I used this tool for the first time when I was asked to do an animation book layout for a movie project. Since this was not the kind of work I usually do I didn't want to spend a large amount of money in a commercial sofware like InDesign. I was really happy to see that this open tool had everthing I needed to get a professional result. It has many functions for text and image editing and was also easy to understand at a basic level, so it didn't take me too long to start working with my first layout. Scribus can also be integrated with Gimp, a more complete open tool for image editing.

The best thing about Scribus I would say is it's complete support for CMYK color management capabilities. This is a feature that's sort of difficult to find in open source packages. It's also very easy to understand and use, with most of it's features being usable from the toolbar and all the object editing functions placed in context menus. It's export function is also very good, with support for placing standard crop, alignment and color calibration marks. Scribus is also extensible with custom Python plugins.

Scribus is available for Linux, including Ubuntu and other flavours that are user friendly, so it is available free of charge. Unlike many commercial software packages that beta test on paying users, Scribus encourages everyone to experiment with the software without charging you any money.