Installing Libreoffice in Ubuntu

users
#31

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

Would you be so kind as to tell us how to enter some numbers into a
Writer table?
LibreOffice 4.4
menu:File>New>Text
Ctrl+F12 [Insert]
menu:Table>Number Recognition is checked
Locale is English(UK)

09 3.14
1999-12-31 5.87%
23:45:59 True

Everything is text.
Oh, the number format code of my new table is "@". May be this is the
reason. Change it to "General" since I have entered various subtypes and
"General" is the number format to accept and represent any subtype.
To my surprise, changing the number format attribute converts the text
data to this:

9 3.14
36525 0.06
0.99 1

Everything is converted and rounded to integer and 1/100th decimals.
23:45:59 --> 0.9900000

OK, let's append a new table and apply number format "General" _before_
typing in numerals. Wow, this time it seems to work.
But why is
=SUM(<B1:B3>) = 4.1987000 (correct)
and
=COUNT(<B1:B3>) = 4.1987000 (expected value is 3)

And why is
=SUM(<B1:B3>) = 3,14
after reloading the same file with a German locale?
Cell B1 has still the "General" number format, B2:B3 is text.
Almost the same in column A. A1 is "General" A2:A3 is "@" but the
forumal cell in A4 still shows the old result cut down to 2 decimals.
When I hit F2 to inspect the formula, the formula bar shows an equal
sign only.

By the way: Did anybody notice that the glorious "date acceptance
patterns" do not work at all?

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94727

Just watch the screen shot and the spreadsheet. Every spreadsheet in the
world accepts 2/10/ or 2/10 or 2/ (this month's 2nd) on the num pad.
With German LibreOffice locale it is impossible to enter any date on the
num pad without typing a full ISO date.
You messed this up. The dumb users are happy because they get what they
type as literal text. The educated users (normal users, no experts) are
wondering why there are any "date acceptance patterns" if they get
invalid text data anyway.

#32

Suffice it to say that Andreas is a vociferous participant in this
discussion list, but that doesn't make his criticisms any less justified
or relevant. What he dislikes is badly implemented change for change's
sake, and that is an inherent problem in LibreOffice's development. The
project from the start has sacrificed behavioural stability with regard
to the end user for feature creep. We are quite clearly in the "bazaar"
mode of the cathedral and bazaar dichotomy, where no overlying
dictatorship (benevolent or otherwise) exists to govern the direction
code development should take. This has positive and negative effects -
the positive being that people can just turn up and work on the thing
they want to implement - the negative being the law of unintended
consequences, or collateral damage, i.e. bugs newly introduced that
change long standing behaviour to which users have become accustomed.

Fortunately, there are still people like Andreas to call the code
contributors out on those decisions.

I would suggest putting yourself in an admin's place where they have
probably invested long hours in developing a turnkey
OpenOffice/LibreOffice solution for their group of users, then finding
one day that that longstanding behaviour has changed because someone
else has not thought through a code change due to the tentacular nature
of the code base with no one having an overarching knowledge of it all,
and you will perhaps understand Andreas' frustration (which I happen to
share and have voiced it on the mailing lists in the past).

At present, long term support (bug fixes, security updates) for older
versions is to my knowledge only available on Linux and only with regard
to certain distributions. If you are not on Linux, then you are stuck
playing catch up with versions that successively introduce new bugs or
behaviours that don't get fixed for at least several point releases, or
for certain OSes, over multiple major version releases. Steve's mention
in this thread of EPS support and printing is just yet another
illustration of a change that was made that has a huge impact on
non-Linux OSes - all because someone thought it would be a good idea to
make that change without providing a solution for all platforms. Video
support in Impress is yet another issue that got significantly worse
with the move to the 4.x branch. What was the message we gave to our
users ? "Suck it up." There is only so much of that that users and their
admins are prepared to do, and in the end, it won't be surprising if
people switch to another product that offers them greater longterm
stability where such changes are less invasive or devastating to the
day-to-day running of the organisation.

Alex

#33

+20

#34

Macro coders depend on either MRI (Python extension) or XRay (Basic
library). Both tools can be linked to the alphabetic index of the IDL
reference for OpenOffice, however LibreOffice changed everything and
there is no index that can be accessed by these tools. But hey, the
OpenOffice reference is still fine because many of the subtile LO
"improvements" are not visible in the API anyway.
Oh, and most of my Python stuff broke due to the switch from "stable"
Python 2.x to "fresh" 3.x.

... to be continued ... (disregarding Mr. Vitrioli from Italy)

#35

Alex,

I do not know where you got that support and security updates are only available on Linux. That is factually wrong and serious bullshit. Get your facts straight: support is the same for the three officially supported platforms: Windowslinux and OS X. Remember that many code contributors have customers too.

As for calling developers on their responsibility that is quite easy especiaIly when that call takes an oracular form: doing it in such a way is one of the things defining a troll. I wonder if Andreas does the same for AOO ? Something tells me that is not the case but I could be wrong.

Best,

Charles.

#36

Hey Andreas,

Quick question: when was Python 3.x released ? Several years ago - at least 5 if I am not mistaken. So the ecosystem is moving after all this time so such migrations should be expected.

Best,

Charles.

#37

Charles,

I do not know where you got that support and security updates are only available on Linux. That is factually wrong and serious bullshit. Get your facts straight: support is the same for the three officially supported platforms: Windowslinux and OS X. Remember that many code contributors have customers too.

I would be interested in learning where longterm support for "older"
versions of LibreOffice on OSX which involves security updates and bug
fixes is generally available. It would certainly help me explain to
people on bugzilla using older versions of LibreOffice on OSX why there
is no hope of bug xyz being fixed unless they upgrade both their OS and
install the latest version of LibreOffice.

If I look here :

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/#Apple

Either I can't read properly or else the information at that place is
incorrect. As I was unable to find anywhere on the LibreOffice website
that indicates that there is support available for "older" versions of
LibreOffice on OSX < 10.8, then may I assume that my facts are indeed
right after all ?

Alex

#38

Hi all,

Suffice it to say that Andreas is a vociferous participant in this
discussion list, but that doesn't make his criticisms any less justified
or relevant.

Indeed. Maybe I do not have the same opinion as Andreas always, but his
technical contributions are useful and IMO much appreciated.

[...] The
project from the start has sacrificed behavioural stability with regard
to the end user for feature creep.

I fully understand your concern on development, and partly share it.
I seriously don't think you can uphold the opinion that all major and so
much needed improvements are 'feature creep'.
Italo is simply correct when he refers to AOO as a dead and buggy code
project. The technical debt that LibreOffice started to fight in 2010
was one of maybe already a decade or more old. New features in
OpenOffice.org in the last years were even implemented in Java
extensions, so that the core code could be avoided..
But doing that work is a pain and needs many hands.

The good thing is that there is now a wonderful amount of people helping
on the code. Still more welcome, but we may feel happy with where we are.
The sad thing is that on the QA side less people contribute and things
can be further improved. This affects potentially all users, of whom
many could be valid contributors :slight_smile:

Thus it is not without reason that LibreOffice has two branches. And
depending on your work, skills, time etc. there is a wide range to chose
from the last updates in the still branch, to early in the Fresh line
and even daily builds. The latter are great for most of the work, but of
course not for professional deployments.
And there are supported LTS versions - see below.

Fortunately, there are still people like Andreas to call the code
contributors out on those decisions.

And he is not alone in that.
But note that the ESC and the board are working (after all that already
has been done) on more ideas to further improve:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/RegressionIdeas

Mind that not changing and improving compared where we are and were five
years ago, is no option.

At present, long term support (bug fixes, security updates) for older
versions is to my knowledge only available on Linux and only with regard
to certain distributions.

To my knowledge bot Collabora and CIB offer versions with much longer
support. Quite affordable and really valuable for organizations.

Cheers,
Cor

#39

Mind that not changing and improving compared where we are and were five
years ago, is no option.

Agreed, but not, and I am expressing my own opinion, to the detriment of
dropping a software behaviour nuke on the users/admins.

At present, long term support (bug fixes, security updates) for older
versions is to my knowledge only available on Linux and only with regard
to certain distributions.

To my knowledge bot Collabora and CIB offer versions with much longer
support. Quite affordable and really valuable for organizations.

Sure, but both of these focus on at least LO 4.4.8, from my reading of
their respective websites. That is not an "old" version, it is the
latest version from the Still branch.

Alex

#40

Setting aside the discussion that followed, I would like to thank Andreas for his explanation of installing Debian packages from the command line. I've been using Ubuntu for about a year now, and I've learned how to use the Software Center and Synaptic as well as the "sudo apt-get..." commands, which I sense are just three different ways of doing the same thing. Beyond that, however, I've never learned how to install a Debian package without using the PPAs.

Thank you Andreas for this explanation. You've expanded my knowledge of Linux. And after upgrading my Windows partition from 7 to 10 with less than satisfactory results, my reliance upon Linux is only that much greater.

Virgil

#41

Hi :slight_smile:
+1
Although we often disagree with each other and have heated arguments at
times i have a lot of respect for the technical support Andreas gives and
also for his links to or suggestions of other places that give good
support.

He is a classic example of someone who works in both communities. Not all
have the same attitude (of course) but his way has a lot of energy about
it, which is not always easy to be comfortable with, but his way does seem
to be an effective driving force at times.

I really like Zen-Wiz's script that does the same job as Andreas'
command-line. Instead of having to type in the same commands each time you
would just double-click on the script file. If the script is not already
in the "Extensions" library;
https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/templates-and-extensions/
then i hope he is is generous enough to add it in. It is not really an
Extension as such but having a 3rd "App Store" type of place might be
tricky to arrange.

I keep meaning to add his script to the wiki-page;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Install/Linux
if that hasn't been done already and i hope it gets added to the relevant
page on the official website too - preferably as both a downloadable file
and as just plain text on the page itself.

I'm fairly sure ZenWiz would be happy with that but it would be nice to
know that we can do that and use the Creative Commons CC-by-SA or similar
license (such as LGPL or MPL) so that people can modify and re-release in
other places as well as just using it.

Wrt the 3 "package managers" you named; The Software Centre, Synaptic and
"apt-get" - Yes they are 3 ways of doing the same thing. Each has it's own
advantages. The 2 Gui ways are easier for point&click users. The Software
Centre is good for installing entire programs that consist of many parts;
such as LibreOffice, MegaGlest, Wesnoth and so on. Synaptic and "apt-get"
are better for adding individual add-ons, extra libraries for extra
functionality, codecs, specific fonts, command-line tools. Apt-get has
commands to clean and remove temp files created when downloading and
installing things.

Synaptic and "The Software Centre" actually use "apt-get" to do a lot of
their work but they 'just' put a prettier face on it to make it easier for
point&click users. Ok, they often do a lot more than that but it's the
easiest way of thinking about it.

So i might use The Software Centre to install LibreOffice, a camera and
Gimp - then turn to Synaptic to add extra features and fonts - and then use
"apt-get" to clear all the cruft away. I could probably do the whole job
from any 1 of them but this way i have used each package-manager for what
it does best.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#42

Thank you for the positive feedback. I hope you noticed the correction of Oct
10, 2015; 1:12pm by Jean-Baptiste Faure-3 that there is no
desktop-integration subfolder anymore. Well, there used to be a reason why
it was organized this way, .... anyway.

If the file /usr/bin/soffice does not exist, there should be no problem.
Run dpkg -i *.deb without additional switch which will include the desktop
integration package.
If you don't want any desktop integration because you want to use the new
suite as a secondary suite, rename/remove the desktop-ingegration.deb file
_before_ running dpkg and everything *should* be fine IMHO.

#43

Hi :slight_smile:
Yes the separate sub-folders for different Desktop Environments was a
work-around for some intractable problem which did eventually magically
unravel and get fixed.

I can't remember exactly when, maybe 4.2.0 or 4.3.0 - it was just after i
found out about the work-around and was still struggling with it at each
new install.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#44

Agreed, but not, and I am expressing my own opinion, to the detriment of
dropping a software behaviour nuke on the users/admins.

I hope that, compared to functionality in other software and on other
devices, most changes will not be experienced as such :stuck_out_tongue:
This of course apart from unwanted side effects.

Sure, but both of these focus on at least LO 4.4.8, from my reading of
their respective websites. That is not an "old" version, it is the
latest version from the Still branch.

Those offer multiple years support. Much longer than the say 9 months
life cycle of normal LibreOffice.

Cheers,

Cor

#45

Hi :slight_smile:
Many Gnu&Linux distros offer their own somewhat independent support through
their own forums, mailing lists and bug-report systems.

That type of support is not available to Windows users and may not be
available to Mac people.

However it is true that there are many other support systems available and
those are (hopefully) available for all OSes. There may be local support
such as a shop or relative who understands one OS better than others.

All support from TDF is available to anyone regardless of which OS so that
give Gnu&Linuxs users yet another set of places to get support from. It's
usually helpful if we know which OS or at least platform in order to be
able to give more specific and relevant support rather than talking in
general terms. However this seldom includes much help for those who are
stuck on older versions.

Also there are professional support services which can be paid for. Again
these services can often provide support for a variety of platforms and
OSes. This often includes tier 3 (or level 3) support so that might well
include support for older versions.

So one of the few places that doesn't support the notion of a "Long Term
Support" type release is TDF itself! TDF say it cant be done. Other
places just get on with it and do it.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#46

FWIW, and I can't comment on CIB supplied versions as I haven't tested
them, but the versions on the AppStore supplied by Collabora come with a
number of their own specific bugs that are not found in the TDF
downloadable versions.

I see no business rationale in paying for a product to gain bugs that
aren't in the freely downloadable version. After all, the aim is not to
have more than those that are in said freely downloadable product, surely ?

To top it all, I end up triaging those extra bugs on top of the QA
triaging I do on the TDF downloads because people add them to LO
bugzilla :wink:

Anyway, getting largely off topic, so signing off here.

#47

Hi Cor :slight_smile:

LibreOffice has many advantages. One is the fast-paced development cycle.

As with all projects there are advantages and disadvantages.

One of the few disadvantages with LibreOffice is it's lack of an official
LTS. Hopefully people who have a strong need for an LTS are able to find
some compromise or an alternative. There are options out there! One is to
use OpenOffice but, as mentioned by other people, that carries a whole raft
of other problems.

My personal preference is to give my clients the "Still" branch or leave
them with an older version. I've never had any problems with any of the
older versions. It seems that about 1/year there is some security issue
but none of my clients have had any problems even with versions that are
years old. On my own machine i try to use the "Fresh" branch in order to
try to find problems with it but again i seldom seem to find anything to
grumble about.

For me LibreOffice is perfect. For my clients "Still" branch is best.

However when i am forced to use OpenOffice i am fairly happy with that
too.

The only time i am really unhappy is when i have to go back and use
Microsoft Office. Their UI changes too much in each release, it's too
heavy and slow, the resulting documents often need some tinkering to get
them up to standard, the format can't be used by other software or even
other versions of itself ... and the list of problems just goes on and on.
People who say they prefer it often ask me for advice on how to do even
quite simple things and i can usually show them but whatever their problem
the simplest answer is usually just to move away from MS Office!

For me the struggle is NOT us against OpenOffice (or KOffice, Caligra,
Gnome Office, Google-docs or others). Each one has it's niche and covers
most of the middle ground extremely well too. If all the rest of the
entire world used OpenOffice or one of the others then it'd be quite fine
with me as long as i was allowed to use LibreOffice = and it would be much
easier to collaborate with everyone else. So for me the struggle is all of
us against the ones who focus on using proprietary formats.

For me, and i suspect quite a lot of the most vociferous detractors here,
the only real problem with LibreOffice is that it's sooo close to being
perfect but just misses by a frustratingly narrow margin.

Many regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#48

Hi :slight_smile:
As you've probably noticed this mailing list often pulls in at least 2,
often surprisingly opposite directions.

* Technical Support
* User Support

Often those who do an excellent job near the extremes of one find
themselves infuriated by those who work near the extreme of the other.

I tend to aim at "User Support" but i am painfully aware that i often fail
at this. I aim to stand-up for individuals, especially new ones because
they often bring in new ways that might well succeed where current or old
strategies may have failed at some old problems. Again i'm aware that i
often fail at this and that it's often even back-fired somewhat painfully.

So i like the community here on this list and i like it that this mailing
list's unique community sometimes has a different viewpoint than the other
mailing lists. I've also been very impressed by people who came in here
thinking they knew nothing but then found their way into other teams, such
as Marketing, Design, Documentation, QA, List-Moderators or/and just ended
up helping people here.

TDF needs people who can't code to help in the many other things that need
to be done. Even QA can usefully do with more non-coders and not just for
admin type roles. Each of us could probably find some other team where we
could help TDF quite a bit with surprisingly little effort.

Also each of us could probably find a niche in one of the other teams where
we get a lot of reward and satisfaction - maybe even learn quite a bit in
the process.

Many people here already do so. Some tried out a few different teams
before finding somewhere they felt most comfortable. Some are still on
many other teams. Some liaise between different projects, such as between
us and the Caligra Office Suite (a fork of KOffice).

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#49

Charles,

I do not know where you got that support and security updates are

only available on Linux. That is factually wrong and serious bullshit.
Get your facts straight: support is the same for the three officially
supported platforms: Windowslinux and OS X. Remember that many code
contributors have customers too.

I would be interested in learning where longterm support for "older"
versions of LibreOffice on OSX which involves security updates and bug
fixes is generally available. It would certainly help me explain to
people on bugzilla using older versions of LibreOffice on OSX why there
is no hope of bug xyz being fixed unless they upgrade both their OS and
install the latest version of LibreOffice.

Indeed if you speak of older versions (as in versions currently not availabe as one of our two branches) , the LibreOffice project itself has no support for this. Companies such as CIB or Collabora usually do on all platforms.

Now I realize there may be frustrations involved by handling upgrades but you would still deploy upgrades anyway regardless of the software. Would automatic incremental updates do the trick for you?

If I look here :

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/#Apple

Either I can't read properly or else the information at that place is
incorrect. As I was unable to find anywhere on the LibreOffice website
that indicates that there is support available for "older" versions of
LibreOffice on OSX < 10.8, then may I assume that my facts are indeed
right after all ?

Your facts are wrong as you expect from LibreOffice what you don't expect from any other software, which is ad vitam support for free by the community. In short you expect "the butter, the money for the butter, the smile and thanks from the dairy merchant" all at the same time.

So yes indeed, LibreOffice does not support all its versions... but then who does ? Microsoft ? Mozilla? Does AOO support the 3.3? Does it patch the 3.2.1? No? How outrageous. :slight_smile:

Best,

Charles.

Alex

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Hello Alex,

#50

Hi :slight_smile:
Many Gnu&Linux distros offer their own somewhat independent support
through
their own forums, mailing lists and bug-report systems.

That type of support is not available to Windows users and may not be
available to Mac people.

However it is true that there are many other support systems available
and
those are (hopefully) available for all OSes. There may be local
support
such as a shop or relative who understands one OS better than others.

All support from TDF is available to anyone regardless of which OS so
that
give Gnu&Linuxs users yet another set of places to get support from.
It's
usually helpful if we know which OS or at least platform in order to be
able to give more specific and relevant support rather than talking in
general terms. However this seldom includes much help for those who
are
stuck on older versions.

Also there are professional support services which can be paid for.
Again
these services can often provide support for a variety of platforms and
OSes. This often includes tier 3 (or level 3) support so that might
well
include support for older versions.

+1 good description.

So one of the few places that doesn't support the notion of a "Long
Term
Support" type release is TDF itself! TDF say it cant be done. Other
places just get on with it and do it.

Also you might add that TDF does not offer LTS because TDF is not a business and therefore has no incentive in a LTS version which only makes sense if you monetize it. The poster example of this is Canonical and Ubuntu LTS. Canonical makes money on LTS and is only able to do so because the LTS itself is a profitable business. Otherwise you would not even hear of it. Businesses looking for something very similar to a LTS version of LibreOffice can contact our certified developers and their companies though.

Best,

Charles.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

>
>Suffice it to say that Andreas is a vociferous participant in this
>discussion list, but that doesn't make his criticisms any less
>justified
>or relevant. What he dislikes is badly implemented change for

change's

>sake, and that is an inherent problem in LibreOffice's development.

The

>project from the start has sacrificed behavioural stability with

regard

>to the end user for feature creep. We are quite clearly in the

"bazaar"

>mode of the cathedral and bazaar dichotomy, where no overlying
>dictatorship (benevolent or otherwise) exists to govern the

direction

>code development should take. This has positive and negative effects

-

>the positive being that people can just turn up and work on the

thing

>they want to implement - the negative being the law of unintended
>consequences, or collateral damage, i.e. bugs newly introduced that
>change long standing behaviour to which users have become

accustomed.

>
>Fortunately, there are still people like Andreas to call the code
>contributors out on those decisions.
>
>I would suggest putting yourself in an admin's place where they have
>probably invested long hours in developing a turnkey
>OpenOffice/LibreOffice solution for their group of users, then

finding

>one day that that longstanding behaviour has changed because someone
>else has not thought through a code change due to the tentacular

nature

>of the code base with no one having an overarching knowledge of it

all,

>and you will perhaps understand Andreas' frustration (which I happen

to

>share and have voiced it on the mailing lists in the past).
>
>At present, long term support (bug fixes, security updates) for

older

>versions is to my knowledge only available on Linux and only with
>regard
>to certain distributions. If you are not on Linux, then you are

stuck

>playing catch up with versions that successively introduce new bugs

or

>behaviours that don't get fixed for at least several point releases,

or

>for certain OSes, over multiple major version releases. Steve's

mention

>in this thread of EPS support and printing is just yet another
>illustration of a change that was made that has a huge impact on
>non-Linux OSes - all because someone thought it would be a good idea

to

>make that change without providing a solution for all platforms.

Video

>support in Impress is yet another issue that got significantly worse
>with the move to the 4.x branch. What was the message we gave to our
>users ? "Suck it up." There is only so much of that that users and
>their
>admins are prepared to do, and in the end, it won't be surprising if
>people switch to another product that offers them greater longterm
>stability where such changes are less invasive or devastating to the
>day-to-day running of the organisation.
>
>
>Alex
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>--
>To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org
>Problems?

http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
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be

>deleted

Alex,

I do not know where you got that support and security updates are

only

available on Linux. That is factually wrong and serious bullshit.

Get your

facts straight: support is the same for the three officially

supported

platforms: Windowslinux and OS X. Remember that many code

contributors have

customers too.

As for calling developers on their responsibility that is quite easy
especiaIly when that call takes an oracular form: doing it in such a

way is

one of the things defining a troll. I wonder if Andreas does the same

for

AOO ? Something tells me that is not the case but I could be wrong.

Best,

Charles.
--
Envoyé de mon appareil Android avec K-9 Mail. Veuillez excuser ma

brièveté.

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Hello Tom