7 ms·

Calligra- FOSS Office Suite by KDE Team

101 points by approxim8ion 6y ago

christophilus 6y ago
2021 is my personal year of the Linux desktop. I haven’t found an office suite I particularly like. For documents, I’d love something as lightweight and focused as IA Writer. Right now, I’ve settled on VS Code + markdown combined with the markdown PDF plugin. It’s not bad, actually. And Zen mode gets me most of the way to what I liked about IA Writer.
- patrickmd 6y ago
  You may want to give FreeOffice a try. While not FOSS, it is free as in beer. The application has 27 years of development behind it. It is not based on LibreOffice. The application boasts full compatibility with all of the Microsoft formats. https://www.freeoffice.com/ https://www.freeoffice.com/
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Welcome aboard! Add pandoc to the markdown setup and you gain (at least basic) interoperability with other common office formats as well. [1] https://pandoc.org https://pandoc.org
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > For documents, I’d love something as lightweight and focused as IA Writer. I also use IA Writer on my Mac. The best replacement for it on Linux Desktop is Ghost Writer [0]. It should be available in your favorite package manager already. It supports Pandoc and can export in a ton of formats. [0]: https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/ https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/
  - christophilus 6y ago
    Wow. This looks like just the thing. Thanks!
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      You're welcome. Linux and Mac can cooperate very nicely. I use Linux desktops and MacBooks in tandem for years now and I'm a happy camper. Welcome to Linux.
    - atoav 6y ago
      Check out typora as well: https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/
- chaorace 6y ago
  Much like nuclear fusion, the year of the Linux desktop is just on the horizon. Jokes aside, desktop apps on Linux are more common than ever, thanks to Electron. We all bemoan the continued gobbling of good, sensible software by the bloated web, but I'm forced to admit that it's actually kind of nice to have some level of support for commercial desktop applications, even if it's not quite first-class. By contrast, the state of the Linux desktop is a little less sunny. No matter what your opinion on Wayland actually is, you certainly have to admit that the transition is not going very well.
- Halian 6y ago
  It's not FOSS, merely freeware, but, having not myself found a good alternative to Microsoft Office, I've taken a liking to SoftMaker FreeOffice.
japhyr 6y ago
I've never heard of this. Can anyone who's used it share how it compares to LibreOffice, MS Office, and Google Docs?
- danarmak 6y ago
  If you've heard of KOffice, this is a fork from 2010 which didn't inherit the project name but eventually became the official / only KDE office suite project.
MrCoffee7 6y ago
Calligra has much lower user satisfaction ratings than LibreOffice. Does Calligra offer any features compelling enough to use it vs. one of the other FOSS office suites? https://comparisons.financesonline.com/libreoffice-vs-calligra-suite https://comparisons.financesonline.com/libreoffice-vs-callig...
- MarcellusDrum 6y ago
  I personally prefer it because it is nicer looking, and much simpler to use. I don't require much advanced features in word or spreadsheet editors, which is why I use Calligra. When I do require something more advanced, LibreOffice is my go to office suite.
- approxim8ion 6y ago
  I love that it loads up really fast, compared to LibreOffice which is slow as molasses to start up. LO has way more features though, it's not even a fair comparison. And something that ticks me off about Calligra and OnlyOffice is that they can't do partial word counts, as in the word count of the highlighted portion of the document only. Small things like these sting more than more niche features that you might not miss. Still, it's nice looking and fast and adequate for a lot of basic documents.
  - kwanbix 6y ago
    3 seconds takes LibreOffice Write to load on my "old" ThinkPad P50.
    - approxim8ion 6y ago
      First load or was it already loaded in your session? Took 21 seconds on my 6 year old laptop with an i3 and 8GB of RAM. No SSD though, just a 5400rpm HDD. The second load was about 4 seconds though.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      Even with a good SSD and processor, LibreOffice takes a lot of time for the first fire. Then, as long as it's in the memory, you can fire it relatively instantly but, it's not "3 seconds flat".
hnedeotes 6y ago
I haven't heard nor used it but it looks great, will give it a try, thanks for sharing
exikyut 6y ago
What would I do with this? Not what can I do; what would I do. In the real world. I'm on my phone at the moment so I went to the Play Store to check it out, only to return to the site and realise "smartphones" technically means devices running Linux. I'll have to check it out properly another time. Generally speaking, when I look at these kinds of applications, I feel like I'm seeing what might be described as a "first-order implementation": everything needed to say "we've done it, everyone, we built a <blah>". The screenshots do indeed look exactly like a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation tool, etc. This suite even has a project manager in it, huh. But beyond the top-level appearance... what about the little quality-of-life enhancements that make software like this, the tiny things that are individually so minute I can't even think of any of them right now, but which form a disorientating vacuum when they're missing? These are the second-order, third-order, etc features that turn this type of software from "look I made an office suite" into something people from the real world can approach and say "...wait, I could use this to do my job, because it implements enough functionality to be intuitive for my use cases." The software-design equivalent of the difference between *working* on the computer and *working on* the computer, or having to bend to the software's will instead of having it have enough smarts to bend to yours. I must admit it's hard not to look at this sort of thing without disappointed annoyance. I know that years of real effort went into this... and for what? When I look at the project website the impression I get is of something defining itself as having mostly arrived. This would not be the case if the project's aims (as communicated by the design language on the website) did not only extend to a literal - or, in other words, first-order - encapsulation/interpretation of "reimplement Office", and nothing more. If that were the case there would be much more about how unfinished everything definitely is and so forth. Hrm, it definitely looks like I fell out of bed this morning and decided I really hate this project in particular for some reason. I don't. It's just that, there are certain types of steaks out there that are particularly dense, and if you're going to try and take a chunk out of them, if you don't do it properly, your effort looks like a caricature of itself. I guess if I were going to try and extract something actionable from the above mess, uh... figure out what you are never going to do, or at least what you aren't doing right now, and clearly communicate that. See, it's both about implementation, but it's also about implied specification - how you carry yourself, and where you infer you're going. You need to be explicit about that, otherwise when people's brains see projects like this, intuit off of the inferred direction, autocomplete all of the things that direction would imply, and realise that actually the project doesn't implement all the things the autocomplete expectation set up, that can produce some really annoying cognitive dissonance. I must admit I have to make an effort not to interpret it as passive-aggressiveness (which I do realise it obviously isn't). Anyway, rant over. Like all(?) rants this is absolutely not aimed specifically at this project, which looks legitimately interesting, despite the absence of ground truth about what to expect in terms of long-term position. Not from a hard-commitment standpoint (which is undeniably hard in open source software), but rather just knowing how finished the project thinks it is. [If you feel this is inappropriate please feel free to downvote away.]
awiesenhofer 6y ago
Does anyone use it as their daily driver office suite? How is it holding up?
sergiomattei 6y ago
Why are most KDE applications so visually inconsistent? Look at the sidebar for their Word equivalent. Inconsistent font sizes, lack of margin/padding everywhere, etc. I've always had this complaint about KDE and I really wish they'd fix it, because it drives me nuts.
- tokamak-teapot 6y ago
  Because instead of helping, people just complain on the internet.
- circularfoyers 6y ago
  This is something that always really stood out for me yet I hadn't seen any discussion about it. Is this something that most Linux users not notice? It was a reason I'd preferred GNOME over KDE and had always hoped it would improve at some point.
amaccuish 6y ago
I find WPS Office works well, but somehow I have WPS, OnlyOffice and LibreOffice all installed, and still sometimes need to resort to Office running in Wine.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
RedComet 6y ago
The KDE team does great work.
- SirLotsaLocks 6y ago
  It really does, there is a kde app for everything.
anthk 6y ago
Groff + MOM + sc-im + gnuplot = magic. For everything else, and importing odt files, wordgrinder.

101 points by approxim8ion 6y ago

2021 is my personal year of the Linux desktop. I haven’t found an office suite I particularly like. For documents, I’d love something as lightweight and focused as IA Writer. Right now, I’ve settled on VS Code + markdown combined with the markdown PDF plugin. It’s not bad, actually. And Zen mode gets me most of the way to what I liked about IA Writer.

patrickmd 6y ago
You may want to give FreeOffice a try. While not FOSS, it is free as in beer. The application has 27 years of development behind it. It is not based on LibreOffice. The application boasts full compatibility with all of the Microsoft formats. https://www.freeoffice.com/ https://www.freeoffice.com/
acidburnNSA 6y ago
Welcome aboard! Add pandoc to the markdown setup and you gain (at least basic) interoperability with other common office formats as well. [1] https://pandoc.org https://pandoc.org
bayindirh 6y ago
> For documents, I’d love something as lightweight and focused as IA Writer. I also use IA Writer on my Mac. The best replacement for it on Linux Desktop is Ghost Writer [0]. It should be available in your favorite package manager already. It supports Pandoc and can export in a ton of formats. [0]: https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/ https://wereturtle.github.io/ghostwriter/
- christophilus 6y ago
  Wow. This looks like just the thing. Thanks!
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    You're welcome. Linux and Mac can cooperate very nicely. I use Linux desktops and MacBooks in tandem for years now and I'm a happy camper. Welcome to Linux.
  - atoav 6y ago
    Check out typora as well: https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/
chaorace 6y ago
Much like nuclear fusion, the year of the Linux desktop is just on the horizon. Jokes aside, desktop apps on Linux are more common than ever, thanks to Electron. We all bemoan the continued gobbling of good, sensible software by the bloated web, but I'm forced to admit that it's actually kind of nice to have some level of support for commercial desktop applications, even if it's not quite first-class. By contrast, the state of the Linux desktop is a little less sunny. No matter what your opinion on Wayland actually is, you certainly have to admit that the transition is not going very well.
Halian 6y ago
It's not FOSS, merely freeware, but, having not myself found a good alternative to Microsoft Office, I've taken a liking to SoftMaker FreeOffice.

japhyr 6y ago

I've never heard of this. Can anyone who's used it share how it compares to LibreOffice, MS Office, and Google Docs?

danarmak 6y ago
If you've heard of KOffice, this is a fork from 2010 which didn't inherit the project name but eventually became the official / only KDE office suite project.

MrCoffee7 6y ago

Calligra has much lower user satisfaction ratings than LibreOffice. Does Calligra offer any features compelling enough to use it vs. one of the other FOSS office suites? https://comparisons.financesonline.com/libreoffice-vs-calligra-suite https://comparisons.financesonline.com/libreoffice-vs-callig...

MarcellusDrum 6y ago
I personally prefer it because it is nicer looking, and much simpler to use. I don't require much advanced features in word or spreadsheet editors, which is why I use Calligra. When I do require something more advanced, LibreOffice is my go to office suite.
approxim8ion 6y ago
I love that it loads up really fast, compared to LibreOffice which is slow as molasses to start up. LO has way more features though, it's not even a fair comparison. And something that ticks me off about Calligra and OnlyOffice is that they can't do partial word counts, as in the word count of the highlighted portion of the document only. Small things like these sting more than more niche features that you might not miss. Still, it's nice looking and fast and adequate for a lot of basic documents.
- kwanbix 6y ago
  3 seconds takes LibreOffice Write to load on my "old" ThinkPad P50.
  - approxim8ion 6y ago
    First load or was it already loaded in your session? Took 21 seconds on my 6 year old laptop with an i3 and 8GB of RAM. No SSD though, just a 5400rpm HDD. The second load was about 4 seconds though.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    Even with a good SSD and processor, LibreOffice takes a lot of time for the first fire. Then, as long as it's in the memory, you can fire it relatively instantly but, it's not "3 seconds flat".

hnedeotes 6y ago

I haven't heard nor used it but it looks great, will give it a try, thanks for sharing

exikyut 6y ago

What would I do with this? Not what can I do; what would I do. In the real world. I'm on my phone at the moment so I went to the Play Store to check it out, only to return to the site and realise "smartphones" technically means devices running Linux. I'll have to check it out properly another time. Generally speaking, when I look at these kinds of applications, I feel like I'm seeing what might be described as a "first-order implementation": everything needed to say "we've done it, everyone, we built a <blah>". The screenshots do indeed look exactly like a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation tool, etc. This suite even has a project manager in it, huh. But beyond the top-level appearance... what about the little quality-of-life enhancements that make software like this, the tiny things that are individually so minute I can't even think of any of them right now, but which form a disorientating vacuum when they're missing? These are the second-order, third-order, etc features that turn this type of software from "look I made an office suite" into something people from the real world can approach and say "...wait, I could use this to do my job, because it implements enough functionality to be intuitive for my use cases." The software-design equivalent of the difference between *working* on the computer and *working on* the computer, or having to bend to the software's will instead of having it have enough smarts to bend to yours. I must admit it's hard not to look at this sort of thing without disappointed annoyance. I know that years of real effort went into this... and for what? When I look at the project website the impression I get is of something defining itself as having mostly arrived. This would not be the case if the project's aims (as communicated by the design language on the website) did not only extend to a literal - or, in other words, first-order - encapsulation/interpretation of "reimplement Office", and nothing more. If that were the case there would be much more about how unfinished everything definitely is and so forth. Hrm, it definitely looks like I fell out of bed this morning and decided I really hate this project in particular for some reason. I don't. It's just that, there are certain types of steaks out there that are particularly dense, and if you're going to try and take a chunk out of them, if you don't do it properly, your effort looks like a caricature of itself. I guess if I were going to try and extract something actionable from the above mess, uh... figure out what you are never going to do, or at least what you aren't doing right now, and clearly communicate that. See, it's both about implementation, but it's also about implied specification - how you carry yourself, and where you infer you're going. You need to be explicit about that, otherwise when people's brains see projects like this, intuit off of the inferred direction, autocomplete all of the things that direction would imply, and realise that actually the project doesn't implement all the things the autocomplete expectation set up, that can produce some really annoying cognitive dissonance. I must admit I have to make an effort not to interpret it as passive-aggressiveness (which I do realise it obviously isn't). Anyway, rant over. Like all(?) rants this is absolutely not aimed specifically at this project, which looks legitimately interesting, despite the absence of ground truth about what to expect in terms of long-term position. Not from a hard-commitment standpoint (which is undeniably hard in open source software), but rather just knowing how finished the project thinks it is. [If you feel this is inappropriate please feel free to downvote away.]

awiesenhofer 6y ago

Does anyone use it as their daily driver office suite? How is it holding up?

sergiomattei 6y ago

Why are most KDE applications so visually inconsistent? Look at the sidebar for their Word equivalent. Inconsistent font sizes, lack of margin/padding everywhere, etc. I've always had this complaint about KDE and I really wish they'd fix it, because it drives me nuts.

tokamak-teapot 6y ago
Because instead of helping, people just complain on the internet.
circularfoyers 6y ago
This is something that always really stood out for me yet I hadn't seen any discussion about it. Is this something that most Linux users not notice? It was a reason I'd preferred GNOME over KDE and had always hoped it would improve at some point.

amaccuish 6y ago

I find WPS Office works well, but somehow I have WPS, OnlyOffice and LibreOffice all installed, and still sometimes need to resort to Office running in Wine.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

RedComet 6y ago

The KDE team does great work.

SirLotsaLocks 6y ago
It really does, there is a kde app for everything.

anthk 6y ago

Groff + MOM + sc-im + gnuplot = magic. For everything else, and importing odt files, wordgrinder.