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After more than three years of intense work to make the office suite compatible with QT4 and KDE4 libraries, KOffice 2 is now available and represents a quantum leap compared with the previous version.

During these three years, the KOffice team has completely rewritten the code in order to improve integration between all components of the suite while seeking to eliminate duplicate functions.

But not all the components that existed in KOffice 1 will be available in version 2 which includes the following applications:

  • KWord - Word processor
  • KSpread - Spreadsheet calculator
  • KPresenter - Presentation manager
  • KPlato - Project management software
  • Karbon - Vector graphics editor
  • Krita - Raster graphics editor
  • The chart application KChart is available as a shape plugin, which means that charts are available in all the KOffice applications in an integrated manner.
As for the absences, the databases tool Kexi will have to wait until version 2.1, while the software for creating flowcharts Kivio still has no release date and is possible to dissapear completely.

Koffice 2.0.0 Screenshots:

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The most significant and visible highlights are: the new graphical interface, with a redesign of the work space designed for large screens, and Flake Shape whose mission is to facilitate the integration of components in any of the KOffice applications.

Another important note is that KOffice supports native ODF format thus ensuring interoperability with other applications such as OpenOffice or MS Office.

To install KOffice 2 in Kubuntu, go to Software Sources in your menu, on the "Updates" tab check the "Unsupported updates" repository, then using a terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install koffice-kde4