The Verdict
The choice of Roundup subjects over the past several issues has left us to conclude that perhaps one application might not cater to all your needs. This was true for the image and video editors, and office suites aren’t an exception either. If you can spare the resources, you might find yourself preparing presentations on one suite’s application, while relying on another for your spreadsheets.
With the exception of the podium finishers, the other office suites alternately disappointed and impressed us in equal measure. WPS Office is a highly capable suite, and we would optimistically advice users to give it a chance, but the lack of ODF support, with no word on when if ever it will be available, sealed its fate for this Roundup. Never mind that its fast and responsive, and fun to work with. The lack of many useful features on the Linux edition also goes against it.
Calligra Office, despite being highly capable, and offering an impressive feature set, was also a major disappointment – but chiefly for its interface. If you can get past its esoteric workflow, and don’t mind finding your own way through trial and error, there’s nothing per se wrong with it. But if you plan on running
Calligra on a small screen, say a 14-inch laptop, you’ll barely have any room to work on your document or slides, and so it too couldn’t make the podium.
While both OnlyOffice and LibreOffice support the proprietary Microsoft Office formats, OnlyOffice is far better at rendering documents. Unlike the other suites, however, it doesn’t feature a database or drawing application, only offering a spreadsheet, word processor and presentation application. The offline desktop edition also doesn’t provide all the same features as are on offer with the cloud variants, and that’s disappointing too. Still, for the limited number of applications on offer, OnlyOffice performs rather well, and isn’t as resource hungry as LibreOffice. If you don’t care for collaboration then we would definitely advise you to give it a try.
There’s very little separating Google Docs and LibreOffice, save for the fact that the former needs an internet connection to function, while the latter is a desktop solution.