Reference Post - Freeware Office Suites

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socrtwo

I recently updated and reorganized the Wikipedia list of office suites
and would like to invite alt.comp.freeware users to visit to add or to
comment. There are a lot of red entries, meaning they are hot-linked
to Wikipedia articles that don't exist yet. I encourage anybody who
knows the subject to write one or some of the pages, the list would be
more attractive :-).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites

At any rate, here's the free stuff:

~~Freeware Windows Office Suites~~

* Budgie Office - Historical but still available:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040407062220/http://www.modesoft.com/Budgie16Setup.exe
or http://tucows.dds.nl/files4/Budgie16Setup.exe.

* EasyOffice Freeware - The old "tiny" version (2002) is apparently
still available for free:
http://www.download.com/3000-2079-10058181.html?legacy=cnet.

* GNOME Office - Includes AbiWord, Gnumeric and Gnome-DB data access
components. AbiWord and Gnumeric are highly rated software:
http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/win32/ (this site may be best viewed
in Firefox and Opera - it's off to the right on my IE but correctly
aligned with Firefox and Opera).

* OpenOffice.org - The parent project. Open Office contains a
foundation of code from StarOffice. The code is donated (perhaps
continually) by Sun Microsystems as it develops it. Volunteers
elaborate on the code to produce the various Open Office versions,
including the base suite: http://www.openoffice.org/.

~~Freeware Mac Office Suites~~

* NeoOffice - NeoOffice the main development project for making
OpenOffice.org to run natively on Mac OS X: http://www.neooffice.org/.

~~Free/Open Source Office Suites for Unix, Linux, AIX, BSD, Sun Solaris
or Other Operating Systems~~

~Other than Open Office~

* Ability Office - Is only in Alpha testing at the moment:
http://www.ability.com/linux/abilitylinux.php.

* Andrew - An office suite for Linux and UNIX, developed by Carnegie
Mellon University and named after Andrew Carnegie. Works with AIX 3.2,
SunOS 4.1.3 & Solaris 2.4, Ultrix 4.3, HPUX 9.0, Linux (Redhat &
Slackware): http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~AUIS/.

* Applixware - Although it is a competent office suite, this software
is really a programming language and environment (whatever that means).
The spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation modules are just
meant as examples of what can be done with the application. This is
free for Linux home use:
http://www.vistasource.com/vs2/en/applixware.php.

* Axene - An office suite for Unix, Linux, SunOS, Solaris Sparc,
FreeBSD & NetBSD. Fancy Website, but seems to have halted development
in 1999: http://xibios.free.fr/english/index.html.

* GNOME Office - Includes Abiword, Gnumeric and Gnome-DB data access
components, Abiword and Gnumeric are highly rated software:
http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/.

* KOffice - KOffice is an extensive free, integrated office suite for
KDE, the K Desktop Environment: http://www.koffice.org/.

* Siag Office - A suite with a sense of humor. The word processor is
called Pathetic Writer: http://siag.nu/.

~Open Office and its Offshoots (list is very incomplete right?)~

* Jambo OpenOffice - A Swahili version of Open Office:
http://www.o.ne.tz/.

* OpenOffice.org - The parent project. Open Office contains a
foundation of code from StarOffice. The code is donated on a continuum
basis by Sun Microsystems as it develops it. Volunteers elaborate on
the code to produce the various Open Office versions, including the
base suite: http://www.openoffice.org/.

* RomanianOffice - Romanian Version of Open Office:
http://www.romanianoffice.ro/.

~~Online Office Suites~~

* gOffice - An impressive start to the Web 2.0 office suite concept.
The spreadsheet which imports Excel files and the word processor which
can accept pastes from MS Word are ready. The presentation module is
being worked on but the desktop publishing module does work:
http://goffice.com/.

* Microsoft Office Live - Is this the future of office productivity?
Stay tuned and sign up for the free beta:
http://officelive.microsoft.com/.

* ThinkFree Office Online Beta - Very interesting well developed new
idea. Java based. PDF export: http://online.thinkfree.com/.
 
socrtwo said:
I recently updated and reorganized the Wikipedia list of office suites
and would like to invite alt.comp.freeware users to visit to add or to
comment. There are a lot of red entries, meaning they are hot-linked
to Wikipedia articles that don't exist yet. I encourage anybody who
knows the subject to write one or some of the pages, the list would be
more attractive :-).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites
Click to expand...

Thanks, just what I was looking for.

BTW Star Office 5.2 is still free afaik, its only later versions that
are $ware.

NT
 
NT,

Thanks for the post, I did not know the info. I did a little research.
It's interesting, I wasn't aware of the history. The suite was
developed by Star Division of Germany. They came out with version 5.0
and maybe 5.1. Sun had been in joint ventures with them, but then
bought the company and put out the 5.2 version as freeware. When Sun
put out version 6.0 it was commercial, but they also made the source
code open, and thus was born Open Office 1.0.

According to Wikipedia, Open Office is developed by the volunteers and
...."Sun then takes a "snapshot" of the OpenOffice.org code base,
integrates proprietary and third-party code modules and markets the
package commercially."

Here are some places to download Star Office 5.2. (By the way according
to my teory the older versions of software are sometimes better for
corrupt file recovery, because they address files more simply, although
the newer ones might have routines for uncorrupting them...I guess it
can go either way).

http://n3t.net/Downloads/Win/ - super fast
http://wa5bxo.shacknet.nu/computer_downloads/SunStarOffice/
http://senior.billings.k12.mt.us/files/webmaster/StarOffice 5.2/
http://www.jumbo.dk/framekopi/support.asp?dir=StarOffice - Star Office
Beta 6.0 is also available
http://ausis.gf.vu.lt/pub/StarOffice/ - fast
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/staroffice/5.2/win32/ - pretty fast
http://ftp.ncnu.edu.tw/cgi-bin/ftplocate/flsearch.pl?query=windows&fsite=hippo.ncn
- Taiwan Server
 
socrtwo said:
According to Wikipedia, Open Office is developed by the volunteers and
..."Sun then takes a "snapshot" of the OpenOffice.org code base,
integrates proprietary and third-party code modules and markets the
package commercially."
Click to expand...

sounds like a clever idea if I've understood it correctly.


Now, flushed with possibly unwarranted confidence, for one more. 602
office was offered as free for personal use, so IIUC that version is
still, and always will be, free for personal use. The version in
question is build 4.1.04.0908, though of course there are probably
other builds with these terms too.

"The Producer grants you the right to: Use the SOFTWARE for personal
non-commercial use. This means use of the SOFTWARE by an individual for
a task that does not directly or indirectly support a commercial
effort."


NT
 
socrtwo said:
I recently updated and reorganized the Wikipedia list of office suites
and would like to invite alt.comp.freeware users to visit to add or to
comment. There are a lot of red entries, meaning they are hot-linked
to Wikipedia articles that don't exist yet. I encourage anybody who
knows the subject to write one or some of the pages, the list would be
more attractive :-).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites

At any rate, here's the free stuff:

~~Freeware Windows Office Suites~~

* Budgie Office - Historical but still available:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040407062220/http://www.modesoft.com/Budgie16Setup.exe
or http://tucows.dds.nl/files4/Budgie16Setup.exe.

* EasyOffice Freeware - The old "tiny" version (2002) is apparently
still available for free:
http://www.download.com/3000-2079-10058181.html?legacy=cnet.

* GNOME Office - Includes AbiWord, Gnumeric and Gnome-DB data access
components. AbiWord and Gnumeric are highly rated software:
http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/win32/ (this site may be best viewed
in Firefox and Opera - it's off to the right on my IE but correctly
aligned with Firefox and Opera).

* OpenOffice.org - The parent project. Open Office contains a
foundation of code from StarOffice. The code is donated (perhaps
continually) by Sun Microsystems as it develops it. Volunteers
elaborate on the code to produce the various Open Office versions,
including the base suite: http://www.openoffice.org/.

~~Freeware Mac Office Suites~~

* NeoOffice - NeoOffice the main development project for making
OpenOffice.org to run natively on Mac OS X: http://www.neooffice.org/.
Click to expand...

Would it be possible to use everyday language in the article? What is
natively? Does this say anything to someone new to the issues who
searches a free office suit and uses wikipedia?

Technical language unnecessarily complicates the access of the Have Nots.

Thanks,
Frank
 
FTR said:
Would it be possible to use everyday language in the article? What is
natively? Does this say anything to someone new to the issues who
searches a free office suit and uses wikipedia?

Technical language unnecessarily complicates the access of the Have Nots.

Thanks,
Frank
Click to expand...

You forgot to first thank him for the good job he have done. Then you
can come with suggestions for improvements... :-)

regards from vegard
 
Now, flushed with possibly unwarranted confidence, for one more. 602
office was offered as free for personal use, so IIUC that version is
still, and always will be, free for personal use. The version in
question is build 4.1.04.0908, though of course there are probably
other builds with these terms too.
Click to expand...

Yabbut. . . This app is post-install keyed Registerware. See:
http://secure.software602.com/registration/
(there's a pop-up window with all the gory details.)

and. . .

"Online registration of 602PC SUITE 4.1 Free will end on March 31, 2006."

See this recent thread: "last "freeware" version of 602 ?" for more info
and a link to the last freeware version (v 4.1.04.0908).

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)
 
socrtwo said:
* EasyOffice Freeware - The old "tiny" version (2002) is apparently
still available for free:
http://www.download.com/3000-2079-10058181.html?legacy=cnet.
Click to expand...

Download links don't work here. Have you had better luck?

Susan
--
Posted to alt.comp.freeware
Search alt.comp.freeware (or read it online):
http://www.google.com/advanced_group_search?q=+group:alt.comp.freeware
Pricelessware & ACF: http://www.pricelesswarehome.org
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org (not maintained)
 
Susan said:
(e-mail address removed) wrote:

Yabbut. . . This app is post-install keyed Registerware. See:
http://secure.software602.com/registration/
(there's a pop-up window with all the gory details.)

and. . .

"Online registration of 602PC SUITE 4.1 Free will end on March 31, 2006."

See this recent thread: "last "freeware" version of 602 ?" for more info
and a link to the last freeware version (v 4.1.04.0908).

Susan
Click to expand...

thanks, didnt know about that

NT
 
Point taken, thanks. Anybody, please correct my misconceptions below,
I'm not a programmer but I wish I were :-).

To tell you the truth, I only have a vague idea what it means too and
you might be sensing this and are remarking on it :-(. I got the
description off the Web. I think what it refers to, is that some
programs written for Linux can only run on at least Windows and maybe
Macs with Linux emulators running as a support program in the
background (whatever that means). In Windows, the big one is Cygwin,
which has to be running in the background for many Linux programs to
run in Windows. Alternatively you can run Windows programs in Linux if
you have the program "Wine", the Windows emulator or enabler, running
or something along those lines. I'm guessing that the Mac can't run
Linux programs off the bat, but needs some kind of Linux emulator
running too. Mac OS X is an elaborated version of Darwin which itself
maybe a UNIX clone like Linux, but my impression is that it is very
different. As you can see my knowledge may be not up to the level I
need for what I am trying to accomplish.

My further understanding is this: when things run natively in an
operating system, the text based source code (really just commands
written in words in a highly stylized language) is run through
something called a compiler that turns it into the most basic of
programming code, assembly language which is the only language a
computer can really understand because a computer can only understand
1's and 0's and that's what Assembly looks like. A compiler compiles
code into an executable program for one operating system and no others.
You really can't call a program a program until its been compiled, it
would be like having the architectural drawings of a house and calling
it a house before the building process was run through the by the
construction industry.

One would suppose that if a program like Open Office is programmed in
say the C++ programming language, that it could easily be compiled for
any operating system as long as a compiler for that OS exists, but then
again, I simply don't know because I have hardly ever compiled a
program and am definitely not a programmer. Perhaps with the Open
Office code base in C++ or whatever language it is, to get it to run
satisfactorily in OS X, they have to make a lot of alterations before
even compiling the program. With the hoopla surrounding NeoOffice it
looks like a lot of programming effort was expended before a working
version of the suite could be produced.

I guess the truth is that I like to sound like I know more than I do,
because I feel I should know some of these concepts better by now than
I do, or at least my knowledge should be more up to the level with the
things I try. As I have gotten older I have tried to simplify my words
and I see the value of it, its good to be reminded that one can get
better but one always has to work at that skill and its good to be
reminded that I don't understand things as well as I should. In the
end simple words can satisfy everybody if they do the job and the
person saying them understands thoroughly what he/she is trying to
explain.
 
Vegard said:
You forgot to first thank him for the good job he have done. Then you
can come with suggestions for improvements... :-)

regards from vegard
Click to expand...

Vegard, you are right. I think freeware is thought to further the use
information & communication tools by everyone, so that informatics leave
the world of techno people. Thus, this nice democratic idea should also
find its expression in the way we write about freeware.

I'm sorry, socrtwo

- Frank
 
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