used collection of office applications is Microsoft Office. Several free office applications are available in Linux.

The most advanced free office suite for Linux is OpenOffice. OpenOffice is the free version of the StarOffice office suite, which is sold by Sun Microsystems. It is available for Windows and for MacOS X, as well as for Linux. OpenOffice is equivalent to Microsoft Office, except for a few missing components such as a database program.

You may find an icon for OpenOffice on the KDE desktop. If not, you will find commands for OpenOffice programs in the "Office" submenu of the KDE Start menu. OpenOffice is capable of opening Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, and it can save documents in several Microsoft formats. The components of OpenOffice include Writer (the word-processing program), Draw (the drawing program), Calc (the spreadsheet), and Impress (the presentation program).