I wrote this article for Slashdot a few years back, comparing the KWord and Applixware word processors. It was going to be a multi-part series, but only the first part was ever written. At the time, word processing was lacking on the Linux platform. With the recent unveiling of OpenOffice, however, all of this has changed. Word Processing on Linux has caught up to Windows.

Since the review was published, KWord has matured a lot. I haven’t had a chance to try it lately, however. I’m fairly certain most of the polish and stability that was lacking in 2000 is in the product now.

Applixware, sadly, doesn’t seem to exist anymore. If anyone knows what happened to the product, let me know.

Abstract

One of the biggest barriers to the acceptance of Linux on the desktop is the perception of those outside the Linux community that Linux has no support for Office suites and applications. As we all know, this is far from the truth. We’ve seen StarOffice, Corel, Applixware and the up-and-coming KOffice, but how many of these have you used? The choices are so diverse that people just end up trying or buying one of them and sticking with it.

• View: Linux Word Processor Showdown
• Original Slashdot page: http://slashdot.org/features/00/02/22/0850251.shtml