Installing Libreoffice in Ubuntu

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
I think John Sowdon is suggesting that it might be a good idea to have
simple instructions on the official website and make them easily accessible
to noobs. This would be something for the Website's Team to discuss.

The current page is under the "Get Help" 'tab'-type thing at the top of the
official website;
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/install-howto/linux/
It specifically mentions Ubuntu. It also states that the version in the
distro's repository (=repo) is good enough and probably better than a more
up-to-date version because the one in the repo has usually been
tweaked/tuned to fit better with existing packages in whichever distro.

I'm not blaming the websites team here. It is tough to get the UI right
and at a guess the team is desperately short of people to help with both
that and other work they need to do. So i think they are doing a great job
and it's not easy (or even not possible usually) to get everything to be
perfect!

To get to those instructions on our official website you have about 3
clicks and a bit of reading so according to recommendations about website
design it is beyond the reach of most first-timers. I think current
estimates are that most people would leave a site after about 3 seconds and
1 click if they hadn't found something interesting/relevant by then. So
our instructions miss being noticed by several seconds and a couple of
clicks. From the official website's home-page it'd be;
1. click on the "Get Help" 'tab' (if you can see the black against
dark-green writing)
2. about halfway down the list click on "Installation instructions"
3. figure out which button is relevant (not very tough but does involve
reading - perhaps logos/mascots might make this clearer?)

Our official wiki also has quite decent instructions imo. It might be good
to compare against Andreas' and see if they can be improved using some/all
of what his email gave. Our official wiki-page is here;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Install/Linux

Again not so easy to find so people probably find it safer and easier to
try googling it (or duck-duck-going it) rather than hunting around our
wiki. I think most people involved in writing or editing anything on our
wiki agree that it's a bit disorganised but can't agree on how to tidy it.
The whole wiki grew very fast and had to capture or build-up a LOT of
information very quickly. Also some quite advanced functionality was
available and very different ways of using wiki's and other types of
web-pages/facilities and the whole Cloud thing was just becoming more
mainstream. There wasn't time for people to settle down, get together and
plan name conventions, position of pages or even overall structure.

For example it initially made sense for the;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation
to be instructions on how to join the Documentation Team. Hindsight is
fantastic though because now it seems not such a good idea at all! Once
documentation started appearing it was suddenly obvious that those chapters
and books should actually be the first thing people see when arriving at
that page. So for a year or so that page was quite a mess until the
separate things got put onto their own sub-pages and that landing page got
used as a disambiguation menu (thanks Sophie!). Meanwhile someone had
translated a very involved FAQ from the French wiki and placed it here;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq
outside of the Documentation part of the wiki. So there is a lingering
question about whether to move all those pages into;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Faq
but that would mean leaving forwarding pages at all the currently used
pages which would make even more of a confusing mess than already exists.

Individual page-name vary between using spaces between words, and then
those spaces get replaced by "%20" which makes the names incoherent to most
people. So some pages use "-" between words and others use _ .
Unfortunately when giving people links the whole name usually gets turned
to blue and underlined so then it's not easy to see if there is a space or
an underline. If you are happy to just click on links then that's fine but
it's a know security issue because it's so easy to use html to redirect a
link that appears to go somewhere innocuous. Other people use CamelCase to
avoid having any spaces or other weird characters/codes in the Url.

So while the whole wiki is generally agreed to be a bit of a mess it's
difficult to move or rename resources which people probably have their own
links to, or have become familiar navigating too and might be taken aback
if it suddenly looked as different as a spam/spoofed-site.

I hope this clarifies why there may be problems with our documentation and
instructions etc and maybe, hopefully show a way of dealing with the
immediate issue and/or how to set-up a strategy for helping fix what we
have!

Meanwhile the Documentation Team could really use help with just
proof-reading some freshly done chapters. It's a good way in to learning
about how the team works. It's something best done by someone who doesn't
know much about how to use LibreOffice. Inevitably as you proof-read you
learn quite a lot about how to use LibreOffice and so the valuable noobs in
the team tend to quickly become a lot less useful for proof-reading and
more useful for "reviewing" to check the instructions really do what is
required. So if you have no idea how to use a part of LibreOffice then
please try to join the Documentation Team as a proof-reader. If you
already have some technical expertise with it then joining as a Reviewer
would be fantastic too.

The "Base Handbook" is the one currently most in need of proof-reading.
Reviewing has effectively been done already but a fresh set of eyes for
another review would always be welcome.

Good luck and many regards from
Tom

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
Ahhh, there is actually a link to the "installation instructions" on the
downloads page but there is a LOT to read there and the link is not very
noticeable.
Regards from
Tom

[Villeroy]

Hi
I think John Sowdon is suggesting that it might be a good idea to have
simple instructions on the official website and make them easily accessible
to noobs. This would be something for the Website's Team to discuss.

Installing software on Linux is not for noobs. Noobs can live with what
they get from ppa and update automagically.

John R. Sowden wrote:

I have been using the command line since trs-80, cp/m and dos before moving to linux. What are the commands? (Fresh PPA)

So I could write a detailed description about how to install any
downloadable versions of Open/LibreOffice on a Debian system without
having to explain the command line.
He knows that he doesn't have to type all that stuff.
He can handle the clipboard on a terminal.
He knows about symlinks, current path, path variables, absolute and
relative paths.
The installation procedure is a matter of seconds or may be two minutes
including the md5sum check and including the "desktop integration" which
is not really necessary to run the software.

[JOE_Conner]

Hmmm, one way that noobs become non-noobs is by following clear directions a few times. I agree with John Sowdon, and I abhore "screw-you" snobs.

Joe Conner, Poulsbo, WA USA

[Villeroy]

Go ahead. Write a clear instruction how to install LibreOffice on Debian
for someone who never used a command line interface.

[Mark_Phillips]

1) Use the Software Center in Ubuntu. Never mind that it is not the
current version. Never mind that the version is not posted in the "more
Info" description, along with the date of the version.

Not sure what you are looking at, but on my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, the version
of libreoffice is clearly displayed in the Software Center. It is at the
bottom of the page - libreoffice-base 1:4.2.8-0ubuntu2

or

20 Go to libreoffice.org. Press the big download button. Now what?
Start googling for instructions.
Expect the instructions to not tell you:
    an explanation of each command.
    where the program will end up on your system.
    whether it will automatically get rid of the remnant files and even
the original downloaded files.
    how to deal with the help, and why.

Hmmm.....and of course, Microsoft Office or any other Microsoft alternative
software will tell you all these things when you install it? I think not.

or

3) Google like I did last night and find that there are "ppa"s, with a
well written explanation of the "fresh ppa" being better and why. Now try
to find how to install the most current version, whether you have a copy on
your computer or not.

and

How to deal with dependencies, not just finding out that you have
"dependency problems" but also that LO will not install due to them.

It seems that this is a universal Linux problem. If you don't know the
intricacies of Linux, then you shouldn't be using it. So much for
attaining more market share.

If you don't want to deal with dependencies, then install the LO from the
Software Center, and stop whining. If you want a different version, then
learn how to read, handle dependencies, work from the command line, and
stop whining.

If you find Linux and LO so offensive that you have to publicly whine like
this instead of asking meaningful questions about a particular prorblem, I
suggest you purchase Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, and pay for a
support plan so you can complain to someone in India or Ireland about your
problems.

Linux (and life) is about learning to help yourself.

Mark

[MR_ZenWiz]

FWIW, I wrote this script a couple of years ago to do the installations for me.

#!/bin/bash

# A script to install or update libreoffice releases properly

if [[ "$1" == "-x" ]]; then
    shift
    set -x
fi

me=`basename $0`
Usage() {
    echo "Usage: $me [-x][-h|--help] <gzipped-tarball> [<gzipped-tarball>...]"
    exit 0
}

if [[ -z "$1" || "$1" == "-h" || "$1" == "--help" ]]; then Usage; fi

# Change these to install on rpm base systems
tgt=DEBS
cmd="dpkg -i"
sfx=deb

for tb in $*; do
    if [[ ! -f $tb ]]; then
        if [[ -f "$tb.tgz" ]]; then
            tb="$tb.tgz"
        elif [[ -f "$tb.tar.gz" ]]; then
            tb="$tb.tar.gz"
        else
            echo "Can't find $tb or $tb.tgz or $tb.tar.gz - skipping..."
            read ln
            continue
        fi
    fi

    # find out what the name of the uncompressed subdirectory will be
    dst=`tar tzf $tb 2> /dev/null | head -1 | awk -F/ '{print $1}'`
    tar xzf $tb
    if [[ ! -d $dst/$tgt ]]; then
        echo "Can't find $me directory $dst/$tgt - skipping..."
        read ln
        continue
    fi

    # install or update, depending on how I was called
    cd $dst/$tgt
    case $me in
        loinst)
            sudo $cmd *.$sfx
            if [[ -d desktop-integration ]]; then
                cd desktop-integration
                sudo $cmd *.$sfx
                cd ..
            fi
            cd ../..
            ;;
        loupdate)
            cd ..
            sudo ./update
            cd ..
            ;;
    esac

    # delete the installation directory
    /bin/rm -rf $dst
done

echo ""

MR

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
ZenWiz!! Superb answer!! :)))

I found this link about how to start writing scripts;
https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/284789-writing-a-simple-bash-script-
There are plenty of others but this one got straight to the point. Here's
some that are even more long-winded than me!
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Beginners/BashScripting
https://wiki.debian.org/BashScripting
Ok, maybe not as long-winded as me (and more of it that's useful) but still
tooo long.

Joe i agree with your comment. The only proviso is that there are many
different ways of learning. Also noobs lose their noobish-edges very
quickly, especially with something like Gnu&Linux and even without trying.

I've enjoyed this thread so far! Thanks all
Regards to all from
Tom

[Villeroy]

THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!

[jbfaure]

Hi,

[...]

For any "desktop integration" you can install an additional package go
to subdir of en-US/DEBS:

cd desktop-integration

The subdirectory desktop-integration does not exist anymore in LO 4 and
LO 5 installation archives.
All packages, including libreoffice5.0-debian-menus package for desktop
integration, are in the same directory.

Best regards.
JBF

[Philip_Jackson]

Thank you Tom for that interesting explanation of the documentation website.

It explains why I often have trouble finding answers there. I keep a local copy
of "OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide" on my machine and can often find answers
there faster than on the website.

Philip

[Villeroy]

LO introduces far too many changes to the worse which is why I still
prefer OpenOffice.

[reisi007]

Would you be so kind as to tell us which aspects got worse?

[krackedpress]

I tend not to use PPA for LibreOffice. I want more control over what version of LibreOffice I have installed on all my systems and when they get upgraded to a newer version. I have some systems [Windows 10 and Ubuntu 14.04 or 15.04] running 5.0.x, while others run 4.4.x. I sometimes remove and install different versions of LibreOffice for testing and evaluation for my needs and others I have dealt with so I can recommend the "proper" version of the software and/or let them know when it is time to upgrade to a new version.

Of course, in later posts there is a lot of talk about command line installs and noob. "Linux is not for noobs" was one statement, but how does noobs not stay noobs without working with the OS? I have been working with Linux since the 2004 or so. I have has a Linux desktop as my default system since later 2009 or early 2010. I still do not know even a third of what I would like to know or what people tell me I need to know. So to some, I am still a noob. Since I have been working with computers since the smallest ones were the size of refrigerators and punch cards were the normal program storage method, I have worked with these things for a long time, on-and-off. SO, I have seen a lot of noobs learn what they need to no longer be considered a noob. They did so by working with the package or OS and not avoiding it since they are noobs. If a person think you should avoid things you are a noob for then that same person could also say you should avoid switching from MS Office to LibreOffice since you would be new to the package and should avoid using it. I have been using LibreOffice since almost "day one" and I know very little about the things LibreOffice can do for which I have no use for. So I must be a noob after these 4 or 5 years, or at least to some people on this list.

- - - - - - - -
off topic, but part of the post

Why are you still using Ubuntu 12.04? Since 14.04 LTS has been out for a year+ and 15.04 is out with 15.10 coming out soon, why have you not used the upgrade manager and installed the newer version[s] of Ubuntu? If there is a good reason why 14.04 or newer does not work for you, it would be nice to know.

I started to have dependency issues with it last year when installing some new software. Of course, 14.04 caused some dependency issues when it dropped support for some dependencies needed for my Canon printer.

The big reason, for me to go beyond 12.04 was the fact that a lot of my favorite software had updates/upgrades that would not work on 12.04.

To get around the 14.04 dependency issues, I upgraded from 12.04 and DID NOT allow the outdated packages to be removed in the upgrade process. That kept the driver dependent packages from being removed. To be honest, this desktop I am typing from was wiped clean since I went from Linux Mint to Ubuntu with MATE d.e.. I installed 12.04 and then installed all my printers and other packages/drivers needed. Then I upgraded to 14.04. If I did not install the printers/drivers at this stage, then it caused some issues when installing them after the 14.04 upgrade was finished.

The reason I question about still using 12.04 LTS is the fact that there are a lot of kernel and other internal updates/upgrades that might be important down the line. The only issue I have seen was with an old package - Kompozer - that does not work with the new GUI interface, or something like that. The upgraded drivers/packages that is the basis for having a graphical display will not work with Kompozer - my default WYSIWYG editor for web pages. I have to find a replacement, since Kompozer is no longer an active project and will not be upgraded to work with the new graphical systems.

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
I suspect that's it's mostly only the "Fresh" branch.

LibreOffice has an extremely fast-paced development. Each new branch
introduces tons of new functionality and deals with legacy problems. This
is partly "catch up", partly recoding to reduce the wide number of
different programming languages into just C(++?) and Python, partly
increasing compatibility with constantly changing proprietary formats,
partly dealing with revolutionary changes in IT and radically new ways of
thinking.

"Sun" achieved a stability by preventing almost anyone from making any
changes at all. This meant that although there were tons of problems these
were all "known problems" that people knew to either work-around or
accept. They seldom worked on bug-reports or fixed anything, apparently.

With each change, even if it's 'just' patching some problem there is a
potential for unexpected side-effects. OpenOffice has a tradition (thanks
to Sun and Oracle) of not dealing with problems. So OO remains "stable"
even in a wide-eyed-end-user type of way. LibreOffice marches fearlessly
on, deals with issues, adds new stuff to the "Fresh" branch and then
patches as many of the new problems as it can with subsequent releases in
that branch even after it becomes the "Still" branch and a new "Fresh"
branch has been released.

So it really isn't any surprise that LO has issues that OpenOffice
doesn't. The same is true the other way around too! Both still have some
long-running issues, just as any long-running project has. Just as MS
Office has. Some may never be resolved but it's more likely to be fixed
some day in LibreOffice precisely because so much more work is going on and
because of the faster pace of development.

This all happened long ago too ...
Back before TDF and LibreOffice, before Oracle, various companies such as
Novell, SuSE, Redhat, Gnome, Debian, Canonical (Ubuntu) and many more got
together and developed a project called Go-oo that added a ton of stuff to
each new release of OO.o making it faster and with better compatibility.
However this often left the original branding in place so that many people
thought they were using OpenOffice.org as released by "Sun" when they were
actually using Go-oo. This was the case with almost all Gnu&Linux
distros.

IBM created their own additions and changes, eschewing the Go-o changes and
just doing it all their own way to create "IBM Lotus Symphony" to sell to
corporate organisations and others.

Some Mac people did their own thing to OO.o to create NeoOffice.

So lots of people were a little unhappy with the stagnation of OpenOffice
under Sun and created their own forks or bunch of additions/changes to the
infrequent OO.o releases.

When Oracle acquired Sun and refused to communicate with the community at
all, apparently seized assets, bank accounts and funds (almost entirely
raised by the community and meant for the community's usage) a small group
of (imo) heroes (incl Charles Schulz, Sophie, Italo, Micheal Meeks (of
Novell) and about 16 more) pushed through the plan that had been developed
years earlier to break away and create an independent organisation purely
for the OpenOfice.org office suite.

Luckily, under Sun, some communities had created independent "local"
community organisations. Famously one in Germany, one in France, one in
Brasil and so on. This made it easier for those places to set-up events
and respond to "local" situations faster - without needing to run and ask
"Sun" if every 'little' thing was ok with them. The Brazilian one had
added some of their own coding making BrOO, yet another fork(ish?). Mostly
these properly registered independent organisations were able to hang onto
their own assets. The German one had enough funds, and enough expertise,
to lend "The Document Foundation" enough funds to "start-up" as a "new"
charity/business/organisation - and to give outsiders confidence in the
legitimacy and future prospects of the new charity/business/organisation.
Presumably that has long since been repaid or become irrelevant and TDF has
shown that it is excellently well managed and gained a strong reputation in
it's own right!

Oracle kept the name and the branding so the newly formed "The Document
Foundation" had to develop something new, even if it seemed like it would
only be temporary and that Oracle would do the sensible thing and just give
the name and branding back to the community. Some people stayed with OO.o,
even under Oracle, and went through a ton of hardships there. The press
and media blew it up as a fight between them and us when really it was
still one community with 2 slightly diverging office suites and 2 different
organisations "in charge".

Go-oo quickly (well, in under a year) merged their changes into the main
branch. Almost everyone in Go-oo was already heavily involved in
LibreOffice anyway. For a year or so afterwards their website carried a
really sweet and somewhat triumphant message saying that they had closed
down and gone to TDF and LibreOffice. It's gone now but the domain is
still hosted somewhere.

Almost all Gnu&Linux distros switched to having LibreOffice as the default
office suite quite quickly, even many that had previously used KOffice
(which also forked at around that time) as their default office suite.

I think NeoOffice and BrOffice also merged back into main-branch of
LibreOffice too along with other less-well-known forks and extra projects
although i've not kept track of what they have been doing.

Oracle attempted to claim their OpenOffice was the superior by suddenly
working frantically towards a new release, which they numbered just
slightly higher than LibreOffice's numbers at the time but by then they had
already lost the impetus and their paid devs weren't familiar with the OO.o
code-base so their 'new' version didn't have anything like as much polish
or new features. TDF responded to the challenge by simply re-numbering the
releases they were already working on at the time and swept in some new
features they had been going to leave for the next "Fresh" branch. So TDF
got their version out days earlier than Oracle and with it looking much
better too according to all the reviews at the time. By the time Oracle
released their 3.4 (or was it 5?).0 a few days later it was tooo late and
unimpressive so few, if any, articles appeared about it - except to compare
it against the LO one that 'everyone' had already been using.

Oracle finally seemed to wake up to the fact they weren't going to be able
to compete and weren't going to be able to split the program/suite up in
order to make an "enterprise" or "professional" version to profit from.
They seemed to see it as a "mill-stone around their neck".

At the time they were in court fighting against Apache. IBM allegedly
managed to convince them to 'give' OpenOffice away. Better a millstone
around an opponents neck than around your own when you are trying to fight
someone, right?

Since then OpenOffice has really flown. Their community, along with some
new people from Apache, have done some amazing good work. With their new
owner just letting them "get on with it", rather than constantly fighting
against them, made a huge difference! It then became much easier for
people to be in both communities and to some extent share work across both
projects. Sadly by then so much development had already gone into
LibreOffice that the two projects really had diverged from each other so
sharing code is often not possible any more - but that hasn't stopped
people working in both or sharing ideas across both or just helping each
other personally. IBM eventually 'gave' "Lotus Symphony" to Apache
OpenOffice so they could merge.

Hagar helped me with one of our wiki-pages by basically letting me just
copy&paste one of his help-pages from their forum - and helped me with some
of the changes it needed too. The head of the LO Documentation Team spent
a lot of time heading up their Documentation Team too. All across the
projects there are people working together quietly.

So throughout the history of this forking and so-called fragmentation it's
actually been a case of merging and consolidation - with even the 2 main
apparent 'rivals' working together to a much greater extent than outsiders
would understand.

Regards from
Tom

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
The "Published Guides" for OpenOffice or LibreOffice are often the best
documentation for AOO or LO - at least for English readers. The LO ones,
including incomplete books and archived versions, can be found at;

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

for free or bought from the Lulu bookstore as proper paper-back books. I
bought a few of these and I'm really glad i did even though i haven't read
all of it yet! I think i managed to time it right so that Lulu were
offering one of their frequent discount weekends or something.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/libreoffice-documentation-team/getting-started-with-libreoffice-42/paperback/product-21682463.html

The guides are also available in various App Stores or online book-stores
for reading on-screen; such as the Apple store, the Ubuntu one and maybe
others. They usually cost a bit but not much. Enough to cover the costs
of publishing them in those places and a little more to allow a bit of
expansion in their distribution.

Also available on the official LibreOffice website (for free of course!);
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

For non-English languages it is usually the 'in-built' help that is far
better.

There are also on-line videos such as the excellent range at Spoken
Tutorials;
http://spoken-tutorial.org/
although they cover a much wider range of OpenSource projects so you'd have
to hunt for LibreOffice in that lot Also while English is excellent
they also do many languages from around the Indian basin as it's a
non-profit organisation largely funded by the Indian Government.
Regards from
Tom

[Villeroy]

Would you be so kind as to tell us which aspects got worse?

This one is a tiny example but symptomatic for the whole development
process:

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94557

New "feature" without specification nor reason plus bad implemention.
I'm grateful that this "feature" will be reverted because "my users"
suffer from it every day. Well, "my users" preferred the green one over
the blue one.

[Villeroy]

I never install any fresh brunch. If I install LO, then I install some
version that works acceptably well. LO 5.0 was not even Alpha because
large parts of the Calc component remained untested.

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
I think that is one thing many of us on this list agree on. I think most
of us have said it at some point or other over the years.

I think it's a travesty that "Fresh" appears to be the only option on the
official downloads page to first-timers and that getting the more solid,
reliable "Still" requires a lot more geekiness. To my mind it 'should' be
the other way so that people have to dig a bit for the shiny new features -
with the majority of new-comers getting the reliable "Still", at least
until the curiosity get piqued.

So often the answer to a noobs problem is to simply try the "Still" branch
and then trying to explain why and that it's not "old". As soon as they
try it that is usually enough to fix almost any noobs problem.

It's the same with a lot of articles out there. When an article claims
that LO is not mature and had obscure problems it's almost invariably
because they were using "Fresh" rather than "Still".

"Fresh" is exciting but it should be more like an "easter egg" in a movie
or game that has to be discovered or some challenge over-come in order to
find it.

Regards from
Tom

[Tom_Davies1]

Hi
Looks like a teaching lesson where the dev learned a lot about practical
and real-world coding that maybe hadn't been taught in his largely
theoretical studies.

Looks like they had the suitable qualifications on their CV but lacked a
bit of "street"-wisdom.

Also looks like most of their commit was smart and useful and has been
retained while only a small element at the start is being held back for
them to re-write with their newly learned wisdom.

So while it was annoying to one of us (and his clients) most of us wouldn't
have even noticed it and that it got fixed pretty quickly. Top marks for
posting the bug-report and helping them with it. That has helped us all
even before most of is realised there was a problem

It's a good example of why it's good for most of us and other experienced
users to try "Fresh" before foisting it on our clients or on noobs.
Regards from
Tom