1. Calligra Suite
The Calligra Suite is a complete Office Suite from the KDE Project. It comes with many different office applications that can satisfy basic office editing needs for most Linux users. Applications include Words (document creation and editiong), Tables (spreadsheets), Stage (presentations), as well as Kexi (database mangament) and others.
There are many different tools in Calligra, that offer a ton of compelling features. As far as office suites for Linux go, this one is the most comparable to Libre Office. Calligra not only includes a solid Word/Excel/PowerPoint alternative, but it includes replacements for some of the lesser-known MS Office tools (Kexi, Karbon, Flow, and Calligra Art).
Like Libre Office, each program has a ton of features to offer to the user and covering each and every one would take a long time. Instead, let’s talk about the most notable features that this suite has to offer:
Words can read MS Office formats, Google Docs, and many others
Stage offers decent transitions and supports MS PowerPoint files
Kexi is a competitive alternative to MS Access, with a vast amount of complex database manipulation features
Karbon offers a highly customizable and competitive vector drawing application with support for multiple file formats
Calligra Suite, like Libre Office, is completely free and open source software
If you’re not happy with the office suite included on your Linux operating system and are looking for a complete replacement of it, this should be your first choice.
2. WPS Office
WPS Office is a freemium, cross-platform office suite that promises to be 100% feature-compatible with the latest version of Microsoft Office. WPS Office includes the WPS Writer (document editor), WPS Spreadsheets (spreadsheet), and WPS Presentation (presentation).
Each of the applications tries their best to have “feature-compatibility” with their Microsoft counterparts. For example, the WPS Spreadsheets application includes a lot of common formulas users use in Excel to make the transition easier. In addition to MS compatibility, WPS Office has a lot to offer:
Online, downloadable templates for anyone to use
Users can download an Android/iOS app to access their documents at any time (up to 9 devices)
Offers free cloud storage of all documents for easy sharing and remote access
Can convert PDF files to MS format
Supports collaborative editing with comments, a change tracker and etc
Libre Office is nice, but if you’re in need of something better for the Linux desktop, try WPS Office.
3. SoftMaker Office
Whether open source advocates like it or not, Microsoft Office and the Docx format is what most of the world uses. On Libre Office, users can import these files. For the most part, it works fine, but due to the fact that these files are not being read and used directly in their original apps, formatting sometimes is disturbed.
SoftMaker Office takes a different approach. Instead of importing the data from files, it just reads and saves in the Microsoft Formats everyone uses by default. For Linux users who have jobs (or classes) that require saving documents in the Microsoft formats, this is a killer feature.
In addition to MS Office compatibility, SoftMaker Office has other features:
Easy ePub creation
Free technical support (something Libre Office doesn’t offer)
Many Microsoft Office feature similarities/compatibilities
Mozilla Thunderbird Email extensions to integrate SoftMaker with your email client
The 2018 version of Softmaker offers an interface similar to MS Office’s ribbon UI
SoftMaker Office isn’t free and costs money. That said, if Libre Office, WPS or Calligra Suite don’t do it for you, this suite may be worth the cost.
4. Abiword
Abiword is one of the best applications to install if you’re a Linux user that views the entire Libre Office suite as unnecessary bloat. It is a free, open source word processing tool that is specifically for writing and editing text documents.
Much like the Libre Office Writer tool that comes with a lot of Linux distributions, AbiWord has the ability to check spelling/grammar, has several font choices, various formatting options, table support and more. Additionally, AbiWord users can use the word processor to create PDF files, draw shapes (for diagrams and charts), and etc.
Many people love all the office tools in the Libre Office suite. If you are not one of those people, and just need an MS Word-like drop-in replacement, do yourself a favor and check out AbiWord. It’ll get the job done!
Source: https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu-linux-tips/best-alternatives-to-libre-office-on-linux/
Honorable Mention: Gnumeric Spreadsheet
It might seem counterproductive to use a spreadsheet application outside a business suite, but no real reason justifies not doing so. Word processing and calculation functions are foreign to each other, and no integrated link exists between programs within an office suite. So launching Gnumeric rather than the OpenOffice or LibreOffice equivalents takes the same click on a menu entry.
The Gnumeric spreadsheet is part of the Gnome desktop environment, but you do not have to run the Gnome desktop to use it. Gnumeric runs just fine in Ubuntu's Unity, Linux Mint's Cinnamon shell and the KDE desktop as well. I have yet to find a Linux distro that could not handle the package.
Do not think of Gnumeric as a clone of other spreadsheets. Gnumeric's strength is its ability to import and export files saved with other spreadsheets. If you use it in business, Gnumeric has an added benefit of minimizing the costs of transition.
Gnumeric works well with other spreadsheet files. It has an ample library of built-in plugins for commonly used spreadsheet file formats. These are pre-installed and active To turn off any unwanted plugin, just uncheck it the Tools / PlugIn menu.
Included in this hefty list is Microsoft Excel formats xlt/xlw, Lotus 1-2-3 formats wk1/wks, and the generic Comma/character Separated Values CSV formats. As noted, it also easily handles OpenDocument's ods/odt and Star Office sxc/stc files.
Among the less-common file formats Gnumeric handles effortlessly are Data Interchange Format (.dif), Applix version 4 (.as), gnu oleo (.oleo), Linear and integer program expression format (.mps), The Microsoft Multiplan Symbolic Link Interchange (.sylk), Wordperfect family "plan perfect" (.pln), Quattro Pro (tm), Xspread (sc) and Ashton-Tate programming language dBASE (.dbf).
Can Gnumeric excel over Libre Calc?
See what I did there? I dropped a name bomb on you. But what I’m trying to say is, there’s this niche little spreadsheet program called Gnumeric, which usually gets bundled into Xfce-flavored desktops as a lightweight alternative to a full-blown office suite. In general, it’s Abiword Gnumeric against the world. Another witty reference.
I have always wondered if perhaps the guys behind Gnumeric had always had it right, and most people truly do not need big programs, and they can get along just fine with simpler, less glamorous options. Today, we shall put this wonder to a test, and see what Gnumeric can do.
Gnumericking away
The software interface is simple if slightly cluttered, with various toolbars stacked vertically. There’s a lot going on, but after a while, most of the buttons start to make sense, and they are quite useful, as they cover the 90% of most common functions (not necessarily math functions) that you are likely to want to use when working with sheets of data.
An inevitable comparison to Excel and LibreOffice creeps up almost immediately, and you start to wonder if you can achieve certain results in this program even if you may not have an immediate need. As far as day-to-day usage goes, Gnumeric is quite adequate. You get the little styling tools and features you expect, and in this regard, it’s probably even more convenient than Calc.
Data & graphsHowever, a far more important facet is how well Gnumeric handles rows and columns of numbers, and how easy it is to create impressive, meaningful graphs with a pinch of statistics sprinkled on top. In this regard, the available set of charts is quite nice. Not as colorful as Excel, but it covers most of the type you’d normally need. You also have a very large degree of customization available, and perhaps this is a tricky part.
While playing with different data sets and graphs, I struggled at first with the positioning, font size, chart title and legend, axis labels, and other trinkets and bits that make data look more presentable. True, if you’re really after just pure numbers, you should be something like Gnuplot, R or maybe Matlab.
In the end, you should have well-styled charts. However, editing takes you into a separate wizard, and you cannot add titles or labels on the fly, or drag & drop chart area elements. You must specify margins and position manually, and this can be somewhat clunky. Another thing that I thought might be useful is the ability to change the width of columns and bars in relevant graphs, which is currently missing.
Statistics & pluginsGnumeric sort of compensates for its artistic downsides with a pretty powerful math side. You get a very extensive set of equations, you can use plugins to enrich the default behavior, and the available statistics tools allow for in-depth data analysis. Of course, you really need to understand what you’re doing, otherwise you’ll just be happily clicking on buttons.
Other featuresHyperlinks are also an options, but unlike Excel, Gnumeric will not autoformat them. Then again, you can use nice anchor text and whatnot. To make your life easier, Gnumeric can also auto-format data sets using existing visual templates, and you can use auto-correct for certain words or phrases. Sorting data also works well, but you get less flexibility than with Excel. I also liked the fact the old Microsoft 2003 F4 button functionality has been replicated, which essentially allows you to repeat whatever last command you executed. Quite handy when adding new rows or columns, styling data headers and such.
Things that are missingGnumeric is truly light and fast. It’s also quite stable and robust. A no-nonsense program really. However, there are some pretty large gaps in what it can do. You do not get any Macro integration, although you can use scripting languages, but that’s not as straightforward as you’d imagine. There’s also no Pivot Table support at the moment, and that’s another big one. File format support is adequate but not perfect.
If you require these right now, then Gnumeric is probably not the best choice. However, it’s steadily improving, and perhaps one day, it might offer all the goodies. Just look at how far Xubuntu has come. Then, take a lookat LibreOffice and Microsoft compatibility. Some good, interesting times are ahead of us, for sure.
Conclusion
Gnumeric is a handsome utility for older, underpowered systems or for people who need a simple, dedicated program with no frills and extras. It works well, it offers a balanced, reasonable set of features and tools, with a strong emphasis on statistics and less focus on data visualization. Furthermore, at the moment, notable disadvantages include support for Macros, better Microsoft file format compatibility, and Pivot Tables.
So can it replace Calc? Well, not quite. But the opposite is also true. Despite its immense progress, LibreOffice is somewhat clunkier, more difficult to use than Gnumeric, and for some people, the extra footprint might be more critical than the missing features. Overall, it would seem that there’s no hidden genius in the status quo, and there are factual reasons for why full office suites lead, including the spreadsheet software. All that said, Gnumeric is not that far off from being an excellent all-around alternative. It just needs a bit of polish and refinement, and some of those corporate features that everyone likes. Well, we shall follow it as it grows.
Source: http://www.ocsmag.com/2015/05/30/can-gnumeric-excel-over-calc/
