Microsoft Office Visio alternatives for Linux×
yEd Graph Editor
yEd is a powerful diagram editor that can be used to quickly create diagrams manually or import external data for analysis and auto-magically arrange even large data sets by just pressing a button. You can use...
Pencil Project
The Pencil Projects unique mission is to build a free and opensource tool for making diagrams and GUI prototyping that everyone can use. Top features: Built-in stencils for diagraming and prototyping ...
LibreOffice - Draw
Draw lets you produce anything from a quick sketch to a complex plan, and gives you the means to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is a an excellent...
Apache OpenOffice Draw
Draw, part of the Apache OpenOffice suite, is a graphics editor that gives you the tools to communicate with visuals and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is powerful tool for posters...
Visual Understanding Environment
Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is a mind-mapping and concept-mapping tool. It is also a non-linear presentation program.
TheBrain
TheBrain helps you organize all your Web pages, contacts, documents, emails and files in a context-driven visual map. Items are linked in a visual network that is designed to mimic the way you think....
PlantUML
PlantUML is an open-source tool that uses simple textual descriptions to draw UML diagrams. The generator can be run anywhere within JVM and integrated with various application such as wiki, text editor, IDE...
IHMC CmapTools
This Software empowers users to construct, navigate, share, and criticize knowledge models represented as Concept Maps. The toolkit is platform independent and network enabled, allowing the users to build, and...
Visual Paradigm for UML
Visual Paradigm for UML (VP-UML) is a UML design tool and UML CASE tool designed to aid software development. VP-UML supports key modeling standards such as Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.4, SysML, ERD...
Umbrello
Umbrello UML Modeller is a Unified Modelling Language diagram programme for KDE. UML allows you to create diagrams of software and other systems in a standard format.
Calligra Flow
Calligra Flow (formerly Kivio) is an easy to use diagramming and flowcharting application with tight integration to the other Calligra applications. It enables you to create network diagrams, organisation...
Creately
Creately makes diagramming and design easy. We do this with an access anywhere, online application that is purpose built for collaboration. Creately allows teams to solve problems and collaborate visually. It...
Lovely Charts
Browser based Chart and Diagram tool. Requires sign up. Free account allows one diagram to be saved. Very easy to use, professional looking. Main advantage is that diagrams can be shared with...
ProcessMaker
PROCESSMAKER WILL HELP YOU Build Workflow Software Build Business analysts can model workflows utilizing an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that’s easy to use. Report Workflow Software Report ...
Bonita Open Solution
Bonita is an Open Source Business Process Management (BPM) software and Workflow software edited by the BPM company BonitaSoft. Develop process based applications easily with Bonita Open Solution.
PGF and TikZ
PGF/TikZ is a tandem of languages for producing vector graphics from a geometric/algebraic description. PGF is a lower-level language, while TikZ is a set of higher-level macros that use PGF. The top-level PGF...
ARIS Express
ARIS Express is based on the proven ARIS methodology and industry standards. Its intuitive user interface and the latest improvements in modeling assistances enable instant results. This free version will...
Seavus DropMind
Seavus DropMind is mind mapping solution for brainstorming, visual and creative thinking, represented by the desktop platform friendly solution and online application created in Silverlight. Desktop Seavus...
vym
VYM (View Your Mind) is a tool to generate and manipulate maps which show your thoughts. Such maps can help you to improve your creativity and effectivity. You can use them for time management, to organize...
WireframeSketcher
WireframeSketcher is a software tool that helps quickly create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for desktop, web and mobile applications. It comes both as a plug-in for any Eclipse-based IDE and a standalone...
Skencil
Skencil is an interactive vector drawing program. It currently support drawing primitives like rectangles, ellipses, Bezier curves, bitmap (ppm, png, jpg, tiff etc.) and EPS images and text. All objects can be...
IYOPRO
IYOPRO, Improve your Processes, is a professional online BPM and workflow system that utilizes the BPMN 2.0 standard. Run it in less than one minute - without installation - always in the latest version....
MockupTiger
MockupTiger is a web based application that helps you to build fluid wireframes, mockups or prototypes for your next web application or desktop software. It has a huge collection of Icons, widgets (both for...
Topcased
TOPCASED is an integrated System/Software engineering toolkit compliant with the requirements of critical and embedded applications. It covers the stages from requirements analysis to ...
Spark-Space
Spark-Space creates a space for your thoughts, simple to use, allowing you to structure your thoughts at speed. Spark-Space connects ideas, documents, web pages and graphics within one map giving you...
Magicdraw
MagicDraw is an award-winning business process, architecture, software and system modeling tool with teamwork support. MagicDraw UML can do comprehensive UML diagramming, reverse and forward engineering for...
UMLGraph
UMLGraph allows the declarative specification and drawing of UML class and sequence diagrams. The current features are part of an ongoing effort aiming to provide support for all types UML diagrams.
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Xebece
Xebece is a multipurpose tool for information visualization and organization. It can be used to set up intriguing presentations. Likewise, Document management is straightforward and effective if you use...
Linux Alternatives To Microsoft Project
- TaskJuggler (http://www.taskjuggler.org/)
- GanttProject (http://ganttproject.sourceforge.net/)
- Planner (http://live.gnome.org/Planner)
- OpenProj (http://openproj.org/openproj)
How to sync Microsoft OneDrive on Linux
And hey, if you don’t like the Ribbon
Text To Columns: Another neat option was ‘Text to Columns’ in Spreadsheet, which actually was the original reason I found WPS office. I was looking for a way to quickly sort my contact list, which had a single cell for all contact names. I wanted to split them into First Name and Last Name. Text To Columns let me choose ‘space’ as a separator and sorted my list into two columns — as simple as that. You can choose characters other than a space, or even draw a line straight through the column to split it into two.
OneDrive (previously known as SkyDrive) is a popular cloud storage offering from Microsoft. Currently OneDrive offers 7GB free storage for every new signup. As you can imagine, OneDrive is well integrated with other Microsoft software products. Microsoft also offers a standalone OneDrive client which automatically backs up pictures and videos taken by a camera to OneDrive storage. But guess what. This client is available for all major PC/mobile platforms except Linux. "OneDrive on any device, any time"? Well, it is not there, yet.
Don't get disappointed. The open-source community already has already come up with a solution for you.onedrive-d written by a Boilermaker in Lafayette can get the job done. Running as a monitoring daemon,onedrive-d can automatic sync a local folder with OneDrive cloud storage.
In this tutorial, I will describe how to sync Microsoft OneDrive on Linux by using onedrive-d.
Install onedrive-d on Linux
While onedrive-d was originally developed for Ubuntu/Debian, it now supports CentOS/Fedora/RHEL as well.
Installation is as easy as typing the following.
$ git clone https://github.com/xybu92/onedrive-d.git
$ cd onedrive-d
$ ./inst install
$ cd onedrive-d
$ ./inst install
First-Time Configuration
After installation, you need to go through one-time configuration which involves granting onedrive-d read/write access to your OneDrive account.
First, create a local folder which will be used to sync against a remote OneDrive account.
$ mkdir ~/onedrive
Then run the following command to start the first-time configuration.
$ onedrive-d
It will pop up a onedrive-d's Settings window as shown below. In "Location" option, choose the local folder you created earlier. In "Authentication" option, you will see "You have not authenticated OneDrive-d yet" message. Now click on "Connect to OneDrive.com" box.
WPS Office For Linux Looks As Good As MS Office, Performs Even Better
It’s about time someone made an Office suite that can actually claim to be better than Microsoft Office. With WPS Office for Linux, Kingsoft has a winner.
We have shown you how to get Microsoft Office running in Linux through Wine, but if the one thing keeping you back from using Linux is a native Microsoft Office alternative you’re in luck. WPS Office is essentially a Linux port of the Kingsoft Office suite available for Windows, and is a darn impressive clone of MS Office.
The current package, Alpha 11, includes three apps: Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheet — alternatives for the famous trinity of Word, Powerpoint and Excel. Sure: it falls short for some features, but it also includes many that Microsoft would do well to emulate.
With A Ribbon On Top
When I say Kingsoft has made a clone, I mean it. It’s missing Microsoft’s blue colour scheme, but you can even change that by switching themes if you really want.
The Ribbon UI, which Microsoft introduced with Office 2007 and continued with Office 2010 and 2013, is something most workers now swear by. It makes almost every task infinitely easier with its easy interface. And WPS Office has cloned that pretty well.
, you can switch to the ‘Classic’ view, which is akin to Office XP or Office 2003. Perfect for traditionalists.
Just like with MS Office, the default ‘Home’ tab of the Ribbon gives you some basic options to format a document, presentation or spreadsheet. Other tabs include Page Layout, Insert, Formulas, Table Style, Animation, Slideshow, Review, View and more, depending on the app you are using.
There are some tabs that aren’t in the MS Office Ribbon, such as ‘Reference’ in Writer, with shortcuts to insert a table of contents and footnotes — two tools I use very often when editing a book.
What I really liked was the inclusion of a second toolbar of shortcuts on the right, which changes based on the app. So for example, in Presentation, you get shortcuts for colour schemes, effects, autoshapes and materials, etc. There’s also a Backup button here, which we will come to soon.
I didn’t really find any feature from MS Office that was missing in WPS Office. Let me know your findings below, though.
Overall, it really looks, feels and behaves like Microsoft’s popular software. And while that might not be a good thing for some, I’m all for it. Having used MS Office for so many years now, I find comfort in a similar environment rather than having to learn my way around a whole new software.
Cool Features
As I said earlier, WPS Office has a few features that Microsoft could learn from.
Paragraph Formatting: There’s a persistent floating button called ‘Paragraph Format’ next to each paragraph in your Writer document. Hit it and it auto-selects the whole paragraph and lets you format its layout, much like you would stretch or compress an image. Just hold one of the sides and move it to set how you want the paragraph to appear. In Paragraph Format mode, you can also select multiple paragraphs (Ctrl+Left Mouse Button) or the whole document (Ctrl+A). It’s just so easy.
Tabs: I really have no idea why Microsoft still doesn’t have this feature, but I’m glad WPS comes with it out of the box. Your documents, spreadsheets and presentations can be opened in tabs, which nest in a little bar right under the Ribbon. If you haven’t used tabs before in an office suite, they will change your work life — just like they did in browsers.
Backup Management: Sure, Microsoft has AutoSave, but this is something more. WPS Office creates periodic backups of your documents, whether you’ve saved them or not. The best part is that it actually saves them in a folder t you can go back to at any time in the future. It doesn’t matter whether your PC or the software crashed unexpectedly, that earlier version of your document is forever stored safely.
Compatibility
The biggest problem with WPS Office at the moment is that the file formats it supports are too limited. Regular DOC, XLS and PPT files are fine, as are simple common ones like CSV, TXT and HTML. But when it comes to Office 2007 files, like DOCX and PPTX, you can only read them — you can’t edit or save them. Which is a problem, because a lot of professionals today use those by default. Surprisingly, it also doesn’t support OpenOffice or LibreOffice formats like ODT.
Instead, WPS has its own file formats (WPS, DPS, ET). The only third-party format that works without a glitch right now is XLSX in Spreadsheets, which you can read, edit and save.
The inability to edit DOCX, PPTX, ODT and other file formats can be a deal-breaker for many people. The developers have recently said that they will be supporting DOCX editing in WPS Office Alpha 12, the first version of which is slated to release on September 10 2013.
WPS vs The Rest
Linux has plenty of alternative office suites. Compared to some of those, WPS Office is quite limited in what it offers. After all, it has only the big three — word processor, presentation and spreadsheets — whereas other suites like OpenOffice,Calligra and LibreOffice come with other work-related applications such as database management (Base, Kexi) and vector graphics tools (Draw, Karbon). And if your needs are restricted to just word processing or only spreadsheets, thenAbiWord (which we have reviewed) and Gnumeric are much lighter, standalone programs than WPS Office.
WPS Office still has plenty going for it. It looks polished, feels like a professional software to use, and has loads of cool features that will make you never want to go back to Office 2007 or any of the other software. Really, once you get used to that Paragraph Formatting, you wonder how you ever lived with MS Office for all these years. And all for the wonderful price of free!
Plus, although the file format support is limited, I have to mention that the common file formats it does support now — DOC, XLS, XLSX and PPT — look almost exactly like what they do originally in MS Office, which is something that can’t be said about competitors like LibreOffice or IBM Lotus Symphony, all of which often distort the formatting of files created in MS Office.
Unless you specifically need more or less than the aforementioned three basics of an office suite, WPS Office is the best you can get right now.
Installation
WPS Office Alpha 11 for Linux is available as downloadable RPM (best for Fedora, CentOS, OpenSUSE), Debian (best for Ubuntu, Mint, Knoppix) and Tarball packages. Grab the package that’s right for your operating system, double-click it and just follow the step-by-step installation process. It couldn’t be simpler.
What do you think about WPS Office? Has it replaced your default office suite or are you sticking with your current options? We’d love to know which one you choose and why in the comments section below.
Web-Based Microsoft Office That Works Natively With Linux - No Wine Required
1. Open your favorite web browser (I use Firefox for Linux).
2. You must first create a free Microsoft Account here: https://login.live.com Click on the "Sign Up Now" option (lower right) to creat your account.
3. After you've created your Microsoft account, go to Microsoft One Drive here: https://onedrive.live.com
4. Next, click on the One Drive “Sign In” box at the top right. Use your Microsoft Account to sign in. You'll be re-directed to this link: https://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&rpsnv=12&ct=1394662346&rver=6.4.6456.0&wp=MBI_SSL_SHARED&wreply=https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?cid=B0431E1C0159A4CF&resid=B0431E1C0159A4CF!164&app=Word&wdo=1&lc=1033&id=250206&cbcxt=sky&cbcxt=sky
5. After successfully signing in, you'll be redirected back to the MS One Drive Main page athttps://onedrive.live.com
6. You are now in the One Drive environment, main page. In effect, you have created your own individual 7GB free cloud storage drive. Along with this comes access to MS Office On-Line.
7. To open to MS Office apps, there are two ways:
(a) At the top left next to the “One Drive” logo (with the cloud icon), click on the down arrow. This opens a list of links to apps - Outlook, Contacts, Calendar, One Drive (cloud storage) Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote.
(b) Or, at the top left next to the word “Create”, click the down arrow. You'll find options for going straight to creating Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations, etc.
8. This tutorial does not cover specifics of how to use each MS Office application (perhaps a topic for a follow-on tutorial), other than the following points:
(a) In the One Drive main page, top left, you'll find “Sort By.” Click the down arrow to find options for sorting docs by name, type, date, etc. Hint - you have to create docs first for all sort options to be available.
(b) Next to “Sort By” you'll find icons for “Views.” Hovering your pointer over each icon shows options for “Details View,” “Thumbnails View,” or “Details Pane.” I prefer the Details View as it shows the folder structure of your One Drive account.
(c) You can create new docs on One Drive. Use the "Create" button.
(d) You can upload existing docs to One Drive, and then edit in one of the MS Office apps. Use the "Upload" button.
(e) You can save docs to One Drive, and/or save to your local system drive.
(f) In each app (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), at the top very far right of the screen, you'll see a question mark “?”....this will open the useful Help Menu.
(g). Office on-line is meant to be highly collaborative (similar to Google Docs), so take a look at the collaboration features.
(h) There's no off-line MS Office capability, so if you want to work offline on a doc, you'll have to use your favorite Linux app (Libre, Open Office, text editor, etc)
(i). See also more information here:
YOU CAN ALSO INSTALL for Microsoft Office 2010
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624351.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624351.aspx
Ways to Install Microsoft Office
There are several different ways to install Microsoft Office on Linux:
- Wine: Wine is a Windows compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows programs on Linux. It’s not perfect, but it’s optimized enough to run popular programs like Microsoft Office well. Wine will work better with older versions of Office, so the older your version of Office, the more likely it is to work without any trouble. Wine is completely free, although you may have to do some tweaking yourself.
- CrossOver: CrossOver is a paid product that uses code from the free version of Wine. While it costs money, CrossOver does more of the work for you. They test their code to ensure that popular programs like Microsoft Office run well and ensure upgrades won’t break them. CrossOver also provides support — so if Office doesn’t run well, you have someone to contact who will help you.
- Virtual Machine: You could also install Microsoft Windows in a virtual machine using a program like VirtualBox or VMware and install Microsoft Office inside it. With Seamless Mode or Unity Mode, you could even have the Office windows appear on your Linux desktop. This method provides the best compatibility, but it’s also the heaviest — you have to run a full version of Windows in the background. You’ll need a copy of Windows, such as an old Windows XP disc you have lying around, to install in the virtual machine.
We’ll be focusing on using Wine or Crossover to install Office directly on Linux. If you want to use a virtual machine, all you have to do is install VirtualBox or VMware Player and create a new virtual machine. The program will walk you through installing Windows and you can install Office inside your virtualized Windows as you normally would.