SoftMaker Office could be a first-class professional-strength replacement for Microsoft Office on the Linux desktop. The Linux OS has its share of lightweight word processors and a few nearly worthy standalone spreadsheet apps, but very few high-end integrated office suites exist for Linux users. Generally, Linux office suites lack a really solid slide presentation creation tool. Most Linux users opt for LibreOffice — or maybe the withering OpenOffice — or online subscriptions to Microsoft Office through Web browser apps.
Am using Textmaker on Android and all my Linux systems. Paid for the full version. In the past, the free version hasn't included a dictionary (among other extras).
Used to use LibreOffice but after years of having bugs and very basic usability requests ignored on the basis of a dubious (at best) notion of what constitutes their core user (I think they call him "Bob"?) I wrote off LO. LO has been a mess in terms of style-based writing. Just awful. For example, it's not possible to search for styles and it's not possible to search & replace direct formatting with styles (the whole search feature in LO is an embarrassing mess anyway...). This makes writing ebooks a PITA. But LO devs don't consider ebook authoring a valid usage scenario for "Bob" (they literally told me this), so they do little to nothing to solve these problems. Until 6.0, one needed to install a flaky (which they subsequently broke) ebook conversion extension. It's my understanding that in 6.0, the ability to convert to epub format will be built in, but will also be beta-ish. I mean, c'mon. Every other word processor has had this ability for years now.
Complain about it and they'll tell you to code the bug fix or improvement yourself.
Textmaker, on the other hand, has been and remains about a decade ahead of LO as regards style-based writing. If you want to author ebooks, save yourself the hassle of using LO and switch to Textmaker.
One feature that *is* lacking in Textmaker, however, is an equation editor (in the Linux version). The Softmaker devs claim it's on their to-do list, but they've been saying that for several years now.
Lastly, Textmaker's interoperability with MS Word is much superior to LO's.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure linux version of SoftOffice 2016 supports MDI and FreeOffice 2016 does not. From a daily user standpoint, that is a fairly significant difference. It will be interesting to see if the 2018 versions follow the same pattern.
As a Linux user I do not see me using this suite because it seems it will not be FOSS. On Windows, sure, I will give it a try as recently Microsoft products started to have a poor performance and the testing before release is almost non-existent.
If I learned one thing when switching from Windows to Linux is that FOSS is the way to go and closed source software should be used when there is no other alternative.
While I use LibreOffice myself, I have noticed from the comments that people that work with a lot of MS documents prefer SoftMaker/FreeOffice over LibreOffice. Those that don't work with a lot of MS documents prefer LibreOffice.
SoftMaker for Linux Is a Solid Microsoft Office Alternative
Posted by: Jack M. Germain December 27, 2017 07:00 AMSoftMaker Office could be a first-class professional-strength replacement for Microsoft Office on the Linux desktop. The Linux OS has its share of lightweight word processors and a few nearly worthy standalone spreadsheet apps, but very few high-end integrated office suites exist for Linux users. Generally, Linux office suites lack a really solid slide presentation creation tool. Most Linux users opt for LibreOffice — or maybe the withering OpenOffice — or online subscriptions to Microsoft Office through Web browser apps.
Used to use LibreOffice but after years of having bugs and very basic usability requests ignored on the basis of a dubious (at best) notion of what constitutes their core user (I think they call him "Bob"?) I wrote off LO. LO has been a mess in terms of style-based writing. Just awful. For example, it's not possible to search for styles and it's not possible to search & replace direct formatting with styles (the whole search feature in LO is an embarrassing mess anyway...). This makes writing ebooks a PITA. But LO devs don't consider ebook authoring a valid usage scenario for "Bob" (they literally told me this), so they do little to nothing to solve these problems. Until 6.0, one needed to install a flaky (which they subsequently broke) ebook conversion extension. It's my understanding that in 6.0, the ability to convert to epub format will be built in, but will also be beta-ish. I mean, c'mon. Every other word processor has had this ability for years now.
Complain about it and they'll tell you to code the bug fix or improvement yourself.
Textmaker, on the other hand, has been and remains about a decade ahead of LO as regards style-based writing. If you want to author ebooks, save yourself the hassle of using LO and switch to Textmaker.
One feature that *is* lacking in Textmaker, however, is an equation editor (in the Linux version). The Softmaker devs claim it's on their to-do list, but they've been saying that for several years now.
Lastly, Textmaker's interoperability with MS Word is much superior to LO's.
If I learned one thing when switching from Windows to Linux is that FOSS is the way to go and closed source software should be used when there is no other alternative.