The Ubuntu 12.10 distribution has included a new office suite named Calligra words. This is a Spreadsheet, Word processor and also a Presentation and Flowchart creation application. Upon loading the Calligra Words application and seeing it for the first time, it has the tool-bars vertically on the right-hand side which takes up room, the Microsoft Word 6.0 layout that original word processors used was better. There does not seem to be a way to configure the toolbars to put them on top as they are in OpenOffice.org. Still, the program does open *.odt files perfectly well. Opening old *.doc files with tables gave some less than impressive results but it does work very well for a BETA status application. it looks like there is a new contender for the desktop Office suite market on Linux. It is missing a lot of features, but it surely will mature as time goes on. The Kubuntu-desktop installation on Ubuntu 12.10 uses KDE 4.8.9, this might mean that the full Kubuntu release will use KDE 4.9.0. That would be incredible. At least my machine was not affected by the leap-second bug, I am running kernel 3.5 on Ubuntu and that has the fix that has been around for ages. Only older machines with the 2.6 kernel would have had problems.
The KDE 4.8.9 desktop is as good as ever, the ability to install new themes from the theme selection window elevates it above the likes of the dumbed-down Metro “desktop” for Windows 8. And the Unity desktop. The ability to to configure the layout and look however you wish is a very powerful feature. You can install KDE 3.4 styled themes to style the 4.8 KDE desktop to look just like the KDE 3.4 desktop if you wish. That is why it is so cool.