KOffice is the official office suite for the K Desktop Environment. Since version 1.5 it supports OpenDocument as the main format for documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It’s lighter than OpenOffice.org and much better interated with KDE. The support for MS Office documents is however poorer (but usable in most cases). The applications in the KOffice suite are:

Pic 1. KWord - startup screen

• KWord - a document editor (a counterpart of Microsoft Word),
• KSpread - a spreadsheet (comparable with Microsoft Excel),
• KImpress - a presentation program (similar to Microsoft PowerPoint),
• Kexi - an integrated database environment and database creator (build to be a Microsoft Access replacement, includes an experimental plugin to import MDB files),
• Kivio - a flowcharting program (may be compared with MS Visio),
• KChart - a chart drawing program, extensively used by KSpread and other KOffice apps, can be however used as a standalone app as well
• KFormula - mathematical formulas editor

As one can see, KOffice apps are very modular. Each one is responsible for a single task, but they can use each other in a very nice way, almost invisilbe to the user. It’s worth to note that other KDE apps, like the PIM (personal information management) program Kontact are well integrated with KOffice and vice versa.

Pic 2. Kivio - sample chart

KOffice supports not only OpenDocument, but its powerful import feature based on XSLT supports multiple external formats including PDF, RTF, WML, (X)HTML, MS Write, Abiword and many others.

All in all, KOffice is a fine and well-integrated office suite that is worth considering if the MS Office compability is not the main issue.