back to article OpenOffice 3.0 - the only option for masochistic Linux users

In a brilliant execution of public relations, OpenOffice.org 3.0 was released without enough capacity to handle the demand for downloads. Servers buckled under the traffic, and some of us in the media took the bait: Shit, this thing must be hot. Are people really getting that excited over an open source productivity suite? …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Fail and Ted

    Open Office to difficult to install. Really?? Four installs (2 Ubuntu boxes, one Mac, and one Windoze) later and I have yet to see the litany of woes you've whined about. There are so many things to say about this ... Well I'd call it an article but that would be overly generous. However I won't because I think any commentary pointing out the glaring flaws in your little bitch fest would a waste of energy. As you seem to be hopelessly mired in some puerile hatred of anything not coming from Redmond.

  2. Dave Driver
    Paris Hilton

    Are we in a timewarp?

    OO 3.0 is not new. I got it as an portage update for gentoo in the stable tree back on October 18th. It just installed, and it just worked. What's all the fuss about?

    Paris cos even she could have coped with the update.

  3. Jonathan Adams
    Happy

    Installing in Ubuntu

    Took me about 20 seconds on google to find this one:

    http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/10/14/install-openofficeorg-30-in-ubuntu-804-and-810/

    Umm ... even installs the menus

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Get the flame retardant

    You DARE to mock the interface of the mightly OpenSource GAWD? You shall surely be smote (or at least, flamed heavily) by a raving pack of bearded acolytes!

    Have you no shame?

    ;)

  5. J
    Stop

    Ya... fail.

    If it was supposed to be funny, I'm sorry, but it wasn't.

    If it was supposed to be informative, I'm sorry, but it wasn't either. (see numerous comments above)

    Be either funny, or informative, or feck off. Waste of time.

  6. BlueGreen

    @Daniel B. - it's not hard

    In FF, Tools:Options... then click the Main tab. Download behaviour settings, right in the middle.

  7. Pete
    Gates Halo

    Ugh

    Took one look at that arsing about with the command line and said "no".

    Thankfully I can get a copy of MS Office Enterprise 2007 for a tenner through work.

    I'll stick with the industry standard thanks, and not some ropey half arsed office clone.

  8. Neil Kay
    Linux

    And your objective was...?

    So the author has a hall pass that gets his work on El Reg. Beyind that, what was the point of the article? Did he really sit down and think "My work gets published - I must write something that makes me look like an complete and utter twat"?

    Yours etc.

    //(Typing on my Acer Aspire One with Open Office 3.0 installed.)

    ////God, that article sucked balls.

    ////Yes, I am being harsh - but take it on the chin from a veteran IT Magazine freelancer from the 1980-90 season - constructuve criticism, darling.

    /////Tux laughts at your amateur ramblings

  9. Brendon Lucas
    Thumb Down

    WTF?

    OpenOffice.org is comparable to MS Office, but is considerably easier like every package on a Linux system to install and keep up-to-date, if the author of this review wants to give his personal opinion without actually having any knowledge on something he should do it in a blog not on a respected technology news portal, we expect better el'reg, this article is utter tosh, and you no it.

  10. Adam Williamson
    Thumb Down

    Patience

    Or you could, you know, just wait till packages come out for your distribution.

    Why do you have a sudden burning need to get 3.0 the day it comes out? Did 2.4 suddenly turn to poison, vile poison, or something?

  11. Russell Chait

    Installation ease

    I use Gentoo Linux with x86-64, the upgrade from O.O. 2.4 to O.O. 3.0 required only one command as root. I found that this was a lot simpler than mucking around with installing under Vista.

  12. James Carter
    Gates Horns

    It installed quite easily on my MBP

    Right next to NeoOffice 2.5. Maybe the use of OO file dialogs is intended to make the package more OS agnostic, eh?

    But I do the graphing portion of OO and all it's derivatives really sucks and blows.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Free, not gratis...

    Presstards and Officetards, no patient for them anymore...

  14. Pierre

    Bite! (patent trolling)

    OOo, a clone of MS Office? Shurely you're kidding? OOo took a lot of stuff from Sun Office (and vice versa), but the relationship with Redmond has always been one way, with the Evil MS Beast shamelessly stealing ideas (and not implementing them correctly). Latest example: xml-based document format. All the patent sabre-rattling by MS shouldn't obscure the fact that they always have been, and still are, mainly a reverse-engineering sweatshop with an eyecandy sprinkler above the exit.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Manure !

    Installed from the OpenSuse OO repository and worked like a charm - no hassle

  16. Mark
    Thumb Down

    re: software patents

    Because OOo isn't using any patents. The UI patents aren't in the WordProcessing field.

    But have a look at photo/image creation projects. Pantone cannot be used in GIMP not because it's impossible or because they aren't good enough but because those spot colours are patented.

    ASF is patented and MS threatened a video editing tool and close the project down because of it.

    Just because you see one (well funded) project producing DESPITE software patents (you reckon that Sun don't have lawyers???) doesn't mean software patents are a-ok.

  17. Schugy

    This isn't even FUD

    The author of this news must be kidding. I've downloaded the German deb-files from a German ftp-server ftp://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/openoffice/localized/de/3.0.0/OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_de_deb.tar.gz at highest possible speed and the installation worked flawlessly with Kubuntu Dapper.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ubuntu and OOo 3.0

    What's so hard to understand about the fact that OOo 3 didn't make the cutoff date for inclusion in the Intrepid release? The Ununtu team had enough on their plate shipping a new version of their OS without also testing and integrating a new app.

    I'd be more inclined to ask why the OOo crowd haven't produced a specific install for Ubuntu. If they want to see their app out there it's surely up to them to do the work. After all they've produced a specific version for Windows.

    I find that 2.4 does what I need to do, but then I find twatting around in Office apps tedious and unnecessary. If you feel you've got to have the latest office apps then there is clearly a problem somewhere.

  19. Walter Francis
    Thumb Down

    Nice to see some real unbiased intelligent reporting

    Elsewhere... there's none in THIS article.

  20. alexc

    boring review. lots of attitude nothing to say.

    Right, so obviously a lot of things wound up the reviewer. I use MS office and OO office. Both work. Got to be said that Calc is not as good as Excel. Yet, OO office is free. Winner.

    Is MS now the biggest advertiser on this site? bet it is......better not upset 'em eh?

    And dunno, but i cannot understand how you can screw up installing OO on linux. just installs in home directory, and runs does it not? doh. Does not need any special rpm? maybe i am a know it all.

    Can get fed up with the Sun/daily mirror style reviews. :-)

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    ummm, whaat?

    Well, my mileage certainly varied from the reporter's.

    I only started using Linux after I bought my Eee earlier this year, so I am a n00b. Installing OO3 was as easy as anything else on Xandros -- I downloaded the correct deb package, fired up the terminal, and was done in in less time than it took me to write this much.

    As for the speed of the program, I've found that after disabling Java, OpenOffice starts as quickly as AbiWord.

    On my Mac, I've been using NeoOffice for three years. No need for X, and it had docx compatibility this spring. In fact, NeoOffice 2.x has better Arabic language support than OO3 does so far, although I'm sure the language support team will get on it eventually.

  22. storng.bare.durid

    Outliner

    Does this thing have a good outliner built into the word processor?

  23. Max
    IT Angle

    "Distro" packages are for noobs...

    "The whole point in the distribution centric model is that the QA and integration work can happen in a tested environment.'

    The above statement is crap, esp. in light of the fact of the Debian SSH fiasco, and the fact that still to this day upgrades often mutilate large swaths of /etc customizations.

    Most pros rather prefer to use their own source compiled apps for production purposes; usually "distro"packages are there when you're in a hurry or don't care. Oo3 definitely falls into the "don't care" category.

  24. SkippyBing
    Flame

    and this is why Linux will never conquer the world

    My Mother can install things in Windows without phoning me, I couldn't install anything in Linux without losing the will to live and developing body odour. I don't care if it's really easy if you execute two lines of text at a command line prompt I just want to write a fucking letter not learn another language. You may call me a noob and a fucktard, but 99% of the population are of the same opinion and until you can install something on Linux by double clicking the file you downloaded it's going to be stuck in the cul-de-sac of spotty geeky people who can't get dates.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    one page too many

    the first page of this rather biased article.....

    there's a rpm and a deb. both 32bit and 64bit

    so what's this all about ?

    Perhaps you forgot that OO is opensource, which means you get what you paid for or more ?

    ac

    paris, because she would have spotted the deb and rpm packages sometime during the 1st second........

  26. Tom

    do people still use office software

    to prevent them computerising their work?

    Microsoft: the man with the red flag walking very slowy in front of your computer.

  27. Sal

    Review?

    I installed Oo3 on Suse as an auto update - took minutes after a single mouseclick and is working fine.

    I find the argument as to whether it's better than Microsoft Office or not irrelevant to me as it's free and does what i want it to. I'm sure Microsoft Office is superior in many ways but I'm not going to spend hundreds of pounds to find out what those ways are.

  28. Mark

    @SkippyBing

    "My Mother can install things in Windows without phoning me"

    Unless it's Windows 95 only and she only has WinXP.

    Or it's XP only hardware and she has Vista.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Cannot install oOO 3.0

    Because the only language available is English version available is US. If I want a word processor that cannot spell, I'll use MS Word.

    So I am stuck with 2.4 for now.

    Yeah, I probably can get the source, merge it, recompile it and generally piss about; but as a general consumer I don't want to nor should I have to. Freetards just don't get that.

  30. Lee Field

    Inaccurate Installation Info

    Whilst openoffice does have it's issues, I believe that it is a good if sometimes slow to start package but enough of opinion......

    'Since this isn't an Ubuntu package, it doesn't have Ubuntu integrations' is quite frankly incorrect an ill researched.

    I have installed the beta previously on Ubuntu 8.04 and the now stable on 8.10.

    Firstly you uninstall the 2.4 openoffice from your system.

    Download the deb version .tgz and untar. (this is available from any of the mirrors)

    Open a terminal, change into the directory where you extracted to, in my case: OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358

    and type

    ./update

    This then installs the main openoffice 3.

    Then:

    cd DEBS/desktop-integration

    and finally

    dpkg -i openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb

    And surprise surprise all the nice pretty icons under: Application > Office on the gnome menu.

    A word of advice for the author, whilst some time has been spent on the article, it has not been properly researched and a few minutes spent on google would have been time well spent.

  31. This post has been deleted by its author

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    And this is why

    All of the comments above me, is all the proof you will ever need as to why Linux will never get anywhere.

    Command Line?

    You guys reply like its a good thing that you need to type reams of code to get a crappy piece of software to work.

    I'd rather pay for Office.

  33. Bill Gould
    Gates Halo

    OOOooOoOooOooOooo

    It's still shite, lacking basic functionality like copying cell, column or row background or text color when sorting. Instead you have to use the advanced sort menu/screen. Fuck me. *highlight area, click A-Z, it works!* How hard is that you cheeto munching open source ass-hats!

  34. John Werner
    Stop

    Solver tool

    The hype is interesting about the solver tools, both in OO and MS land, especially considering that both of these pale in comparison to the grand-daddy of all equation solvers, Tk!Solver. I was using this spreadsheet like program 20 year ago to solve matrix equations.

  35. Chika
    Coat

    @Will Godfrey

    Yay! I knew I wasn't alone on here!

    Mind you, I think that the last bit of software I got involved with on RISC OS that was as bloated as that was the Firefox port. When I consider the size of some of the software we use, I have to giggle.

    Pity that the OS is dying. I really wonder what it would have become if the various idiots that supported the Merkan Pooter effort had given the home market a bit of support. Hmm... sounds like csa fodder to me!

  36. Alex Davidson
    Thumb Up

    And lo, the flames did roll in.

    Another fantastic controversial Reg article. Amazing how many people are willing to argue religion on the internets, isn't it? I think I'll join in.

    As others have pointed out, Ubuntu's strength lies in the package management system, and only a real enthusiast (with time to burn) is going to bother installing something that's not yet available via said system. Or trust an unpatched release, for that matter.

    As still others have pointed out, Windows still rules the desktop. This isn't likely to change until the much-marketed 'Cloud' actually starts to mean something. Windows may be big, slow, and unimaginably bloated, but everyone and their grandma can use it. Unfortunately, the assumption in the world of Management seems to be that Windows servers can therefore be adminned (properly) minus Clue and must be better. So Linux/Unix will never be ousted from /that/ sphere.

    Me, I'm just damn glad my job doesn't require me to use any office apps except for viewing files.

    Except for LookOut, which will be disappearing just as soon as I get the chance to bring our email back in-house.

    Nice one, Ted. Keep 'em coming!

    PS: Incidentally, this myth of the OS dying is a pet peeve of mine. It isn't dying. It's just becoming less visible to the user. In the Cloud context, you'll still need an OS of some sort to run Cloud terminals on. In the virtualisation context:

    Time was, the OS was a thin layer of APIs and libraries that everything else could talk to the hardware through without worrying about the details, and all the user saw was the UI (graphical, text-based, whatever). Then it got a GUI and a 'consistent user experience' (mainly a Windows and Mac trait, but desktop Linux will doubtless get there eventually too). Now virtualisation and paravirtualisation have come along, with the idea of virtual appliances, and we're back to the nice thin layer of hardware abstraction again, which is invisible to the user.

    So if you mean 'the big shiny consistent GUIs that the user sees are being replaced with infinitely-variable, often-crap web sites and apps', then yeah, the 'OS' is dying. In any other sense, it's just the usual cycle of reincarnation combined with vendor waffling.

    Give it ten or twenty years and we'll be moving back towards monolithic platforms and consistent GUIs again.

  37. BioTube
    Thumb Down

    FIle picker

    How is that confusing? It doesn't force you to point-and-click when you know the filename you want. If you can't find your way around a mildly powerful utility(and, seeing as you use Ubuntu, you probably can't), it's nobody's fault but your own.

    "Build something even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it."

  38. nick

    ubuntu 8.04 amd64

    Installation can be easy with Ubuntu/ Kubuntu 8.04 with the 64 bit version. Downloading the .deb is not available on the website directly, but go to the torrent (P2P) section and download them. Install all the packages in the unzipped file. You don't even have to remove 2.X from your machine.

    Although I do concur 2.X works just as good, but for me Solver is extremely necessary as an engineering student. Definitely saved me money. Thanks Oo.o

  39. Gilbert West
    Heart

    It should just work

    Well I thought it was funny and I use it on all 3 OSes

  40. Yfrwlf
    Linux

    Please oh please...

    ...for the love of all things penguiny and the sanity of it's users, create some god damn package standards that all the most common distros will be compatible with. We have document standards. We have web standards. You'd think the open source communities would be all about creating package standards that will be implemented by most all package managers.

    I'd like to click on any package I want and have it work, whether it be DEB, RPM, or some new format, give me the freedom to do that, please. If it's not cross-distro, it's a garbage format.

  41. Tr0n
    Stop

    hahaha

    hahaha - you ass!

    Gnome's dialog is much worse, you can't even configure OOo correctly to give you nice graphs, and it seems you can't even download from a website correctly.

    Try using Fedora, and you'll be able to install directly from firefox using RPM.

    I'm not sure about ubuntu - but I'd be suprised if something similar wasn't going on.

    And why the hell are you using 64-bit when you're not using it in a server environment?

    There are a fair number of troubles with 64-bit computing at the moment and the best corse of action is to stick to i686 (i386/i486/i586). and leave x86-64 alone for the time being (hell, do you purposefully go and install 64-bit windows and try running windows 95 code on it?).

    --

    Paul_one

  42. Mark

    re: Please oh please...

    There is.

    RPM is the mandated part of the Linux Standards Base.

    This is why "alien" is available for debian based Linux distributions.

    However, since you cannot tell a distributor they CANNOT do X or MUST do Y and have every single one of them obey (this is NOT a dictatorship), some systems don't use RPMs.

    The bad stick RPM gets is more to do with the piss-poor work most people put into creating an RPM. Similarly, the good rep a deb package has is because of the extreme care taken by deb packagers.

    PS why don't you ask that MS produce a single installer package, not a new frigging one with each application (and forbid others using anything other than the One Blessed Package Manager)?

  43. Gerry

    @Yfrwlf

    At least one distro provider is starting to do just as you ask (Novell). Quite nice of them, as it's all done free of charge and they only use RPM, so there's not much in for them to provide .deb .

    It's a different model, in case you were not sure.

    Free Software, among other things is rooted in gift culture, I get all this work free,thank you.

    Perhaps, (for those of us not skilled in development) if you find something goes wrong, or want a new feature, you might consider filing a rational and cogent report to one of the developers, so they can do something with it.

    Then we all benefit

    Just a thought

  44. A J Stiles
    Linux

    @ Yfrwlf

    There *is* a common standard for software packages on any distribution. It's called a Source Code Tarball. Often ends in .tar.gz or .tar.bz2.

    If you think that's too hard for you to deal with (and OO.org *is* rather more complex than just ./configure, make, make install), then wait for somebody at your favourite distro to make a package for your favourite distro.

    You can no more expect a package originally compiled for Ubuntu to run on Mandriva than you can expect a map of the route from your kitchen to your bathroom to be valid in someone else's house. That's just how distributions are, and you should bear in mind the size of the official package repositories when choosing one.

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Ubuntu is a pretty decent desktop OS,

    but another that is a very good desktop alternative to Microsoft is PC-BSD. Those having trouble with Ubuntu should give it a try.

    Penguin, because there is neither a puffy nor daemon icon.

  46. Chris
    Gates Horns

    hmmm

    I just want to preface by saying I don't use Ubuntu ,I'm a Suse fan.

    That being said I just downloaded and installed it ,no problems at all.

    I can't see how this guy had so much trouble one way or the other.

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    I don't know why everyone is bashing the author

    I don't know why everyone is bashing the author. As he said, the default x86_64 OO.org 3.0 Linux build does not include an en_GB dictionary, and God knows where they keep it on that mares nest of a site. And yes, it is very nice if your distro includes it in it's repositories, but the creators of my distro considers OO.org the Spawn of Satan and sometimes I agree with them. As to the comments about why are you using X86_64 on the desktop, well i386 distros won't be around forever and someone has to find all the programs that don't run properly for you lunkheads who are incapable of running anything other than Ubuntu and who think "emerge" is hardcore programming.

  48. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OpenOffice 3.0

    Ted:

    1. OpenOffice has been part of the standard Fedora install for a number of releases now.....no problems.....put the DVD in the drive and 40 minutes later Fedora 9 comes up complete with OpenOffice.

    2. Adam Osborne was being given grief about Wordstar and SuperCalc in 1982 ("Not as good as some competing product" etc, etc). Same complaint as voiced in your article. Osborne's answer was simple - "Adequacy is enough". Now speaking for myself, OO is perfectly "adequate" ......even though it doesn't have absolutely every bell or whistle to be found in MS Office. Most MS Office users only use only a small percentage of the fucntionality in the software. Guess what - OO covers MY needs - including interoperability with MS Office.

    Regards from Charlotte NC.

  49. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Package?

    How ridiculous. I prefer to install by printing the installer onto paper, then manipulating the magnetic disk domains directly with a sewing needle and a magnet. All you lazy Ubuntards and Windickheads don't know what sheer fun you're missing. Come on developers, make a special installer just for me. Me me me me me! Me me me!

    Me.

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Installing OpenOffice.org 3.00 on Ubuntu 8.10

    I searched 'install OpenOffice.org 3.00 on Ubuntu 8.10' on Google and found the following:

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-To-Install-OpenOffice-org-3-0-in-Ubuntu-8-10-96449.shtml

    How much easier could it be?

This topic is closed for new posts.