Office suites have become so central to the way people work and communicate that a number of people have proposed that Microsoft's monopoly does not revolve around Windows, but rather around Microsoft Office.

So it will probably be a while before MS Office finds its way onto the Linux desktop. Oh well.

Open source application developers seem to have taken the same attitude toward Linux office suites as they did toward the kernel itself: If you can't join 'em, beat 'em. Whenever Linux was missing some piece of functionality, someone stepped forward and wrote the software to add it. Office suites are proving to be no exception to that rule.

True, the current Linux office-suite offerings are not yet quite as polished, integrated, or feature-rich as those that exist in the Windows world. But hey, a year ago it would not have been possible to conduct a round-up of Linux office suites, and now it is. We looked at five products: Applix Applixware, Sun's StarOffice, Corel's WordPerfect, the GNOME office suite, Workshop, and KDE's KOffice suite. Some of these are open source projects, and some are not, but all of them show tremendous promise.

All of these products are available via free download from the Internet. For many, the large download size (usually dozens of megs) might prove to be an incentive to invest in DSL. The lack of printed documentation can also be a deterrent to using a downloaded version. Applix, Corel, and Sun offer packages that include a CD-ROM, printed documentation, and often installation tech support. Sun sells a $10 CD-only version of StarOffice as well.

One interesting thing about these office suites is the way they bring the inherent power of the X Window System into focus. For example, some of them implement remote font servers to allow centralized workgroup collections of fonts. Some of them, like Corel's WordPerfect, support multiple users. Each user's workstation runs a client program that interfaces with the central WordPerfect X server, using the workstation essentially as a dumb terminal for mouse and keyboard input.

We found that the Linux-based solutions ranged from very complete to extremely marginal functionality. Odds are that your choice will come down to functionality needs and personal taste rather than cost, because even the most expensive Linux office suite is substantially less expensive than the $400 or so you'll pay for MS Office.

Because Microsoft dominates the office-software space, interoperability is a key concern. Document exchange between MS Office and the various Linux office suites is possible, and some of these products interoperate quite smoothly with MS Office. Still, all of them have at least some weaknesses in this area.

If you're looking to go feature-heavy and exchange a lot of files with Windows-based solutions, we recommend either Applixware or StarOffice. As a stand-alone word processor, WordPerfect is head and shoulders above the rest. Unfortunately, its limited support of spreadsheet and database tables can be problematic. But it is probably unfair to compare the functionality of a stand-alone word processor with an entire suite of office applications.

If you have no need to exchange documents with other office software packages, then KDE's KOffice is a competent package. The minimal number of import and export filters make it unsuitable at this time for operation in a heterogeneous environment. Still, KOffice does hold a lot of promise as a sophisticated office environment.

Finally there is SourceGear's AbiWord, which is a part of the GNOME office suite. At this time, it is still a work in progress and is worth exploring if your primary goal is to simply move beyond the functionality of a text editor.

So the bottom line is this: For those who haven't built an entire workflow operation around the special features of Microsoft Office, Linux is a powerful alternative to the Windows environment.