The Pi as a Productivity Machine - Raspberry Pi User Guide - page 127

formats. They are also inaccessible when no Internet connection is available, making them a
poor choice for users with unreliable connections.
If you think that the improved performance and saved space on your Pi's SD card is worth
the trade-off, continue reading. If not, skip to the next section of this chapter to learn how to
install LibreOffice.org, an open-source office suite equivalent to Microsoft Office.
The most popular cloud-based office suites are the following:
❍ Google Drive —Run by the search and advertising giant Google, Google Drive (for-
merly known as Google Docs) includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presenta-
tion tool (see Figure 9-1). Corporate users can also sign up for a Google Apps account,
which provides improved functionality. If you have a Gmail web-based email
account, it will automatically work for Google Drive. You can access the service at
http://docs.google.com .
❍ Zoho— With five million registered users, Zoho is another popular choice. As with
Google Drive, a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation package are included,
but Zoho also offers enhanced business-centric features like a wiki-based knowledge
base system, web conferencing, financial management and even customer relationship
management. Many of the advanced features, however, require a paid account. You
can access the service at http://www.zoho.com .
❍ Oice 365 —If you're a Microsoft Office user, Office 365 is a great choice. Based on
the same user interface as the current editions of the Microsoft Office suite for desk-
tops, Office 365 is powerful and flexible. Unlike Zoho and Google Drive, Office 365 has
no free user level and requires a monthly subscription. Additionally, some features
won't work when the software is accessed from a Linux computer. You can subscribe
to the service at http://office365.microsoft.com .
❍ ThinkFree Online— A web-based interface to the Hancom ThinkFree Office software,
ThinkFree Online offers word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software for
free, with 1 GB of storage. The system also ties in to ThinkFree Mobile for tablets and
smartphones, as well as the enterprise-targeted ThinkFree Server software. You can
subscribe to the service at http://online.thinkfree.com .
Unfortunately, many of these web-based services require a browser more capable than Midori,
which is provided as the default with the recommended Raspbian distribution. As a result, you'll
have to install a different browser in order to make use of any of these packages. The following
instructions are for installing the Chromium browser, which is an open-source project on which
Google's Chrome browser is based. Its relatively lightweight memory usage makes Chromium a
good choice for the Pi. If you're running the Pidora distribution, which comes with Mozilla Firefox
as its default browser, you can skip these instructions and proceed to the next section.