Since the Banana Pi is more suited for college level students instead of K-12 students like the Raspberry Pi is geared towards, getting programs and apps for it is a bit harder, but not tricky. This is where one has to know their Linux system, in this case Debian, aka Raspbian Linux.
 
Every college student needs an Office Suite program package to do their reports and data processing. For Linux that is Libre Office or Open Libre Office. if you use the KDE Desktop environment, K-Office is another good package to use but it is limited to the KDE Desktop Environment. In looking over the available packages, Libre Office was available for the Raspbian for the Banana Pi. But like the Raspberry Pi, Wheezy Raspbian for the Banana Pi needed to be updated. This was difficult to do as there is no "update" command in the Raspbian for Banana Pi.  
 
The good news is that one can update Raspbian for the Banana Pi through the Apt-Get Package manager, which can be found in the Tools section of the app/programs menu.  The bad news, it opens up in a text window in the console. Its a little tricky to maneuver around but the first option is to update the installed system. Move the cursor around until you highlight Update section and press "+" to select it and then "g" to activate it. After a short while you will see the window go through the download process of updating all the system pieces that needs to be updated. This will take some time to do but when it is done you will have an updated Raspbian for the Banana Pi.
 
After the update, go to Uninstalled Packages -> Editors, and select ALL of the Libre Packages (about 12 of them) to have the complete Libre Office Suite with the "+" and then press "g" to install them. My problem was that it would not install, because I did not update my Raspbian for the Banana Pi, thinking it would just go in. After several failed attempts, I then updated Raspbian and then installing Libre Office only took a few minutes to download and install.
 
I need to research other programs I need for the Banana Pi, but since I updated Raspbian for the Banana Pi, it should be easier to do.
 
Like on the Raspberry Pi with its updates, the update for Raspbian for the Banana Pi made it faster, boot faster and more stable. But Jessie for the Banana Pi is still a missing link.
 
Running the Banana Pi (Dual Core 1.2GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM) is a lot faster than the Raspberry Pi (Model B/B+ with an over clocked 900MHz Single core CPU 512MB of RAM), which is obvious. Plus the Banana Pi has a SATA Drive and other options that the Raspberry Pi does not have. Note: The Hard Drive on the SATA Port on the Banana Pi will not be able to boot it, only the SD card with the proper booting OS will boot the Banana Pi. The SATA port is more for data/file storage.
 
The Libre Office installed on the Raspbian (Wheezy) for the Banana Pi is the same one that comes on the Raspberry Pi Jessie Raspbian.

Though he has not used it in a while, the Raspberry Pi on one of my friend has, has Wheezy from 12/13!  Strangely enough it was updated then, and has Libre Office, Gimp and IceWeasel (FireFox's competitor by Mozilla) on it. Just did an update on it, and things work nicely on it.
 
Furthermore, it already has Gnash on it from when I installed it long ago. The 'sudo apt-get update' must have updated everything.