The Open Office Suite in Ubuntu is just the perfect blend you need for all your Office needs.As Wiki says OpenOffice.org (OO.o or OOo), commonly known simply as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is written using the GTK and supports plugins like Firefox which provides it additional functionality.

Comparing with MS-Office or WordPerfect,this pack just fulfils all the needs of a Rookie like me  that too for free.Now that’s something really satisfying since I don’t have to payout a hefty amount just for my small needs.Though online options too are available but they haven’t developed that much yet.

OOo has been divided into 6 components few of which are available by default in Ubuntu

Those six components are

• Writer (Available By Default)
• Calc (Available By Default)
• Impress (Available By Default)
• Base
• Draw (Available By Default)
• Math (Available By Default)

Note : To install rest components you may use Applications >Add & Remove and search for “OpenOffice”

To Access OOo go to Applications>Office and select the desired component.We’ll take  here the 3 basic components of it which are used most

Now lets take a quick look at these 3 components

OOo WRITER aka OOo Word Processor

Writer does all the basic stuff of word processing and is similar to MS Word and is can save files in PDF format (not available in earlier versions of MS Office).It can also save documents in multiple formats including DOC, ODF and many more.

OOo Calc aka OOo Spreadsheet

Calc is similar to MS Excel & is rather better than it in many fields. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing, based on the layout of the user’s data . Also it has functionality to have customised plugins according to your needs which can be downloaded from OpenOffice.Org Site.

OOo Impress aka OOo Presentation

Impress similar to Apple Keynote or MS PowerPoint and  is used for presentations.Its supports plugins like rest its counterparts and also allows exporting the files to swf format(Adobe Flash) that is generally present in our browsers these days .It also has presentation wizard that guides you through the presentation customization on go.