When I wondered at a previous article on whether the continuity of Apache OpenOffice made sense, I said that there were many other options. Now that Softmaker Office 2024 makes its beta public, we can discover what we have next year.
Softmaker is a German software company that has various products related to office automation. The Sofktmaker Office suite was one of the first proprietary software versions for Linux.
Why use Softmaker Office on Linux?
Before continuing, allow me to quote Linus Torvalds:
I am a big believer in technology over politics. I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as you don't have to worry about licensing issues, etc.
I can make jokes about Microsoft sometimes, but at the same time, I think Microsoft hate is a disease. I believe in open development, and that to a large extent it means not only making the source open, but also not excluding other people and companies.
There are extremists in the world of free software, and that's a big reason why I don't call what I do “free software” anymore. I don't want to be associated with people for whom free and open source software is about exclusion and hate."
Softmaker Office is private and paid. But, is one of the best office suites you can get for Linux. If you are a fan of privacy and you don't like the cloud, but you want to work with your documents on different devices, you have versions for Windows, Linux, Mac and mobile devices.
What's new in Softmaker Office 2024
As usual, Softmaker Office includes TextMaker, a word processor, PlanMaker for spreadsheets, and the essential presentation program called Presentations.
Its strong point is the native compatibility with Microsoft Office formats, but it also reads and writes in LibreOffice and saves in Epub, PDF and PDF/A.
The novelties of this new version are:
- Automatic translation: DeepL is one of the best translators out there. Now with the word processor you will be able to use it to convert between 30 languages maintaining the format that you have given to the original text.
- Best results on PDF export: Now the resulting PDF files take up less space because inserted images can be reduced to smaller formats.
- Advanced Copy Features: It is now possible to insert text using the source format, the target format, or a combination. This is ideal if you are creating a document from texts extracted from different sources.
- Improved text selection: In the word processor we can select fragments of non-contiguous texts and edit them simultaneously.
- The spreadsheet app improves its compatibility with SQLite databases and CSV files.
- Operations with dates: The user can determine the order of days, months and years.
- work with decimals: Separators for decimals and thousands can be configured to those established by default in the system.
- Sorting and Filtering by colors.
- Table performance improvements dynamics.
- Create portable presentationss: They can be viewed without using the program.
- Adding dynamic transitions for slideshow.
- New dynamic notes view to add additional information about the presentation.
Softmaker Office 2024 can be downloaded, installed and used free of charge from this page.
The download process is a bit cumbersome since you need to register (if you didn't do it before) and add the product to the cart. Don't worry, you won't have to pay anything or enter any credit card number.
When you finish the process you will receive an email with the download details.
Some time after launching the official version, Softmaker will launch FreeOffice, the free version that, although it will not have all the functions of the original, is a fully functional office suite and is an excellent alternative to the other existing options.
Do not pay attention to the instructions to which the email link sends you because they are not updated. Use your distribution's manual package installation method.