How To Install Calligra Office Suite On Linux
If you’re on Linux and you want a more substantial office suite than Libre Office has to offer, Calligra Office Suite is the answer. It’s a fully-featured Office/Graphical design suite, with excellent tools for many different tasks.
Calligra comes with a lot of different apps, like Words for documents, the Karbon vector graphics tool, a database editor, presentation maker, a tool for spreadsheets, and more.
Install Calligra Office Suite
To install the Calligra Office suite, you need to be running Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Gentoo or a Linux distribution that has access to the latest KDE Plasma packages and tools.
Ubuntu
Calligra is readily available for installation on the Ubuntu Linux operating system through traditional methods. To get it, open up Ubuntu Software Center or KDE Discover, search for “Calligra” and install it. Alternatively, go to a terminal window and enter the following command to get it going.
sudo apt install calligra
Calligra Unstable
For most people on Ubuntu, the version of Calligra that comes in the software center is good enough. However, if you can’t wait for new features, this version probably isn’t good enough. Luckily, it’s very easy to get a more up to date version of Calligra on Ubuntu through a PPA.
The unstable Calligra PPA is usually reserved for KDE Neon, a Linux distribution that uses Ubuntu as a base. That said, any Ubuntu user can use this PPA to get a newer version of Calligra Office just fine. To add the PPA, open up a terminal and do the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neon/ppa
After adding the Neon PPA to Ubuntu, you need to run the update command on Ubuntu. Doing this will refresh your PC’s package cache, and allow Ubuntu to see newer versions of software in its sources.
sudo apt update
Using this PPA on Ubuntu requires the user to install a few KDE Neon tools. Installing these tools are critical and will help the Calligra Office tool run correctly. Install the KDE Neon tools to your PC with apt.
sudo apt-get install project-neon-base
The Project Neon base package installation may take a bit of time, so be patient. When it completes, install the unstable version of Calligra to finish out the process.
sudo apt install project-neon-calligra project-neon-calligra-dbg
When everything finishes installing, log out of your current Ubuntu session. At the login menu, choose the “Project Neon” option and log back in to run Calligra unstable.
Debian
Debian users can access a stable version of Calligra on Debian 9 Stretch (Stable). To install it, open up the terminal and use the apt-get commands to get it going.
sudo apt-get install calligra
Calligra Unstable
Most Debian users can use Calligra, but the version of it in Debian 9 is a bit dated. An alternative is to install the unstable version by enabling the Testing repo in Debian.
Note: only enable Testing in Debian if you understand how to fix things that go wrong!
To start off, enable Testing in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.
su -
echo "deb https://deb.debian.org/debian testing main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
Next, run the update command so that Debian can access the new testing Repo.
sudo apt-get update
After running the update, uninstall Calligra from Debian, as you’re using the old packages.
sudo apt-get remove calligra
Lastly, install the newer version of Calligra:
sudo apt-get -t testing install calligra
Arch Linux
Arch Linux is known for always having up to date software and it has a very current version of the Calligra office suite in its software sources. To get it on your Arch PC, simply use the Pacman package manager to sync it.
sudo pacman -S calligra
Alternatively, if you’re having problems with the main Calligra package, there are versions of the office suite in the Arch Linux AUR available for compilation.
Fedora
Fedora, like Arch Linux, is very up to date. It regularly receives the latest packages, so getting a fairly recent version of Calligra doesn’t take any hard work at all. To install, open up a terminal and use DNF to install the software.
sudo dnf install calligra -y
OpenSUSE
On OpenSUSE, getting a newer version of Calligra is a little harder due to the fact that certain versions of the OS don’t center around new software. Instead, the focus is rock-solid stability, and that means sometimes programs aren’t as recent. To get a new version of Calligra on OpenSUSE Leap, add the following software repository:
Leap 15.0
sudo zypper addrepo https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/repositories/KDE:/Extra/openSUSE_Leap_15.0/ opensuse-kde-extra
Leap 42.3
sudo zypper addrepo https://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/repositories/KDE:/Extra/openSUSE_Leap_42.3/ opensuse-kde-extra
Next, install Calligra with:
sudo zypper install calligra
Tumbleweed
OpenSUSE is a unique OS in that one version of its distribution (LEAP) focuses on stability, while another version focuses on the absolute latest software. If you’re an OpenSUSE Tumbleweed user, getting an up to date version of Calligra should be no problem with Zypper.
sudo zypper install calligra
Other Linuxes
Calligra is the official Office Suite for the KDE Plasma desktop. As a result, you can find it pretty much everywhere. If you’re interested in installing Calligra, but you can’t find the instructions related to your distribution, consider checking Pkgs.org. Alternatively, read the website, as they may have information specific to you.
