It’s been an eventful few months for Kingsoft. In May, the developers announced that development for WPS Office 2016 for Linux had been halted, before backtracking several days later. Now the company has made the software generally available, and it comes with some new features.
The latest version makes “enhancements for the international Linux community”, including:
- “Added WPS Office for Linux remote file sharing;
- Added search functionality for Writer, Presentation, and Spreadsheets;
- Optimized IO operations for improved WPS file access speed;
- Updated display effects of controls and fonts;
- Updated WPS export to PDF hyperlinks, and
- Updated thumbnail preview effects in WPS Presentation.”
Microsoft Office Competitor
So far, WPS Office has over 1.2 billion installs across devices, and supports Microsoft’s PPT, DOC, DOCX, XLS, and XLSX formats. The software could provide significant competition to Microsoft, with a premium experience at a lower price.
The suite provides a very farmiliar interface, runs quickly, and a has an inbuilt PDF reader. It’s available across platforms and includes hundreds of free templates.
“As business demands evolve in an ever more diverse computing landscape, the demand for Linux-based applications has also increased,” said William Wong, General Manager of WPS Office, in a press release. “Our involvement with the Linux community has been unwavering and we now celebrate continued success with the release of WPS Office 2016 for Linux.”
Though the ‘unwavering’ part may be rich when you consider the company’s halt of development, it will be greatly appreciated nonetheless. The company did say it was “made possible with the support of the WPS Office open source community”, so it appears it got the development help it needed.
You can download WPS Office 2016 for Linux free of charge from the community site.
