Calligra Office 2.4 emerged recently from its beta cocoon, which I find exciting.
The Calligra Project has ties back to another community-produced software suite, KOffice. Although KOffice still exists, the more-developed continuation of that effort is The Calligra Office Suite.
Artwork like the image above by David Revoy using Calligra's Krita 2.4 application evidences how sophisticated free software can be.
So what can old KOffice users and new fans expect, butterfly or caterpillar? The question comes to mind for those of us used to paying hundreds of USD for an office suite.
Because this full-functioning option is free.
Calligra Office 2.4 offers the same applications as in the past, with a few new ones. Calligra Suite now features new applications including Flow and Braindump.
Here are some of the other reasons to notice the release of Calligra 2.4:
- Menus are docked to the side, not on top! I am a fan of this, because it avoids menus opening over the document you are trying to work on.
- The Calligra Active functionality of this suite allows use of KDE's Plasma Active touchscreen environment (meaning, you could use this as a viewer on many tablets or mobile devices).
- If by some random chance you have a Nokia N900 phone, the Calligra 2.4 application Calligra Mobile is already installed on it. If you have a different phone, you can of course still jump in and see if it will work.
- Calligra 2.4 uses Open Document Format (ODF), which means you can use files interchangeably with other ODF suites such as LibreOffice and NeoOffice (Microsoft Office may have more formatting issues).
- Did I mention it's free?!
Once I have utilized Calligra 2.4 more in-depth, I will be writing my review. Check back to this site to read my findings, as well as to add yours! With so many contributing to the Calligra project, this suite will be an exciting one to keep an eye on.