Review of KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8 – On Windows

4WebChimps writes "As featured previously on Slashdot, the KOffice project is working towards a cross-platform, open source office suite for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The most recent release, KOffice 2.0 Alpha 8, achieved that goal by being the first release for all three operating systems simultaneously. Want to try KOffice on Windows? TechWorld has a review (with screenshots) of KOffice on Windows, including the installation process which is as simple as clicking a few buttons (the online installer does the rest). Hopefully it won't be long before KOffice sits alongside OpenOffice.org as a usable cross-platform open source productivity suite."

Comments

euch

[abigsmurf]

Anyone else really hate online installers? I hate downloading a 20meg program, getting ready to install and use only to find out that you've then got to wait for the real 200meg program to download.

Some people like to start a download then go off and have lunch whilst something downloads, not to come back and find out it wants you to download some more stuff.

Re:euch

[hedwards]

An online installer shouldn't be 20mb, it should be less than 2mb and pull in just the components necessary to install the rest of the program. The exact size is going to vary from application to application.

The point of online installers is that they are in theory at least going to be downloading just what you're installing. If a program doesn't offer any options in terms of what to install, it shouldn't offer an online installer as there isn't really any benefit to doing so.

Why ...

[RalphLeon]

Why had this taken so long? KOffice is built with Qt, a robust cross-platform gui toolkit, http://trolltech.com/products/qt/.

Being a enterprise developer using Qt, the worse that I've had to deal with is some linking issues with dynamic libraries and GUI adjustments when porting to windows from linux...

Perhaps the "KDE" portion of the code is harder to port than the "Qt" portion?

Re:Why ...

[jstaniek]

The port was available in 2004 already, but just not maintained. The KDE 4 port is available on Windows since I compiled the stuff in September 2007.

People are just not aware of that.

The problem is the deployment of alpha software, we have no volunteers to even make good screenshots (the article shows GIMP on one of them!). Don't expect developers to work more than 24h a day :)

Again, there is single codebase in most KDE apps (minus examples like Konsole), no "hard porting" is needed except work on dependencies that are non-Qt, e.g. less portable filter dependencies for Krita.

FLOSS flood

[zarlino]

in a year or two, as this ports mature, Windows and OSX are going to be flooded with KDE free software: Amarok music player, Gwenview image viewer, Digikam photo manager, Kopete instant messenger, and many many more. I think this is exciting news but probably a bit scary for commercial ISVs...

I'll second that!

[Gazzonyx]

I agree. The way that Windows package management, if you will, is geared towards single file binary installers. Or, a network admin install, as MSI supports both. Really, I haven't seen much legit use of DLLs as they were intended (shared libraries) when it comes to applications. After "DLL Hell" everyone just started statically linking in the libraries, and can you blame them? I mean, MSI does have some really cool features, but dependency tracking for DLLs is not one of them.

I routinely have statically linked executables that will just refuse to uninstall and I can't get rid of the entry. Then I'm stuck ripping out shards of the program from every folder structure and the registry... for the next two years. At that point, they're still resident when I blow away my OS partition and steamroller a new Windows install.

People are used to Windows install routines by now; you get the programName-setup.exe or .msi, double click on it, and watch the bar go across the screen. And, for the most part, Windows does this well, barring the usual head-desk moments that we all love (aha! let's use spaces in the %programfiles% directory name and then half support them and leave everyone guessing where they should put quotes!) and I don't think that we should try force Linux style library schemes on to a system that doesn't want or need it. Doubly so for users that won't understand it!

Full disclosure: I run Slackware and Windows at home (and BSD and Mac) and prefer to compile from source, at work we use RHEL and Windows and if not for the ease of having repositories, I'd take MSI-2/3 over RPM-2/3 any day of the week.

Plans for KOffice on CD?

[tepples]

I can't think of a benefit that couldn't be replicated through another method with both less hassle for the user AND less work for the developers.

Slashdot recently ran a story about a study of dial-up Internet users, which showed that 49 percent of dial-up Internet users in the United States couldn't afford broadband. The OpenOffice.org project works around this by listing vendors that will distribute copies on CDs for a fee. Once KOffice for Windows is out of alpha and beta, who will be the first to do the same for KOffice?

Re:Good Free Software WordPro Recommendation?

[TeknoHog]

I'm a teacher and I use TeX almost always to write handouts. Occasionally I get compliments on the nice and professional look :) Anyway, my usual choice for a "word processor" is Abiword, along with Gnumeric for spreadsheets. They may be a little on the light/simple side of things, but at least they don't try overthink you.