As word processors for Linux keep picking up in popularity, household names in the computer industry are getting into the act. Like Sun Microsystems, Novell and IBM Lotus are both offering word processors based on OpenOffice.org's open source Writer application, but none of these offerings is exactly alike.

Nearly every desktop computer and laptop has some kind of office or productivity suite. Many of these have several applications in them that can be used together to replace a paper office, but the most common three applications are word processors, spread sheets, and presentation creators/viewers... So what options are available for UNIX/Linux systems?

OpenOffice.org isn't the only game in town for open source word processing. One of the best, and underexposed, open word processors is AbiWord.

AbiWord is a free opensource word processing program like Microsoft Word or Openoffice. Abiword is a light weight multi-platform word processor and is rapidly becoming a state of the art Word Processor, with lots of features useful for your daily work, personal needs, or for just some good old typing fun.

Sometimes you need a word processing application but not an entire office suite. Today we take a look at AbiWord which is a free word processor for all three major OS platforms.

OpenOffice.org is the darling of the FOSS office suites, and it is a nice suite. It's cross-platform, and OpenOffice.org Writer is a first-rate word processor with a lot of advanced features. But it's not the only good option for Linux users: Abiword and KWord are excellent lightweight word processors with good feature sets, and both are licensed under the GPL. All three are wonderful. In this two-part series we're going to dig into KWord 1.6, and mine some of its hidden jewels.

A document processor is a document preparation system. Unlike a word processor, this type of application leads the author to concentrate on the structure of the document rather than its appearance. The author therefore focuses on what he/she wants to say, instead of fretting over page borders, font attributes, or formatting.

Rosalyn Hunter writes about using Composer as a stand-in word processor. I too, have used it in this fashion on OS X. I like it for various reasons. For instance, I’m quite familiar with it, as I’ve used it for website authoring numerous times. It creates HTML files.

OpenOffice.org is generally considered the flagship of productivity programs in the open source world, but it’s not the only choice for many standard productivity tasks you need to get done from day to day.