The first Linux program with a Windows Version that I am going to shed a bit more light on is Open Office. As the name somewhat implies, this is an office program that is quite similar to Microsoft Office and has several components.

The six components of OpenOffice.org are Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Base, and Math. The entire suite was designed to work together rather than being a collection of separate programs bundled together. What this means to you is that they share many of the same options (as well as the spell-checker) so that if you change something in one, it will be changed in them all.

Writer is the word processor of the suite and is very comparable to Microsoft Word, which is a program that most people are very familiar with. The overall look is a little bit different as are the icons, but most people should have no problem finding the functions that they want to use. This program can save in a wide variety of formats including Microsoft’s .doc; you can even save directly to a PDF file (try doing that with Microsoft Word) or as a web page.

Calc is the spreadsheet program that is similar to Microsoft Excel. Here again, everything works pretty much the same way as in the program that most people are familiar with and there are a few added features as well. The same goes for the Microsoft PowerPoint equivalent which is Impress.

I haven’t really played with the other three parts of this office suite much yet, but can only imagine that they are just as impressive as the ones I already mentioned. Draw is a utility that “lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations” and I can’t really say anything about it because I use GIMP (which will be talked about in a future post) for my image editing needs. Base is a program that is similar to Microsoft Access that lets you work with databases and from my experience is quite user friendly.

The Math program is another one that I have not really made use of, but looks to have great potential as you can create mathematical equations via typing directly on the keyboard or through a selection of buttons. I’m not sure if it solves them for you though.

If you have never used Open Office, download and install it today and give it a try.