Users looking for a Microsoft Office clone on Linux will be disappointed to hear that WPS Office’s development on Linux has been halted. The most recent build for Linux was released almost one year ago, with the most recent version being v10.1.0.5672 Alpha.
The fact that development had stalled was raised after one Twitter users reached out to WPS Office to ask why there hadn’t been a new release for a while. The response came back saying that it was "on a halt" and that it needs “community builds”; there’s little chance that community builds will become a thing within the next few months given that WPS Office is not even open source, making community maintenance somewhat of a challenge.
In a follow-up tweet, WPS Office did confirm that while the focus right now is on mobile, they will focus more on Linux towards the end of the year. The response came when a user asked if the office suite will be made open source.
Even though support for WPS Office on Linux has effectively ended for now it’s not a huge deal. Most distributions ship with LibreOffice, which is used by the majority of Linux users. For anyone looking for another alternative to LibreOffice, OnlyOffice is available; it is open source and runs on all the major operating systems including Linux.
Source: OMG Ubuntu | Image via ExtremeTech
