When it comes to Office suites on Linux it seems more choice can mean compromise with users now having access to almost any suite on the market (via wine/crossover) or natively I thought I’d give their most recent versions a spin over the next year.

I intend to take a look to see what is best for me, and if it is even possible to determine which is best, based on how they stack up in terms of features, performance, usability and

IBM Lotus Symphony Splash

compatibility. I won’t go into an in depth review of the whole lot yet, although I would like to highlight the one I feel has the most promise in terms of usability. Strangely it isn’t Open Office 3 (which is what I happen to use day to day), but rather a more recent contender, IBMs Lotus Symphony.

Lotus Symphony is yet another office suite, offered for free for Linux and Windows and Mac OS X, although it is not Free Software. Indeed the following extract from the license makes this piece of software unique amongst the software installed on my machines, taking me back to the bad old days when I was running Windows:

You may not 1) use, copy, modify, or distribute the Program except as provided in this Agreement; 2) reverse assemble, reverse compile, or otherwise translate the Program except as specifically permitted by law without the possibility of contractual waiver; or 3) sublicense, rent, or lease the Program.

The thing that makes Symphony stand out to me is quite simple, it is very easy to work with multiple documents and the web on devices with limited screen real estate, in fact its user interface is probably the best that I have come in contac

Symphony UI and Sidebar

t with in general. Time seems to have been taken to make the UI functional and attractive, something still lacking in Open Office, in my opinion at least.

The tabbed interface may not be revolutionary anymore, it is a stock feature of every useable web browser, file manager and terminal application these days and it is making it’s way into other applications where it is deemed appropriate, in an office suite, it is a godsend.

Symphony Home PAge

Symphony provides most of the components people are used to in an office suite, word-processor, spreadsheet and presentation components, being based on an early version of Open Office none stand out particularity, other than to say that they satisfy most normal office users requirements without too much trouble.

The sidebar approach to more complex operations (more complex than single button push alterations of various properties) is also surprisingly nice, IBM have managed to make logical choices that reflect what users are likely to want to do at any given time, without removing the alternatives.

There are of course some problems, Symphony is a relatively new office suite, not long out of Beta and currently it is

Symphony Presentations

based on an old and out of date version of Open Office (although V2 will apparently be based on Open Office 2, making it only one full version behind its main rival. It is slow to load the first time and not terribly snappy to use on occasion (On the variety of machines I tested it on) putting it on a Par with Microsoft’s office suite and far behind Abiword or Koffice in terms of performance.

Happily Symphony has stuck with the Open Document Format, ensuring that the documents you create are portable and easily editable in your favourite Open Source Application, as with Open Office it also has the ability to open a range of proprietary formats and seems to do so well.

So if you have the time, take a look at Lotus Symphony. From a personal point of view, I think I will keep using symphony for a while yet, although I would prefer to see some of the UI elements implemented in Open Office, especially tabbing and the cleaner UI, although a version of Lotus Symphony based on Open Office 3 and an Open Source or Free Software license would be a perfectly acceptable alternative.