Review of KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8 – On Windows

4WebChimps writes "As featured previously on Slashdot, the KOffice project is working towards a cross-platform, open source office suite for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The most recent release, KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8, achieved that goal by being the first release for all three operating systems simultaneously. Want to try KOffice on Windows? TechWorld has a review (with screenshots) of KOffice on Windows, including the installation process which is as simple as clicking a few buttons (the online installer does the rest). Hopefully it won't be long before KOffice sits alongside OpenOffice.org as a usable cross-platform open source productivity suite."

Re:kwrite?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean native? MSOffice uses it's own toolkit, not the standard windows toolkit. KOffice is using QT, so that's non-standard too.

Look, think about it as a positive. Lots of people are testing the same UI on different platforms so any bugs found on Linux will be fixed in Windows too. Also users can move between operating systems without having a radically different interface.

Strategically KOffice matters to the Office File Format debate... OpenDocument (ODF) vs Microsofts OOXML.

Healthy competition in standards is needed like it is in the browser market. KOffice uses ODF (of course it couldn't use OOXML without reverse-engineering) and by being the second most popular implementation it helps keep OpenOffice.org honest (not that there's any sign that they're not honest). When MSOffice support ODF then KOffice will be more important still -- it will help evaluate ODF compliance and interoperability. [softwarefreedom.org]

Microsoft Office earns them 10 billion and a part of that is coming out of your country's economy -- competition in the form of KOffice is very good indeed. It's particularly good that they're embracing Windows -- it worked for Firefox.

One slight problem...

[madenglishbloke]

On thing that concerns me - Linux-style package management is something that anyone who has been using Linux for any length of time will know and understand - but for a general 'Doze user to suddenly be told "you want to install packages A, B, +C, which require packages X, Y, +Z", this is going to set off all sorts of alarms. A lot of Windows users are (finally) getting used to the idea that some software will try and install all manner of nasties, they are going to see this list of additional software that needs installing, and freak out, meaning theyre not going to install it. Pity, as this looks as if it could potentially be a viable alternative to MS Orifice or OpenOffice.

Re:One slight problem...

[Prep_Styles]

I think your concern is justified, but can they not release a single installer with all necessary files as needed? Windows users would have to wait for someone to release a stable build but I don't see the problem with that. The rest of use can just run it on Linux.

Re:One slight problem...

[madenglishbloke]

A single installer would be great - but going off the 6th screen-shot, adding additional features later would invoke the download of extra packages that you didnt explicitly ask for. With my Linux user hat on, I'm thinking "Ok, go ahead" - but with my 'Doze admin hat on, my first instinct is "ok, so whats going on here then?"

Re:euch

[Ginger Unicorn]

it seems to be a kind of mini package manager that runs on windows, that allows you to install kde apps the same way you do on linux. so this installer thing doesnt just install koffice - it stays on your system and allows you to install and uninstall any other kde apps that become available for windows in the future.

i think i heard that kde have a long term plan of being able to run a full KDE desktop session on top of windows - presumably this package manager is the foundation of that ultimate goal.

Re:One slight problem...

[Yfrwlf]

Regardless of the platform, I'm pretty sure you can include and link to your own libraries if you think the targeted platform may not have them.

What's really needed is for the LSB to finish ironing out a point of standardization for Linux packages so that all package managers can easily install software packages so that you'll have smaller downloads and better installation management when installing out-of-the-repo software. For Windows users though, it's highly unlikely that they will have any of the required libraries installed, so the Windows installer should be bigger and come with all the libraries.

Re:euch

[smittyoneeach]

doesn't look like Windows 3.11 anymore,

While style is not unimportant, I'm quite a bit more interested in reasonable features, stability, and keyboard navigation.
Here's a shout out to all ma homiez that really don't require a skinnable, theme-able printing dialog!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Excellent news

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be plenty of people (me included) that will down load it to see how good it is but then never use it again because it's incompatable with other office software*.

* any broken formatting when opening a non-native file format means it's incompatible as far as I'm concerned.

KOffice uses ODF as its native format, and MSOffice can't currently handle that.

Since ODF is the native format for a large number of Office suites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_software

While MS Office' own format is native for only 1 Offic suite, then clearly MS Office is the suite you should drop by your own criteria.

Re:euch

[19061969]

Maybe a lot of users don't know what a software dependency is?

It's a valid point - very few people in the real world care or understand about what a shared library is even if you tell them carefully. Let's face it - being into computers is not a majority thing. Most people don't give a stuff. They really just want things to work easily for them.

Re:euch

[MrHanky]

That's a perfectly valid point, but those people shouldn't pollute Slashdot with their silly complaints. Back in the days, people who self-identified as "nerds" would have endless and pointless discussions of making Linux-powered robots that could brew coffee, or configuring Emacs to do it or whatever (single-threaded coffee, urgh), but these days there's a loud majority of Slashbots who seem to think that market share is the only valid goal and hence the only valid technical goal is that idiots should be able to use it: the idiot as the epitome and endpoint of human technical endeavours.

These people claim the superiority of "it just works" over "how does it work?", and regularly chip in with smug Apple sales pitches, technically and socially impossible suggestions such as that Gnome and KDE should merge, and that software with special dependencies should work just as software without those. The only positive way to deal with these idiots is with sarcasm. I'm sure that if we cared about their views, then we should listen to them, but we shouldn't.

Re:Work with Open Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we really need two or more office alternatives?

Yes, we do. Your question is like saying "Do we need anything else that's not MS Office?"

Having at least two cross-platform office suites gives people choice. You don't have to like ooo's interface/speed/memory usage because now you have Koffice, and if you don't like Koffice, you have ooo, abiword-gnumeric, etc.

I personally, like Koffice a lot more than ooo, maybe the ooo team could work together with Koffice :).

Re:Why ...

[Alex Zepeda]

Until you run into incompatibilities between different JREs.