KDE is working on an M$ Word alternative?
KDE is working on an M$ Word alternative?
Just found this while scrolling flathub.
As a KDE fan, I don't use any of these "redundant" programs, unless there is a true benefit.
The thing is that, LibreOffice works and looks great in Plasma, and Calligra doesn't do anything special.
It's even more obvious for me with KTorrent. We already have qBitTorrent!
I absolutely like things like Neochat, tho, because in this case the "official" alternative is an annoying Electron app.
Yeah but I don't think competition is bad.
Maybe they'll make it even better than the alternatives.
Of course, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong about Calligra. It's just that, so far... I see no point for using it.
There is also OnlyOffice, which has been more palatable for the people I shared it with (mostly students that were graduating and losing access to free MS Word)
I've found OnlyOffice to have bettet interoperability with MS Office, than LibreOffice. Not perfect, but things like layout are better transferred between the programs. If that is a main concern (i.e. you frequently collaborate with people using MS Office), that would be a good solution. There is however some sketchy licensing stuff going on with OnlyOffice I have yet not fully understood.
It seems Calligra can open, but not save in MS Office file formats. I guess MS Office can open OpenDocument-files, but I believe interoperability will not be too good. Again, if that is a main concern. For me now, it is not.
Since you are able to classify it as "redundant", I would assume you have experience using it? Could you comment on some of the main gaps you find between this and LibreOffice, that leads you to prefer LibreOffice? As stated in a comment below, I have no experience with this and would be interested to see if it could be a contender, and it seems you have an opinion that it (at least at present), does not.
If you mean "redundant" as in "LibreOffice already does everything you need", I disagree with that.
I gave it an extended look a few years ago, and I don't remember much of the details, but I found the workflow not terribly intuitive, it had some unusual defaults and was relatively limited in features.
If I remember correctly, it did save in the ODF formats, so for just writing out a letter, it's definitely fine.
There's just not really a reason to use it over LibreOffice, except for it being somewhat more lightweight.I mean "redundant" as in "Calligra does not offer me anything special compared to LibreOffice"; and so I prefer to keep using LibreOffice as it is essentially the source of all things OpenDocument.
Thanks for good input! I'll give it a spin later, but I will contain my expectations for now. Seems like Krita was spun out of this some time ago, and my impression is that Krita is generally very well liked. Maybe the remaining parts will recieve similar development focus later and they will become true contenders down the line. I like competition, and as said before, I don't think LibreOffice is quite there.
Man, you must have better luck than me because Libreoffice is utter dogshit at sending a print job correctly IME. Several different machines and printers and I can't get a proper print out of LO.
Calligra can't deal with .docx files at all, and that's enough to disqualify it, really.
I mean, you can save in .docx but you have to manually type in the file ending cause there isn't an option for it.
And it can technically open .docx files, but don't be surprised when it suddenly adds 6 pages to a document that contains nothing but the word "test".
(I couldn't find out if that was caused by the saving or the opening, but it doesn't really matter.)@SeekPie
kde had this for years.
at first it was koffice then they renamed itDidn't know this, thanks for the info!
This is what I was thinking. This isn't new and it isn't in the best of maintained state. There have been some recent contributions, but not enough to claim that KDE as a whole is doing some huge undertaking such as developing a real alternative to word.
Yes, Calligra has been around forever, and it's been going nowhere in all that time.
I wouldn't place too much hope in it.
Interesting, never seen this recommended as an Office alternative. Seems this is nothing new, it was released as KOffice in 2000. Calligra 4.0 was released in August this year though, so it is actively developed. Wonder why it is seldom recommended?
I would like to check this out. Currently in the process of making some presentations outside of work, and using LibreOffice Impress after weighing it up against OnlyOffice Presentation. Both tools leave much to be desired, unfortunately. Both in terms of stability, ease of use and features. For now, Powerpoint does a better job (but also this has some huge annoyances that I think an open source alternative would be better addressing). I am on a deadline, so I do not dare to change up my tools now, so it will be for later.
Wonder why it is seldom recommended?
it's simply not good enough for daily use, unfortunately
Tried it a few months ago! I'll never complain about alternative software, but it currently has only the basics. Until its further developed, I wouldn't be comfortable recommending this over LibreOffice to anyone.
Tried it today with the same thought .
Just realized... why is this not called Kalligra? Boo...
Open a ticket.
Calligra has been around for a quite while and it's still not on par with either MS Office or Libreoffice.
I forgot that existed. I haven't used it and now I'm wondering how it compares to libreoffice
Certainly looks interesting. Being made by the KDE community, it actually may evolve to something great
...why are we making a competitor to libreoffice
Honestly i'm cool with it. Libreoffice is awesome but is perpetually behind the curve on a lot of things.
My biggest pain points with it currently are:
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No apparent motivation to incorporate Wayland support, resulting in very strangely sized UI elements or dropdown/popup menus that appear very far away from where you clicked
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Pivot tables.
And thats just two examples, there are several others.
If this KDE one brings out the big guns, I am super down for it.
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My abiding memory of it that it handled the basics very well but lacked advanced features. That was a long time ago though so it may have changed.
Cool, and this is a good thing. I like it.
That said, after loading KDE on a system this weekend I was reminded of how much like Windows KDE is (on purpose, of course) and how I don't like it.
It's brilliant for someone moving to linux from Windows who "likes Windows" and it's beautiful and fast and free. Just not my preference.
But you can change it almost totally, to behave and look more mac os or anything else.
True, it's just my current distro-of-choice does that out of the box so I just pick the color scheme and I'm off to the races.
Interesting
Not quite Libreoffice but looks cool
I still have to use Word for things because LibreOffice hates tables. Every doc I have to edit explodes violently when ooened in LibreOffice, and fixing the formatting to work in LibO would take far too long for the time available to do it.
Libre Office and Only Office are the only real MS alternatives (which offer decent compatibility) at the moment but I'm excited for KDE expanding its own suite of software, which is something that GNOME has had over it for a long time now.