KOffice 2.1 was released yesterday, bringing a number of new features as well as general improvements in the maturity of the individual applications. Import and export of foreign file formats have been given an overhaul, and especially the import filters for Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt) and Word (.doc) have been much improved. This is a result of the work done for the Nokia n900 Office viewers.

This KOffice release is aimed at developers and early adopters and it's not indended for end users. Also, the KOffice developers do not recommend packaging KOffice 2.1 in any Linux distribution as a default office suite.

KOffice 2.1 Beta 2 was released today, and it features lot of changes which you can see HERE.

To upgrade to KOffice 2.1 Beta 2 in (K)Ubuntu, open a terminal and follow the steps below:

After more than three years of intense work to make the office suite compatible with QT4 and KDE4 libraries, KOffice 2 is now available and represents a quantum leap compared with the previous version.

During these three years, the KOffice team has completely rewritten the code in order to improve integration between all components of the suite while seeking to eliminate duplicate functions.

As for the absences, the databases tool Kexi will have to wait until version 2.1, while the software for creating flowcharts Kivio still has no release date and is possible to dissapear completely.

Koffice 2.0.0 Screenshots:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install koffice-kde4