Alternative to Abiword, LibreOffice or Open Office under Linux

Actually I'm looking for a word processor with the folllowing features :

Base Formatting
Lightweight
Stable & bugfree

It should work for common office work on quite old machines.

EDIT : It's better to give a more complete description of the situation. Actually I'm working in a press agency. The journalists work on Ubuntu machines, and until a couple of weeks ago they did use Abiword to prepare articles that are loaded into a CMS. OpenOffice was not an option because it's too heavy and slow. The problem is that they keep many documents and browser windows open at the same time, so the amount of RAM avaliable is very little. We upgraded to natty a couple weeks ago and Abiword came out with many strange bugs and crashes, and it has some problems with extra mark-up, so we decided to move from it. Actually the better option IMHO is Google Docs, but they are not really happy sharing their documents in the cloud. So resuming, the problems are : - Openoffice/Libreoffice : too ram consuming - Abiword : strange markup and not so stable

Juan Sebastian Totero

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 486

1vim + markdown? – RedGrittyBrick – 2011-05-26T09:38:42.817

You're much more likely to get useful answers if you explain why Abiword and OOo don't work. Otherwise it's hard to tell what you are looking for. – sleske – 2011-05-26T10:49:55.127

I would say LaTeX, but you're probably going to be reading documents as well as sending them back in the same format. It's worth learning LaTeX anyway, and we have a site for that.

– new123456 – 2011-05-26T10:52:06.800

1@new123456 : Actually Latex is one of my favorites, but our journalists need a program to prepare articles quickly for online publishing, and they are not so willy to learn a complete new way of doing it :) – Juan Sebastian Totero – 2011-05-26T11:01:41.393

1Switch window managers from gnome to something lighter like XFCE or Obenbox or fluxbox. That'll free up a ton of memory, and maybe openoffice will work better. – Rob – 2011-09-14T13:21:23.490

Answers

Take a look at LyX, it's my favorite writing tool ever, and I think I've tried them all. It's easy to learn too.

enter image description here

Helgi Örn

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 46

Yes, I actually use LaTex and Lyx a lot, but they are too document-production-oriented (I mean, for printing or publishing). That means it's really not what we were looking for. – Juan Sebastian Totero – 2011-09-15T22:45:51.650

Did you have a look at KOffice? It also has a word processor.

enter image description here

However, if the problem with Abiword is stability, did you consider just downgrading to the version you used before? Might require a bit of fiddling to the library versions right (or at worst, a recompile), but there's no reason you can't continue using the old version.

sleske

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 19 887

actually that's how I solved it right now... but there is still an extra-markup problem when copy-pasting with it so I was trying to find a solution to get rid of it :) – Juan Sebastian Totero – 2011-05-26T15:56:54.383

Abiword is more stable now than it was. – Alexander – 2011-09-14T20:57:37.437

I am not familiar with Linux enough to give you a specific recommendation, but when it comes to software alternatives, I always check in this site:

AbiWord linux alternatives: http://alternativeto.net/software/abiword/?profile=linux&platform=linux
AbiWord online alternatives: http://alternativeto.net/software/abiword/?profile=linux&platform=online

Hope it helps.

VitalyB

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 225

If you can still run a web browser on these older machines, one solution could be to use Google Docs, or another option like netEditr(I just ran across that one now, I don't know how good it is).

jonsca

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 3 889

mmm actually it should be a native program... Google Docs was proposed before but they did not accept it :) – Juan Sebastian Totero – 2011-05-26T10:08:52.370

@jst Oh, ok. You might edit your question to indicate all of the rejected suggestions. It will probably get you an answer you can use much more quickly :) – jonsca – 2011-05-26T10:10:49.233

thx for the tip :) I edited the question – Juan Sebastian Totero – 2011-05-26T11:03:23.607

While it's not FLOSS, there's a nice multi-platform office package from a German company called SoftMaker Office. I tested a version three or four years ago on a Pentium III 500 and it was usable, but I don't know if the current version has higher requirements.

enter image description here

If you're willing to register, the 2008 version can be downloaded free of charge here. The upgrade price to the current version is 30 Euros.

jstarek

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 928

thx, I'll take a look at it :). – Juan Sebastian Totero – 2011-05-26T11:02:53.593

Try Calligra-suite. Based on Koffice.

Words for text processing.
Tables for computations.
Stage for presentations.
Plan for planning.
Flow for flowcharts.
Kexi for database creation.

enter image description here

Jarco

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 595

Gareth, is this fork of OOo lighter and faster than the original, as Juan requested? – CarlF – 2011-09-14T14:10:03.953

Is Ted too lightweight?

enter image description here

Alexander

Posted 2011-05-26T09:20:17.650

Reputation: 258

In my limited experience under Debian, Ted is incredibly unstable and blows up within about one minute of my starting to do anything. – CarlF – 2011-09-14T14:11:10.660