StarOffice is already very popular and has become something of a standard on Linux PCs often in the guise of OpenOffice, its open source brother. Sun acquired Star Division GmbH five years ago, with the clear intention of competing directly with Microsoft. It has taken time for Sun to establish a competitive position, though. StarOffice never got strong reviews until version 6, which debuted in early 2002. It is just now in version 7, which is attracting even more attention because of the quality of the release.
Version 6 did two things that made a difference. First it removed the StarOffice Desktop which was always an over-ambitious feature, so it now functioned as a collection of applications - word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing - almost like Microsoft Office, except that with StarOffice you get a little more and it's far better integrated. Secondly it began to use XML as default for file storage. However, version 6 was a little buggy and sometimes the Microsoft file conversions didn't work so well.
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News source: The Reg
