Today we are looking at different office suites for Ubuntu 18.04.  LibreOffice is the default LibreOffice suite for Ubuntu but it is by all means not the only one.  In this article, we will look at different office suites for Ubuntu and all of its pros and cons.

All these Office Suites are available for at least all Ubuntu-based distros, and the installation method is the same for all the Ubuntu-based distros.

LibreOffice
LibreOffice has become the default office suite for Linux and it is pre-installed on most Linux distros.  It is great in the sense that it is open-source and free and it can do everything which a person can require from an Office suite.  The problem comes in when a person uses documents across LibreOffice and MS Office and presentations and complicated documents it can look "weird" on the other office suite, but if you just use LibreOffice than it is perfect.




Official Site:
https://www.libreoffice.org/

Installation Guide:
https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/02/how-to-install-libreoffice-62-on-linux.html

WPS Office 2019
WPS Office is a closed source but free office suite and looks very similar to MS Office 2016.  As far as I can tell it is 100% compatible with MS Office so you can easily create documents and presentations of WPS and you can have confidence that it will look just fine on MS Office and others.



Official Site:
https://linux.wps.com/

Installation Guide:
https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/04/how-to-install-wps-office-2019-on.html

OpenOffice
Back in the day, OpenOffice was the go-to LibreOffice suite, and LibreOffice has forked off it and for many OpenOffice went away, but it is still alive and well and a great choice.  Please note, as seen in the installation guide a person has to remove LibreOffice completely from your system before you can install OpenOffice, otherwise it won't work.



Official Site:
https://www.openoffice.org/

Installation Guide:
https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/01/how-to-install-openoffice-on-ubuntu-1804.html

SoftMaker Office and FreeOffice
SoftMaker is a German company that creates offices suites with the goal of being compatible with MS Office.  They have a native Linux Client.  SoftMaker has two office suites, a free version, and a paid version.  The interesting thing about it is that it requires a product key which they send to you via email, for free for FreeOffice and after you paid for the paid version, the paid version has a month free trial, I believe.



Official Site:
https://www.softmaker.com/
https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

Installation Guide:
https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/01/how-to-install-softmaker-freeoffice.html

ONLYOFFICE
ONLYOFFICE is an open source office suite that is 100% compatible with MS OFFICE formats and has the office layout as well.  They have completely free versions as well as paid versions.  It has a word processor, presentation app and spreadsheet application.



Official Site:
https://www.onlyoffice.com/

Installation Guide:
https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/06/how-to-install-onlyoffice-on-ubuntu-1804.html

MS Office
MS Office, as we all know is not free, it is closed-source and yes, it does not have a native client for Linux but it is possible to install it on Ubuntu.  The easiest way is to use the online version of Office via your browser and enjoy it.  But there is also a way to install Office 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007 and 2000 on Ubuntu and that is with Wine, now it will require some dependencies and it can be quite a hassle to install it with Wine, so I will recommend an app called Crossover, it is a paid program but it is free of Deepin and especially on Black Friday weekend they have some crazy sales for it, but it is basically an app which takes cares of all the difficult parts of Wine and you can easily install most Windows apps on Linux including Office, they have a two weeks trial period and they have a tool on their site which shows what apps are working and which not,  as I said you can also use it completely for free on Deepin OS


Official Site:
https://www.office.com/

Crossover:
https://www.codeweavers.com/

Installation Guide:

https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/02/how-to-install-windows-programs-via.html

Calligra
Calligra is open source and part of the KDE family of apps, it is lightweight and does the basics a person expect of an office suite and supports a huge variety of text inputs, so if you have an odd text input then it might just read it perfectly.



Official Site:
https://www.calligra.org/

Installation Guide:
https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/03/how-to-install-calligra-office-suite-on.html

Abiword
Abiword is the lightest office suite available and to be honest, it is not really an office suite, it is just a word processor and it is awesome if you just need something light that can type.  It is open source and free.




Official Site
https://www.abisource.com/

Installation Guide:
https://www.linuxmadesimple.info/2019/03/how-to-install-abiword-on-ubuntu-1804.html