KOffice can be downloaded as daily source snapshots from ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/snapshots. It requires KDE2, available in the same location, and QT-2.10, from ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source; the file you need is qt-x11-2.1.0-tar.gz.

It is possible to run KOffice--indeed, any KDE2 application--from KDE-1.x, if one follows the recipe built by the excellent KDE programmer David Faure. Those instructions are at http://www.kde.org/kde1-and-kde2.html.

A Glimpse of the Future
While KOffice isn't yet the suite onto which you want to hang your business's fortunes, a stroll through it makes it plain that it one day will be. And many of its parts are largely useable and useful today, so getting early experience with it is a reasonable thing to do. KDE is as close to a standard Linux desktop as exists; it is highly likely that KDE2 and KOffice will be part of many if not most Linux distributions by year's end. Presuming that KOffice lives up to its promise, it will transport Linux a giant step toward becoming a desktop operating system second to none.

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