Free OpenOffice.org 2.0 Suite Launches

After over two years of development, the final version of OpenOffice.org 2.0 was at last launched on October 20, 2005 and is available for free-of-charge download from the Web in versions of:

1. Windows


2. Windows (incl. JRE)


3. Linux (x86)


4. Linux (PPC)


5. Solaris (SPARC)


6. Solaris (x86)


7. FreeBSD


8. Macintosh

While OpenOffice.org is not the only office productivity suite to support OpenDocument -- accompanied by KOffice, IBM Workplace, and many others, many are optimist that OpenOffice.org is on its path toward being the most popular office suite the world has ever seen, having Novell, Red Hat, Debian, Propylon, and Intel, as well as a slew of independent progremmers involved in its development and goverments to start using it instead of the presently more popular office suite Microsoft Office due to the matter of proprietary against non proprietary formats -- Massachusetts in particular being the most vigorous proponent.

OpenOffice.org also got a bit of a boost earlier this month when Sun and Google announced a long-range technology partnership. Although the pair have been short on specifics, speculation remains strong that StarOffice, or the open-format OpenOffice.org offshoot, might be the foundation for additional Google Web services in the future.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 isn't totally reliant on OpenDocument, or even a nebulous Google-Sun deal, to make news, however. This version of the suite features a new database component -- dubbed "OpenOffice.org Base" -- major improvements in compatibility with Microsoft Office document formats, a redesigned user interface, and improvement in its export-to-PDF feature, which now gives users more control over the quality and size of the resulting PDF files.

That is quite an invaluable feature that Microsoft Office has not yet incorporated I might add, and I use it quite a lot. The next version of Redmond's suite, called Office 12 for now, will also offer PDF export (reminds you of the war between Microsoft XML and Adobe PDF some time around two years ago -- they might simply decided to include that feature to add as a value to contend with OpenOffice.org 2.0), the company confirmed three weeks ago.

"OpenOffice 2.0 is a big deal…this isn't some new, untried technology," said Tim Bray, one of the creators of XML, and now an employee at Sun, in a statement. "You can get your desktop work done without having to pay onerous up-front licensing costs and without having your data locked up in somebody else's file format. Why would you work any other way?"

OpenOffice.org 2.0 can be downloaded free of charge from the OpenOffice.org Web site.