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The name of the organisation that maintains the codebase for the identically named OfficeSuite.

OpenOffice.org is Free and CrossPlatform, running on many Unix variants (including Linux, of course) MicrosoftWindows, and MacOSX.

Some features:

  • It is pretty good at importing MicrosoftWord documents (other than VisualBasic macros).
  • Version 1.1 and later can export to PDF natively, so you can type up documents and then make nice PDF files with TrueType fonts in it. (The PDF page lists some good reasons why emailing PDF files around is better than emailing word-processor files around).
  • The Debian package of version 1.1 uses native GTK2 widgets, so it fits nicely into a GNOME desktop. (There is a subproject of openoffice to use native widgets on all platforms - see http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/. GTK and Win32 are already supported but it is not yet in the main CVS branch. Good on Debian for including it already!)
  • Redhat, Ximian and Debian are all using the same CVS server on gnome.org which includes these additions.
  • Open file format - it uses XML so you will never be in the situation where you have old documents but can't extract any information out of it.
  • Version 1.1 is much improved over version 1.0, especially in terms of start-up time.

OpenOffice.org is included on TheOpenCD, which is an easy way for windows users to try this great OpenSource software without having to commit to a large change.