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As a KDE fan, I don't use any of these "redundant" programs, unless there is a true benefit.
The thing is that, LibreOffice works and looks great in Plasma, and Calligra doesn't do anything special.
It's even more obvious for me with KTorrent. We already have qBitTorrent!
I absolutely like things like Neochat, tho, because in this case the "official" alternative is an annoying Electron app.
Yeah but I don't think competition is bad.
Maybe they'll make it even better than the alternatives.
Of course, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong about Calligra. It's just that, so far... I see no point for using it.
For me the question becomes whether or not it is a waste of resources.
There's only so many donations to go around.
Calligra is blazingly fast by comparison to open office. I'm glad there's not just one alternative, and I don't think it's a waste of money.
There is also OnlyOffice, which has been more palatable for the people I shared it with (mostly students that were graduating and losing access to free MS Word)
I've found OnlyOffice to have bettet interoperability with MS Office, than LibreOffice. Not perfect, but things like layout are better transferred between the programs. If that is a main concern (i.e. you frequently collaborate with people using MS Office), that would be a good solution. There is however some sketchy licensing stuff going on with OnlyOffice I have yet not fully understood.
It seems Calligra can open, but not save in MS Office file formats. I guess MS Office can open OpenDocument-files, but I believe interoperability will not be too good. Again, if that is a main concern. For me now, it is not.
You can make LibreOffice look more like Microsoft Office, it's in the settings. No need for OnlyOffice for that.
Since you are able to classify it as "redundant", I would assume you have experience using it? Could you comment on some of the main gaps you find between this and LibreOffice, that leads you to prefer LibreOffice? As stated in a comment below, I have no experience with this and would be interested to see if it could be a contender, and it seems you have an opinion that it (at least at present), does not.
If you mean "redundant" as in "LibreOffice already does everything you need", I disagree with that.
I gave it an extended look a few years ago, and I don't remember much of the details, but I found the workflow not terribly intuitive, it had some unusual defaults and was relatively limited in features.
If I remember correctly, it did save in the ODF formats, so for just writing out a letter, it's definitely fine.
There's just not really a reason to use it over LibreOffice, except for it being somewhat more lightweight.
I mean "redundant" as in "Calligra does not offer me anything special compared to LibreOffice"; and so I prefer to keep using LibreOffice as it is essentially the source of all things OpenDocument.
It doesn't handle .docx files.
And it has a useless sidebar you can't remove.
And it doesn't have the libreoffice ecosystem, with lots of extensions and plugins.
@superkret @cyberwolfie world would be a better place if many many more office suites, especially MS Office, wouldn't support OOXML... The only reason for its existance is MS monopoly and lies.
Yes, unfortunately we live in the world we live in.
Thanks for good input! I'll give it a spin later, but I will contain my expectations for now. Seems like Krita was spun out of this some time ago, and my impression is that Krita is generally very well liked. Maybe the remaining parts will recieve similar development focus later and they will become true contenders down the line. I like competition, and as said before, I don't think LibreOffice is quite there.
Calligra can't deal with .docx files at all, and that's enough to disqualify it, really.
I mean, you can save in .docx but you have to manually type in the file ending cause there isn't an option for it.
And it can technically open .docx files, but don't be surprised when it suddenly adds 6 pages to a document that contains nothing but the word "test".
(I couldn't find out if that was caused by the saving or the opening, but it doesn't really matter.)
@SeekPie
kde had this for years.
at first it was koffice then they renamed it
Didn't know this, thanks for the info!
This is what I was thinking. This isn't new and it isn't in the best of maintained state. There have been some recent contributions, but not enough to claim that KDE as a whole is doing some huge undertaking such as developing a real alternative to word.
Interesting, never seen this recommended as an Office alternative. Seems this is nothing new, it was released as KOffice in 2000. Calligra 4.0 was released in August this year though, so it is actively developed. Wonder why it is seldom recommended?
I would like to check this out. Currently in the process of making some presentations outside of work, and using LibreOffice Impress after weighing it up against OnlyOffice Presentation. Both tools leave much to be desired, unfortunately. Both in terms of stability, ease of use and features. For now, Powerpoint does a better job (but also this has some huge annoyances that I think an open source alternative would be better addressing). I am on a deadline, so I do not dare to change up my tools now, so it will be for later.
Wonder why it is seldom recommended?
it's simply not good enough for daily use, unfortunately
Tried it a few months ago! I'll never complain about alternative software, but it currently has only the basics. Until its further developed, I wouldn't be comfortable recommending this over LibreOffice to anyone.
Tried it today with the same thought .
Calligra has been around for a quite while and it's still not on par with either MS Office or Libreoffice.
Certainly looks interesting. Being made by the KDE community, it actually may evolve to something great
Just realized... why is this not called Kalligra? Boo...
Many more recently named KDE apps don't have a K in them, like Dolphin or Elisa or NeoChat. Naming everything with a K in it was mainly something early KDE did.
...why are we making a competitor to libreoffice
My abiding memory of it that it handled the basics very well but lacked advanced features. That was a long time ago though so it may have changed.
Yes, but it's nothing new.
Interesting
Not quite Libreoffice but looks cool
Libre Office and Only Office are the only real MS alternatives (which offer decent compatibility) at the moment but I'm excited for KDE expanding its own suite of software, which is something that GNOME has had over it for a long time now.