Open Source Software

Open Source Software

Productivity software

When anyone mentions office software, you assume they are talking about Microsoft Office. It has become synonymous with sending e-mail messages (Outlook), writing letters (Word), creating spreadsheets (Excel) and visual presentations (Powerpoint). It has dominated the market for a long time and is a true success story. It does not come cheap though and if you need it for professional purposes and/or for multiple users, the costs start adding up quite sharply.
There are a few alternatives.

Google Docs (now part of Google Drive), allow you to do everything mentioned above except for e-mail. Everything is in the cloud with Google Drive, so you know your data is backed up. It is free for personal use, which is great for most people and it will work on any operating system. All you need is a browser and internet access. For businesses wanting to get more out of the services available, there is a cost though.

Open source to the rescue!

Two popular products exist for general office applications. OpenOffice and LibreOffice, which are both free. Versions are available for multiple operating systems which is good. Our favourite Ubuntu comes with LibreOffice pre-installed, which is great!
What about e-mail? Mozilla, the creators of the internet browser Firefox, have also created a free e-mail client called Thunderbird. If you need a calendar as well, then you can easily install the Lightning plugin for Thunderbird.

FTP

FileZilla is a free FTP client. The chances are if you know what that is, then you don’t need it explaining further. It is a reliable piece of software, so if you need to upload large quantities of data, why not give it a look?