ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors
Free office suite built around Microsoft file formats, with a ribbon-style layout close to Word and Excel.
Our verdict
ONLYOFFICE is the office suite to try first if the thing you will miss most is the way Microsoft Office looks. It copies the ribbon across the top, so muscle memory from Word and Excel mostly carries over on day one.
It is also the safer choice for file fidelity, because Microsoft formats are its native formats rather than something it converts on the way in and out. A .docx you edit here and send back to a colleague on Windows usually survives the round trip better than one that has been through a different suite.
The trade is depth. LibreOffice has more tools once you get into long documents, databases and heavy spreadsheets. Many switchers end up installing both, using ONLYOFFICE for anything they have to share with Windows users. The Flathub build is community maintained rather than published by ONLYOFFICE itself, so the official installer file from their site is the more cautious route.
What's good
- Tabbed ribbon layout that looks and works much like recent Microsoft Office
- Treats .docx, .xlsx and .pptx as its normal file types rather than an import
- Handles documents, spreadsheets, slides and PDF forms in one window
- Free for personal use with no account needed
What to know first
- Smaller feature set than LibreOffice once you get into advanced spreadsheet work
- Not usually preinstalled, so you have to fetch it yourself from the app store
- The collaboration features really want you to connect a cloud account
- Fewer Australian English dictionaries and templates out of the box
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (AGPL-3.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), .deb installer, .rpm installer, App store (Snap), AppImage download
Windows apps it can replace
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