KDE Readies KOffice 2.0 As OpenOffice Competitor

Da Massive writes in with a link to a story on KOffice 2.0, the next generation of the KDE office suite due sometime next year. In an interview with KDE spokesman Sebastian Kugler, Computerworld reports that KOffice 2.0 will be leaner, faster, and enjoy a cleaner code base than OpenOffice. It will also feature more applications, including an Access-like database creator, a flowcharter, and an image manipulation tool. KOffice is not yet fully compatible with ODF but the claim is that 2.0 will be.

Comments

Re:"Competitor" my ass...

[japhmi]

From the fine article, first paragraph.

While the industry is distracted by the ongoing tussle between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org over document formats, the KDE project is quietly preparing the next generation of its own office suite, KOffice, for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X

KOffice 2.0 is FAST!

[Anonymous Coward]

The main benefit KOffice 2.0 brings is that it's sleek and fast. Unlike OpenOffice.org, KOffice has a very sensible architecture. Now, part of that is because KOffice is a far newer application. It builds directly on top of Qt, rather than implementing its own UI layer (like OpenOffice.org does). It also has a far more sensible component model, that suffers from only a small fraction of the bloat of the OO.o model.

While OpenOffice.org may have a larger feature set at this point, it just won't be able to compete with KOffice when it comes to being responsive and memory-efficient. Having built the KOffice source code from SVN just last week, I can tell you that you'll notice the difference immediately. OpenOffice.org just feels really damn sluggish, while KOffice is quick.

Go for the gold

[jpfed]

Computerworld reports that KOffice 2.0 will be leaner, faster, and enjoy a cleaner code base than OpenOffice. I'm glad they're setting the bar high for themselves.

Re:Why don't we think of a catchy name?

[holloway]

OfficeSweet.

Re:why don't they think of a catchy name

[westlake]

The "K-" line of apps has all the cachet of Sam's Club or President's Choice. Why plant the presumption of value product mediocrity in people's minds before they even try it?

At least you have been spared the pain of trying to bring credibility in marketing to The Gimp.

My office will be even -better-.

[tjstork]

In 2009, I will ship my office suite, Stork Office. It will be fully open source, be even leaner than koffice, and not have the stupid Access-like tools. Then, if KDE isn't finished their 4.0 desktop, and fix the register view in KDevelop, I may just write my own GUI and IDE to go with it, for release in 2009. Oh, and I'll have Duke Nukem Forever as a game that ships with my system!

Re:"Competitor" my ass...

[Kjella]

And just to expand on that, there are really several different things going on:
1) Qt 4, the underlying system library is now dual licensed GPL/commercial on the Windows platform by Trolltech, before only commercial on Windows.
2) As a result, the kdelibs (the core KDE libraries) for KDE4 has been made cross-platform. Like KDE4, they're still unreleased (at beta 2 still I think) but I did manage to get a KApplication compiled and running on Windows.
3) Since the KDE libraries are going cross-platform, so is all KDE applications that doesn't have additional *nix-specific dependencies. Note that KDE is trying to be a complete application framework not just an UI library, so this should be true for most.
4) Since the move from KDE3 to KDE4 is major, most applications like KOffice are also doing major rewrites not only because of the framework changes but also "if you want to change and break something, now's the time".

End result? Well it's always though to say with unreleased software but the general idea is that it'll be a three-pronged attack:
1. It's now cross-platform, so new markets
2. All applications should see a 20-30% speed improvement because of library improvements
3. Major new version with new features

Only downside is that it's taking quite long - Qt 4.0 was released in June 2005, though in personal experience it was a poor release but none the less it's taken a few years and KDE4 is still in development. The release of KDE4 is scheduled for December 11th, and I'm very much looking forward to it. It should bring the Gnome vs KDE flamefest to new heights :D.