One of the Linux complaints that I often here is, “my work requires Microsoft Office, and Linux has no compatible similar software”. That may have changed. WPS (old name Kingsoft) is a relatively new Linux Office Suite that appears to be compatible with Microsoft Office: http://www.wps.com/linux/
. It supposedly supports PPT, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX and saves to PDF. I do not use office suites much, so I’m not the best tester, but “Writer” seems comfortable with .docx. I have 64-bit Debian-based systems with Skype and Wine, and the 32-bit wps-office_9.1.0.4945~a16p3_i386.deb easily installed without drawing in any additional 32-bit libraries. After installation, launchers for Writer, Spreadsheet and Presentation appeared in the office category of all dynamical menus. It appears to take up about 60 MB. There supposedly is a 64-bit Linux version just released. Perhaps Sparky should consider including this suite in future editions, or at least making it available in the repository.