I learned to use Open Office.org's suite when I wrote a series of tutorials for Linux Format magazine. Open Office.org's name is the only awkward thing about the suite and that's because someone else had already taken the name first. (So, why not use a different name ?). I'll refer to it as "OO.o" from now on.

The suite is a much improved version of Star Office 5. (which was pretty slow and horrible to use, to be honest.) Sun, the owners, made it Open Source and also sell a version (called Star Office 7). OO.o has all the functions (but lacks some templates and a few other non-vital parts) of Star Office but it's free. You can mess with the source code, alter it, give it away. There's no "vendor lock in" with OO.o. Once you have it, you don't have to upgrade to be able to read documents and it won't cost you a fortune year after year.

The suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software and a decent drawing program. It doesn't contain a database (but Star Office does). The latest version (1.1) can export PDF files and has tools to deal with various free databases.

I use it for all my writing needs, it even saves in Microsoft Office formats. It's pointless to get into a debate about which piece of software is "better" as that will depend on what you use it for and what you want from it. I've found that the OO.o suite meets every reasonable expectation. It's got a very good Help system and a lot of features that MS Office doesn't have. (and MS office has features that it doesn't have. It's not a clone of MS Office, but it will do the same job in most cases.) Best of all, it's free as in "no cost involved". With Microsoft's "Licencing 6" system annoying business owners, OO.o is worth investigating. (In the May 2003 issue, Linux Format readers voted Microsoft the "Best Linux Advocacy" award due to their licencing system!) It runs on Windows as well as Linux/Unix and Mac.

(Note that MS Word documents can be opened by some other Linux programs such as Abiword and Kwrite. Gnumeric will open Excel spreadsheets fairly reliably. Hancom Office and Anywhere Office are also worth investigating, although they cost money.)