A number of distributions mess around with OpenOffice.org and release their own versions. The reasons vary. According to OOo, "Some distributions have strict policies around licensing, which means they have chosen to disable parts of OpenOffice.org which rely on software which does not meet their criteria (e.g. the Fedora rpms have disabled the parts of OpenOffice.org which require Java)." Personally, I prefer the unadulterated version. Not only do you get all the features, but you can also upgrade the moment the latest release is out and not have to wait for your distro's package maintainers to catch up.

In Ubuntu, the first step is to remove the existing packages. The quickest way to do so is to open a terminal session and paste in this command:

sudo apt-get remove openoffice.org-base-core openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-common openoffice.org-core openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-writer

(Don't worry, it won't remove the .openoffice.org file in your home directory -- the one that contains all your settings, templates, dictionary additions and the like.)

Next download the latest release of OOo and save it to your Desktop. Right-click the archive and choose Extract Here. When it's done, navigate to the new folder in your terminal session, go to the /DEBS directory and enter this command to install all the packages...

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Now cd into desktop-integration and repeat the command to add OOo to your menus.

And that's it... except for one small problem. The Adept Updater will show your OpenOffice.org packages as "Upgradeable". I'll show you how to fix that in the next Hidden Linux...




Footnote: The latest beta of OpenOffice.org 3.0 is out. Get it here. And check here for Ubuntu installation (and removal!) tips.



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