UKC

Looking to set up a PC (currently win 8, will upgrade to win 10) for my Dad. Need fairly basic word processing and spreadsheet software. Don't want to go for the full MS office, partly because of the cost, but primarily cos it's really bloated. I struggle with Word at times and only use 10% of the functionality.

This useful article mentions a few alternatives

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-microsoft-office-alternatives/

Just wondered what the UKC opinion is

In reply to Chris the Tall:

The only one worth considering is LibreOffice.

If it was me I'd just pirate Office 2003 (which was the last release before the nasty ribbon UI came into play).

In reply to Chris the Tall:

LibreOffice - https://www.libreoffice.org/

While it is fairly big, it's free. It suffers a bit from 'trying to be MS Office' so you might find it bloated.

Or Google Docs?

Also make sure you've updated to Windows 10 by July, which is when the free upgrades stop.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

OpenOffice is decent and works well as long as you don't want to move the file to another machine and print while using MS Office. Exporting to PDF works better that way.

Been using LibreOffice/OpenOffice since c. 2008. M$ is crap.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

not used myself but Which? rate libre office slightly better than open office.

In reply to PPP:


I have to disagree, there are lots of things I don't like about Microsoft and have always been a linux man at heart but office is spot on and incredibly powerful. I use open office at home and office 2010 at work, the difference between excel and calc is night and day. If you just want a word processor then pick any and they'll do the trick but try doing anything remotely complicated and the opensource software will show it's limitations. Granted a lot comes down to what you're used to but excel in particular just can't be beaten imo. Mail merge, macros, graphs, database manipulation, large word documents/reports where you want consistent formatting and data integration...you can say a lot of things about Microsoft but "crap" is a bit unjustified.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Libra office or kingsoft.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Briefly used Liber Office and didn't get on with it.

Very happy with Open Office which is very much like the older versions of MS, some limitations but does the job. Worth setting the default save format to .doc and .xls - files won't open/save "quite" as quickly but means that anyone using MS can open them OK.

In reply to Sharp:

I know, but MS just ignores the Linux OS completely and users are pushed to use other software that is not compatible with MS. For example, .odt and other file formats are not supported by MS Office by default, but .doc(x) and other MS Office formats are compatible with OpenOffice/LibreOffice/whatever. Of course, you just cannot ignore MS Office file types, but it makes the whole life harder for both users and developers. I am sure ext4 (or ext3 which is quite old) could be compatible with Windows OS out of the box, but they don't do it either.

I understand the reasoning and I have been using some fancy features of MS Office at work (mail, word in cloud, Lync, etc.), but that also means that software developers have to use Windows everyday.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Thanks for all the replies - think I'll give LibreOffice a go on my home PC and see how it goes

In reply to Chris the Tall:


I went down this route for years - it's OK. Finally gave in and got Office 365 for a number of devices (Microsoft, Apple etc.) - it's worth a look.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

Another vote for LibreOffice. Also sometimes use the 'free' online versions of Word/Excel (not 365) - worth a look if he's already comfortable with MS Office and only has very basic needs.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

I find OpenOffice works well, you can change the default save setting to save as .doc for compatibility

In reply to Chris the Tall:

I find Google docs is pretty good these days. Can be used offline too.

In reply to Chris the Tall:

I find LibreOffice the best, couldn't get on with OpenOffice. However, I end up using MS Office because of compatibility. If you create a doc in MS office and then open it in something else then the formatting will get mangled, and the same happens the other way round. You have to stick with the same Office suite if you're sharing docs. If you need to share docs with MS Office users then MS Office is your only option. If you don't, then LibreOffice is great.

In reply to PPP:

You can install Microsoft office on linux. I've got it on my machine, I got fed up of the formatting changing when opening files in libre office.