Best Free and Free Alternatives to MS Office for 2020
It is no secret to anyone that within everything «Sistema Operativo», the most used by everything common user It is usually the «Navegador web» and «Aplicaciones Ofimáticas», such as a Text editor, PDF file reader or the well known «Suite Ofimáticas», which are nothing more than a set (package) of applications that allow the management (creation, reading, modification) of files and documents of daily work in offices or homes.
Therefore, although most usually use «MS Windows» and its corresponding «Suite Ofimática»Called «MS Office», the truth is that both, about this «Sistema Operativo» as about the «Distros GNU/Linux» and others, there are usually excellent free and open alternatives, or at least Returns, which can be used by everyone to perform office work with quality and efficiency.
And either, that your new Computer bring «Windows 10» with a trial version of Microsoft Office installed, which you can later buy or continue using with a pirate solution, or bring «Mac OS» with the «Suite Ofimática» iWork, the ideal will always be to choose to use a Free and open office suite or free, and preferably multi platform.
Therefore, below a small review for each of the best known and valued alternatives of «Suite Ofimáticas» to consider during this year 2020 as a replacement for «MS Office».
Free and free alternatives to MS Office for 2020
Free and Open
LibreOffice
LibreOffice, the oldest, known and used «Suite Ofimática» of the GNU / Linux world currently goes for this date, by the number of version 6.4.0 1 beta for your testing branch, the number of version 6.3.3 for its stable development branch, and the number of version 6.2.8 for your stable branch. And with versions for «Windows, Mac OS y Linux» in different formats of installation files. And iIncludes for now, the following packages: Write, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base and Math.
"LibreOffice is a powerful office suite; its clean interface and powerful tools allow you to unleash your creativity and increase your productivity. LibreOffice incorporates several applications that make it the most powerful Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer, the word processor, Calc, the spreadsheet, Impress, the presentation editor, Draw, our drawing application and flowcharts, Base, our database and interface with other databases, and Math for editing mathematical formulas".
In summary, «Libre Office» is one of the most solid projects of the GNU / Linux world, with an excellent, modern and friendly user interface, and with a sustained and rapid growth within the Free and Open Source Software Ecosystem.
Calligra
CalligraSuite from its official page is a «Suite Ofimática» distributed through compressed files (tar.xz) that contain its source code, however, it can be easily installed from the repositories of many of the most popular «Distros GNU/Linux».
Currently, it goes by the number of version 3.1.0 for your stable branch and version number 3.2.0 alpha for your development branch. However, in it you can get its installation files to «MS Windows» en .msi format for versions of 32 and 64 bits, and although it does not have installation files for «Mac OS» This can be installed on top of it, using the Package Manager known as Homebrew.
This «Suite Ofimática» part of the KDE Community, which in turn, is dedicated to the production of Free Software. And it offers a complete set of 8 applications that meet the office management needs of an average office, which are for now: Words, Stage, Sheet, Flow, Kexi, and is usually complemented with others from the KDE Project, such as Karbon and KritaPlus Plans.
Free
Of these, some of the most valued both by the «Comunidad de Software Libre y Código Abierto» consist of WPS y Free office, so much so that they currently come by default, in at least 1 Linux Distro. If you want to know more about these 2 «Suite Ofimáticas», we recommend you read our previous articles about them: WPS y Free office.
And if you only wish to have like alternative an online office service, since the following options are available:
- Google Docs
- MS OneDrive (MS Office Online)
- IBM Docs
- Zoho Docs
- Dropbox Papers
- Polaris Office
- Open 365
Among many others.
Conclusion
And for more information, always do not hesitate to visit any Online library as OpenLibra y jedit to read books (PDFs) on this topic or others knowledge areas. For now, if you liked this «publicación», don't stop sharing it with others, in your Favorite websites, channels, groups, or communities of social networks, preferably free and open as Mastodon, or secure and private like Telegram.
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Hello,
Manjaro Linux user since 2014 and Linux user since 2003. I was very pleased with your report on office tools that can reach the quality or exceed MS Office (LibreOffice and KDE Caligra suite) and at the same time it is my intention to complement your research work of these office tools with two office automation packages that have been incorporated into the Manjaro repositories since 2017. The first one featured and assembled by developer and maintainer Vitor Lopes (@codesardine https://vitorlopes.me/) called MS-OFFICE-Online that allows you to use the service offered by Microsoft Office 365 in your browser if you have an email account in Outlook. This designer integrated this app into his Jade Desktop Environment for linux.
And the second package is from OnlyOffice company (https://www.onlyoffice.com/es/download-desktop.aspx), with its OnlyOffice Docuements Desktop package, which just extended its lightweight app to be compatible with MsOffice extension files to Linux. Users of Arch Linux, Manjaro, Debian and other distributions have reported a positive evaluation or feedback this month regarding their compatibility with the original Microsoft system. It can be installed in linux formats such as Debian / Ubuntu, RPM and SNAP.
Thank you for your complete and excellent comment.
Which is the most compatible with MS Office?
Of all the ones I have tried, I can say that the one with the best compatibility with Microsoft formats is WPS Office, the only downside is that it is proprietary.
I've only tried WPS and it looks great. Rest, LibreOffice for everything.
How is the free office?
From the last time I tried it I can say that it has good compatibility with Microsoft things, but the free version is quite simple and if you want some more advanced options you will have to invest in its paid version. I would tell you to take a better look at LibreOffice and if you require a lot of compatibility with Microsoft formats you have WPS Office.
I have not tried this Office Suite but its interface is very nice and similar to that of MS Office. I imagine that its compatibility with its file formats must be very good to have a paid version. Otherwise, I have only tried WPS and it seems excellent.
All of these are missing two things: PIM manager and integrated projects
You are wrong, OnlyOffice if it is open source in the Desktop Editors edition:
https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DesktopEditors
Excellent comment and contribution, Andrés!
When my license in MS Office ran out, I installed the WPS that covers all my office automation needs, as I work with group documents, I think it is the one that best integrates with other users who use MS Office
Greetings Pentras. And thank you for your input comment on your personal experience.
Hello, in the case of macros I have seen that apparently it is also compatible with those of MS Office, do you know if they are available in the free version or to use them you must have the premium package?
As you can see, many write in English and do not need correction tools or synonyms. The wp I installed was in English only. I am a writer in Spanish and unfortunately there is no alternative to word, once there was a better one that was the perfect Word, but it seems that they bought it to eliminate it and that it did not compete with microsoft. I have tried everything in opensuse, which is the distro I use, there is no way, for example installing wine and trying the option of installing a word even if it is old. For me what really part of the corduroy for writers is the utility of synonyms, something basic to write with lexical richness and free office has it, but insufficient, poorly written, with errors, with options that are not those of common use . In 1998 I think, I wrote an email to the libre office project to ask them to integrate a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms, they were stunned and for what? They have done it in part, it has taken decades that yes, it is an application that comes apart from the free office at least in Spanish and in several subprograms that must be downloaded separately and know how to decompress and integrate into the interface. But then the meanings are miserable in terms of options and they do not fit the spoken words because they have not checked if the few synonyms they offer are adequate. If they made a proper thesaurus, I would never touch windows again and use open suse on the main computer that I use just to write. I do not know what to do more, I know it is essential but it seems that people believe that they do not need to use synonyms.
Greetings Rafael! I fully agree with you on the point about the Thesaurus that LibreOffice and other Office Suite lacks. For those of us who make intensive, professional or professional use of writing, this is an unsolved point. Thank you for your enriching comment.
I have combined 3 office suites on linux for my different document editing tasks. Among these is WPS Office, OnlyOffice (one of the lightest and compatible with MS Office documents) and Free Office, in fact it has an interface very similar to that of office 2010 and 2019. Among these 3 suites I can cover my different needs at the time of writing my documents. One of the advantages of Only and Free Office is that their interface is in Spanish. WPS Office costs a bit to change the interface language, otherwise everything is fine!
Greetings Luis! Thank you for your comment and contributed experience.