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Add to SafariWhen comparing Calligra vs SoftMaker Office/FreeOffice, the Slant community recommends Calligra for most people. In the question“What are the best office suites for UNIX-like systems?” Calligra is ranked 6th while SoftMaker Office/FreeOffice is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Calligra is:
Calligra consists of 9 tools. In addition to word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, it includes tools for project management, sketching/painting, database management, vector graphics, diagramming and brainstorming.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Huge list of efficient and capable office components
Calligra consists of 9 tools. In addition to word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation software, it includes tools for project management, sketching/painting, database management, vector graphics, diagramming and brainstorming.
Pro Free and open source
Pro Unified design language
Pro Calligra offers cutting edge applications for artists to work on 2D drawings and illustrations
Calligra includes Krita, a sketching and painting application, and Karbon, a vector drawing application. Both offer end-to-end solutions. Krita is also available as a standalone program.
Pro Made for KDE
Designed in Qt for KDE plasma (but will also work in other DEs), hence the appearance is consistent with it.
Pro Great interoperability with Microsoft Office
SoftMaker office can open doc(x), xls(x), and ppt(x) files without messing up formatting.
Pro Multi-platform
Works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android.
Pro Low on dependencies
On Linux it avoids the common widget toolkits which makes it really lightweight compared to other office suites.
Pro Configurable user interface
Includes the possibility to use Ribbons or classical Menus.
Pro EU based company
Follows the the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU.
Pro Has a free version
A free version, called SoftMaker FreeOffice, is available.
FreeOffice is a stripped down version of SoftMaker Office, with less features, templates and interface polish, but it still is feature-packed and with the same excellent import and export filters that enable opening/saving Microsoft Office formats faithfully.
Pro Free technical support
If you face any issues, you can always use the technical support by developer SoftMaker, it's free.
Pro Documentation
Even the FreeOffice version includes a Handbook in PDF.
Pro EPUB export included
You can create high-quality e-books in EPUB format easily.
Pro Integration of Zotero
Especially important for academic use: SM Office has a great working connector to Zotero for the direct insertion of citations.
Pro Free for teachers
The regular paid version is free for teachers.
Pro Great amount of advanced features
Compared to alternatives like OnlyOffice and WPS, really important advanced features especially for compatibility with Excel.
Cons
Con Bloated
Very bloated as it requires way too many dependencies to install. This is especially prominent in non-KDE desktops which may require over 100 dependencies to install.
Con Subpar compatibility
Microsoft office proprietary formats are not always accurately rendered
Con Slow development
Development is slower and less active than competition.
Con The regular paid version is not free for students as it is for teachers
For students to use it, there needs to be a free student license for the regular (with . docx support) version.
Con Proprietary software
Although some versions/programs are free to download, they're all proprietary licenses utilizing a freeware model.
Con Free version needs registration
The free version needs to be registered with a valid email adress.
Con Installs a lot of crap and does not clean up
On Linux it installs over 40 MB of templates, images and other crap people will never need.
De-install does not clean up usr/share/freeoffice.
Con Breaks icon themes
On Linux it breaks all icon themes by modifying them.
Con No VBA support
As Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is proprietary software used in MS Office.
Con It's not Microsoft Office and it never will be
Use SoftMaker Office only if you want basic MS Office-like features. Once you delve deeper into the software the omissions become glaringly obvious.
