SoftMaker brings its Office 2016 suite to Linux

[Batu69]

SOFTMAKER HAS begun shipping its latest productivity suite for Linux.

 

Unsurprisingly called SoftMaker Office 2016, the company, which won an INQUIRER Tech Hero award earlier this year, claims it's the fastest office suite for Linux, being five quicker than Microsoft Office. It also offers more than 400 new features including vastly improved compatibility with Microsoft Office.

 

Two versions are available. The standard version offers TextMaker, a word processor, PlanMaker for spreadsheets, Presentations for PowerPoint and add-ons for Mozilla's Thunderbird email client to bring an improved experience and better tie in with Office.

 

The professional edition adds four Berlitz translation dictionaries offering easy translation between English, Spanish, Italian, German and French.

 

Headline features include OpenGL with multiple CPU cores to improve graphic rendering, document version history, improved PDF support, basic cropping tools for graphics, and better file filters for Microsoft Office with Smart Art support and understanding of 'Automatic' settings in ported documents.

 

In TextMaker, along with support for 80 different chart types across 2D and 3D, there's also direct export to EPUB e-book formatting and a new label function with support for 9,000 label types .

 

PlanMaker can now support a million rows and 16,384 columns and offers more than 350 mathematical functions. Support for pivot tables with functional scope is now included and conditional formatting has now been adapted to work identically to Excel.

 

Presentations (surely PresentationMaker?) has a full-screen view, smart guide for better relative alignment of objects and a complete redevelopment of the table function to be more intuitive.

 

As ever, existing customers will be given preferential upgrade rates, but for new arrivals, the cost is £45 for Standard and £65 for Professional with no monthly fees. Each licence is valid for three users, home or commercial, and special rates are available for enterprise.

 

SoftMaker Office 2016 is compatible with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, openSUSE, Fedora, CentOS and Megeia - and probably some others too.

 

Softmaker also offers a free edition for Android mobile devices, as well as a Windows edition.

 

News source