Openoffice 3.0 released

If you're running another distro you're probably good to go.
A few notes and instructions for the installation process at the link below.

http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/10/inst ... spire.html

 

Excellent instructions as usual.

Don't forget to speed it up! There are guides easily found with Google, or you can simply disable the use of the JRE through Tools>Options, as (I believe) that's the main bottleneck.

 

Thanks Macles. Your instructions are simple for a Linux noob like me.

 

Ditto. I have just successfully upgraded to Oo 3.0. Just had to learn to ignore those "communication refused" responses that showed up repeatedly in the Terminal window.

 

Why can't anyone make an installer, or some kind of batch-file for doing this ?

It's so goddamn waste of time that every single person should have to type all this manually to install the stuff.
Those endless command lines are probably the most importing reason why people are scared of trying Linux (it sure is for me).

I'm completely n000b at Linux, but I'm sure there must be someone out there with thick enough glasses to be capable of doing it.

 

As Macles said, OOo has been packaged for Fedora 10: it's just a pity that Linpus is based on Fedora 8. It's rather like trying to install M$Office 2007 on Windows 95: it won't happen!

We have this wonderful thing in Linux - it's called 'copy and paste'. You copy the commands from macles' blog, and paste them into the terminal. Cuts down the typing nicely, and tends to avoid mistypes too. Don 't they have that in Windows?

Or of course you could be public spirited and package it yourself. It takes a bit of working out, but it's not impossible.

 

So the instructions mentioned in the link further up on this page:http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/10/installing-openoffice-30-on-acer-aspire.html
won't work anohow ?

 

Those instructions will work: that's what you need to do to install the generic OOo packages into the Linpus system.

If we had a Linux based on the more up to date Fedora, it would be a matter of going into a graphical package manager (like the Pirut installed on the One), and running an update on the Open Office software: the package would have everything set up so that the system knew what to do with it all without any manual intervention. That would be easier and not involve typing (well, apart from a password) - but like a Win95 user with an M$Office 2007 DVD, we on Linpus can't use the otherwise obvious route. Unlike the Win95 user, we can get the up to date software to run, and run as designed, but we have to try a little harder to install it.

Someone might repackage it for Fedora 8 soon to make the installation process easier, but given that FC8 is nearly a year out of date (quite a long time in Linux releases), it's doubtful; people who want the up to date versions of things often tend to run the most up to date versions of Linux. Of course, Acer with a sizeable user base using Linpus might just decide to do the work and repackage it.

 

@Pilsener
I would add to this that you're just getting confused by the terminology. The RPM files that you are installing from *are* packages, compiled from the source code that will work with any computer with the same CPU architecture (you may see i386 for 32-bit, x86_64 for 64-bit, ppc in old Macs, sparc in Sun machines, etc.). When the folks at Fedora package the software themselves, they can do things like change the default splash screen, icons, options. They're generally just cosmetic changes that aren't important.

To expand upon the last point, Fedora won't add stuff to their old Fedora 8 repository, but Acer could release it through their Live Update system, which is kind of like their own repository. We (the users) can't add stuff to either one, for obvious security reasons, so we can either wait for Acer or we can resort to the rpms. Too bad for us, but at least we don't have to compile from the source code, because let me tell you from experience, compiling openoffice from source is very, very not easy. I believe though, that openoffice added their own software updater functionality similar to firefox, so perhaps this won't be an issue anyway.

So, as daldred said before, just copy and paste. Click and drag to highlight, open terminal, middle-click the scroll wheel to paste, hit enter. It's really a much more efficient way of giving instructions; he probably could've given you a way to do it all through the GUI, but the instructions would've been much longer and much harder to follow than simply cutting and pasting commands. Don't try to type them in manually unless you're trying to learn the syntax or something. Especially those "sed" commands, those are a real killer. He could've easily made those into a bash script, but the community generally discourages new users from downloading and running scripts without knowing what the scripts are doing. Stick to it, we'll make you a CLI user yet.