A.1 Office

This section features the most popular and powerful Linux office and business software solutions. These include office suites, databases, accounting software, and project management software.

FreeMind

FreeMind helps you to visualize your thoughts by creating and editing a mind map. You can easily copy nodes or the style of nodes and paste texts from sources such as HTML, RTF, and mails. The mind maps can be exported into various formats, such as HTML and XML. For more information, refer to https://freemind.sourceforge.net.

GnuCash

GnuCash is a software tool to control both your personal and business finances. Keep track of income and expenses and manage your bank accounts and stock portfolios all using one piece of software. Learn more about GnuCash at www.gnucash.org.

Gnumeric

Gnumeric is a spreadsheet solution for the GNOME desktop environment. Find more information about Gnumeric at www.gnumeric.org.

Gnuplot

Gnuplot is a very powerful and portable command line–controlled data plotting software. It is also available for MacOS and Windows platforms. Plots created by Gnuplot can be exported to various formats, such as PostScript, PDF, and SVG, allowing you to process these plots easily. Find more information about Gnuplot at www.gnuplot.info.

Grace

Grace is a very mature 2D plotting tool for almost all flavors of Unix including Linux. Create and edit plots with a graphical user interface. Grace supports an unlimited number of graphs per plot. Its export formats include JPEG, PNG, SVG, PDF, PS, and EPS. Find more information at plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/.

Kdissert

Kdissert is an application for structuring ideas and concepts, mostly aimed at students but also helpful for teachers, decision makers, engineers, and businessmen. Ideas are first laid down on a canvas then associated into a tree. You can generate various outputs from the mind map, such as PDF files, text documents (also for OpenOffice.org Writer), and HTML files. Find more information at https://freehackers.org/~tnagy/kdissert/.

KMyMoney

KMyMoney is a personal finance manager for KDE. It enables users of open source operating systems to keep track of their personal finances by providing a broad array of financial features and tools. Learn more about KMyMoney at kmymoney2.sourceforge.net.

KOffice

KOffice is an integrated office suite for the KDE desktop. It comes with various modules like word processing (KWord), spreadsheets (KSpread), presentations (KPresenter), several image processing applications (Kivio, Karbon14, Krita), a database front-end (Kexi), and many more. Find more information about KOffice at www.koffice.org.

Kst

Kst is a KDE application for real-time data viewing and plotting with basic data analysis functionality. Kst contains many powerful built-in features, such as robust plotting of live streaming data, and is expandable with plug-ins and extensions. Find more about Kst at kst.ked.org.

LabPlot

LabPlot is a program for creating and managing two or three-dimensional data plots. Graphs can be produced both from data and functions and one plot might include multiple graphs. It also offers various data analysis methods. Find more information about LabPlot at labplot.sourceforge.net.

Mergeant

Mergeant is a database front-end for the GNOME desktop. Find more information at www.gnome-db.org.

moneyplex

moneyplex is a tool to control your finances. All tasks from managing incoming resources and expenses and monitoring your stock portfolio to online transactions via the HBCI standard are handled by moneyplex. Keep track of your financial transactions over time using various analysis options. Because this tool is also available for Windows, users can migrate very easily without having to learn a whole new application interface. Find more information about moneyplex at www.matrica.de.

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is the open source equivalent of MS Office. It is a very powerful office suite including a word processor (Write), a spreadsheet (Calc), a database manager (Base), a presentation manager (Impress), a drawing program (Draw), and a formula editor for generating mathematical equations and formulas (Math). Users familiar with the MS Office family of applications find a very similar application interface and all the functionality to which they are accustomed. Because OpenOffice.org is capable of importing data from MS Office applications, the transition from one office suite to the other is very smooth. A Windows version of OpenOffice.org even exists, enabling Windows users to switch to an open source alternative while still using Windows. Find more information about OpenOffice.org at www.openoffice.org and read our OpenOffice.org chapter for a short introduction to the office suite.

Planner

Planner is a project management tool for the GNOME desktop aiming to provide functionality similar to the project management tools used under Windows. Among its various features are Gantt charting abilities and different kinds of views of tasks and resources. Find more information about Planner at www.imendio.com/projects/planner/.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, and user-defined types and functions. Find more information about PostgreSQL at www.postgresql.org.

Rekall

Rekall is a tool for manipulating databases. Supported databases include MySQL, PostgreSQL, XBase with XBSQL, IBM DB2, and ODBC. Use Rekall to generate different sorts of reports and forms, design database queries, or import and export data to various formats. Find more information about Rekall at www.thekompany.com/products/rekall/.

StarOffice

StarOffice is a proprietary version of OpenOffice.org and is distributed by Sun Microsystems. It is available on multiple platforms including Windows and Solaris. It includes certain advanced features not available with the free version (OpenOffice.org). Find more information about StarOffice at www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/ .

Taskjuggler

Taskjuggler is a lean, but very powerful project management software. Take control of your projects using the Gantt charting features or by generating all kinds of reports (in XML, HTML, or CSV format). Those users who are not comfortable with controlling applications from the command line can use a graphical front-end to Taskjuggler. Find more information about Taskjuggler at www.taskjuggler.org.

VYM (View Your Mind)

VYM is a software for visualizing your thoughts by creating and manipulating mind maps. Most manipulations do not require more than one mouse click. Branches can be inserted, deleted, and reordered very easily. VYM also offers a set of flags allowing you to mark certain parts of the map (important, time critical, etc.). Links, notes, and images can be added to a mind map as well. VYM mind maps use an XML format, allowing you to export your mind maps to HTML easily. Find more information about VYM at www.insilmaril.de/vym.