How to Install OpenOffice.org 3.0 on Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex [Updated]

I have been using the forthcoming release of Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) since the Alpha 5 testing version; the same time I built Lobsang.

Apart from a few early glitches with the Nvidia graphics drivers and some printing issues, my overall experience with Ibex has been excellent and as we are now in the beta stage it should only get better. Ibex certainly boots faster than Hardy, the update to Gnome 2.24 is most welcome with new features such as tabing in Nautilus, and a major update to the Network Manager applet. You can read about the main additions here.

One thing I wanted to do today, was upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3.0. Unfortunately, according to a bug on Launchpad, OOo 3.0 will not make it into the final release of Ubuntu 8.10. It may get added later, but personally I think it is a shame if it will not make the release. It’s a major upgrade to OOo and has appeared 2 weeks prior to the 8.10 ship date so I think it would make a good candidate for inclusion. The new Mandriva 2009 release has it and that was released last week…

I think for many the support for Microsoft’s OOXML format on OOo 3.0 will be the major new feature. It certainly gives one a great reason to not have to upgrade, at vast expense, to MS Office 2007.

Anyway, thankfully some bright spark has built the required packages on a PPA (Personal Package Archive) on Lauchpad making install as easy as adding two lines to your package manager’s source list.

Please remember this is for Intrepid Ibex. I don’t have a Hardy (8.04) install to hand any more and so I don’t know if this PPA will work for Hardy users or not. I’d love to hear from anyone if they do try it though.

Begin How To

[UPDATE] I am not sure if this repo is still maintained for Intrepid. I would strongly suggest that users follow John McCreesh’s suggested method he described in the comments below. Here it is for ease of reading:

I just do:

To get rid of the release candidates I’ve installed previously:

sudo aptitude purge ‘~nopenoffice.org3′
sudo aptitude purge ‘~nooobasis3′

download the debs from the OOo site and tar -xvfz them.
cd to the directory containing the debs

sudo dpkg -i o*.deb
sudo dpkg -i desktop_integration/o*.deb

John

John’s method seems quite straightforward and works for me.

The original method (below) also worked for me but I am not using it any more and am still getting lots of hits to this article so I thought I should update the information.

So the following might work but, as they say, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

From the menu choose “System->Administration->Software Sources” and enter your password if asked.
Updating Software Sources

Click on the Third Party Software tab and then click on the “+ Add” button. Cut and paste the following line into the box

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

and then click on the “Add Source” button to save it. Repeat and add this line too:

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

Make sure the two new lines have the checkbox ticked (see screenshot above) and then close the Software Sources application. You should then be asked to reload the package manager database:

To install software and updates from newly added or changed sources, you have to reload the information about available software.

Once I did this, the “Updates Available” star appear in the top panel of Gnome. Running the update manager showed me the updates available, e.g. OpenOffice.org, which it then downloaded (about 95Mb) and installed. It was as simple as that.

If for some reason the update manager star doesn’t appear then just open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

End How To

Behold, OpenOffice.org 3.0 on Intrepid Ibex.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 on Intrepid Ibex

[Update]

This morning the auto updater wouldn’t run because of a conflict with the OOo packages I installed from the PPA. The simplest way I found to rectify this, was to simply turn off the PPA repos by removing the tick from the relevant boxes in the Software Sources manager. Then the update went ahead as it should.

Tags: ,

25 Comments

  • jpmcc says:

    I just do:

    To get rid of the release candidates I’ve installed previously:

    sudo aptitude purge ‘~nopenoffice.org3’
    sudo aptitude purge ‘~nooobasis3’

    download the debs from the OOo site and tar -xvfz them.
    cd to the directory containing the debs

    sudo dpkg -i o*.deb
    sudo dpkg -i desktop_integration/o*.deb

    John

  • Alan Lord says:

    Thanks for that John.

    Is this method likely to cause any conflicts/issues with regards to existing installs of OOo made through the regular Ubuntu repos?

    Al

  • Beautiful…
    I was hoping for this how-to.
    Thanks for the tutorial.

    Good job.
    Thanks
    Anurag Bansal

  • Determinator says:

    Adding the sources to 8.04 didn’t work. I had to manually download the deb packages and install them. I also had to create a link to /opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice

  • Donna Snow says:

    Hi,

    Thank you so much for this great how-to! This makes for wonderful kindling for those of us “investigating” moving away from Windows. I now have Ubuntu as my base OS on my home office machine and so far I’m noticing a major difference in productivity.

  • Thanks,

    I was disappointed that it wasn’t in the 8.10 which I installed last night.

    This worked great.

    Warwick

  • […] does everything I need in a great way! Anyway if you want you can check why it was not included and how to install it with with […]

  • Ed Jolanski says:

    This will ONLY work for Jaunty, Hardy and Intrepid packages have been removed.

    People–just wait. It’s only 5 months. If you can’t figure out how to install Openoffice.org 3.0 without a howto like this, than you SHOULD NOT be doing it in the first place!

  • Ray Lombard says:

    When I follow John’s instructions I end up with 2.4 still intact and this message on the command line

    dpkg: error processing desktop_integration/o*.deb (–install):
    cannot access archive: No such file or directory
    Errors were encountered while processing:
    desktop_integration/o*.deb

    Have I missed something? Did I not actually cull 2.4 and that interferes with 3.0?

    Any ideas on a work around?

  • Mr Ernest Hagger says:

    As a recent convert to Ubuntu 8.04 I have been trying to install OpenOffice.Org 3.0 alongside the 2.4 version following the AMD ATHLON-64 3000instructions on the HowtoForge website without success. As I have a AMD ATHLON-64 3000 processor I need the Linux 64 Deb platform whereas their instructions are for the Linux Deb platform and they did not work. Can you kindly let me have the step by step instructions for my platform?

    Many thanks,

    Ernest Hagger(a young 80!)

  • Alan Lord says:

    @Ray,

    The message is saying it can’t find the files. First thing is to actually re-extract a fresh tarball and then take a look. There is at least one file in that directory ending in .deb. Perhaps the case of the leading “o” has changed or something?

    I have tried both methods and I also ended up using John’s method too. It works for me.

    @Ernest, Hi!

    I’m not sure of the Howto you refer to but one thing I would say is this. Just because you have a 64Bit AMD processor, does not necessarily mean that you are using a 64bit version of Ubuntu. The normal x86 package will run just fine on the 64bit CPUs. I am now using an Intel Core2 8400 and that’s 64bit, but I only use the 32bit distribution.

    If you are using the 64bit Ubuntu version, hopefully there is someone else out there who can provide a sensible answer. Not using 64bit code, I cannot. I assume that your have downloaded the 64bit package of OpenOffice.org?

  • Ernest Hagger says:

    Hi there,

    When I installed Ubuntu 8.04 I selected the 64 AMD version. The How to install OpenOffice Org 3.0 instructions I followed in the HowtoForge website was the one posted by Falko Timme. All went well until I got to the stage where it states:

    … and go to the directory that contains all the .deb packages…

    cd OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358/DEBS/

    the package I get does not have the /DEBS/ at the end so obviously somethingis not right.

    If any one out there can help I would be very grateful.

    Ernest.

  • leon says:

    For some reason I’m not seeing openoffice.org-base for version 3 in Synaptic Package Manager (it’s there for 2.4). I noticed in your graphic above that you had your database working. Any suggestions as to why it might not be there for me? Re-running sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade didn’t do it for me, either. Thanks!

  • Mr Ernest Hagger says:

    Leon,

    I merely followed the instructions by Falko Timme on the HowtoForge Website, titled How to Install OpenOffice.Org 3.0 in Ubuntu 8.04, having downloaded the approprate OpenOffice.Org 3.0 platform until I got as far as the stage in my original post.

    Ernest.

  • Paul says:

    The GUI-based way via the Software Sources box worked for this Ubuntu newbie. Thanks for the tip!

    I’m sure the other method is great, but right now I’m not quite sure how to “tar -xvfz” anything at the moment – I’ll get there eventually, but I’m just barely poking my little penguin beak out of my hatchling shell at the moment. And for Ed Jolanski’s comment – your sneer-over-your-glasses-perched-on-the-tip-of-your-nose attitude reflects exactly why not everyone is flocking to Linux: too many of you glory in your geekiness and in the fact that only those of you who live and breathe this stuff can ever get it to work. It’s the help (even though, basic, it may be to you) of contributors like Alan that will allow the rest of us to cross this bridge over to this supposedly superior OS.

    [Now if you only had something as easy to help me get a true dual-monitor setup for my Inspiron 6000 (using an external LCD with a different resolution) that enables dragging windows across monitors I’ll be ready to fully ditch Windows on this machine!]

    Thanks again!

  • scorpio says:

    Hi,

    I try to download the same way u mention earlier, but don’t know its work properly actually its not working at all i try to open the open office its don’t shows error.. its not open ..

    please help me regarding the same ..

    Regards

    Scorpio

  • mark says:

    Just another newbie who appreciates all the help from the Masters, but I am struggling with the Terminal & file structure – any references you could suggest?

  • andy says:

    doesn’t work no signed key

    GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 60D11217247D1CFF

  • Alan Lord says:

    @andy

    There are some words missing from your ppa url, but also, please read the [update] section. Using John’s methoss seemed far more reliable hence my updating the article.

    Just download the deb files from OOo and install as above.

  • quentin thomas says:

    Thanks again for the heads up on how-to-install OpenOffice 3.0. Every portion of the instructions worked for me except for the following:
    sudo dpkg -i o*.deb
    sudo dpkg -i desktop_integration/o*.deb

    When I used these commands in the terminal window, I got an error message stating no directory found. I can only assume that the directory wasn’t created or I may have missed step w/creating a directory…dunno? I continued on w/the remainder of the instructions
    (i.e. Click on the Third Party Software tab and then click on the “+ Add” button. Cut and paste the following line into the box

    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

    and then click on the “Add Source” button to save it. Repeat and add this line too:

    deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main). Afterwards, I was able to download/upgrade to OOo 3.0.
    Thanks again.

    • Alan Lord says:

      Hi Quentin,

      Ummm – you seem to have tried “both” methods for installing OOo. Ideally you should only need to do one or the other.

      When you download the tarball from the OpenOffice.org website and extract it, you will have a directory with a long name. You have to cd into that before running the sudo dpkg... commands.

      This is my preferred method to install OOo as opposed to using the PPA repository.

      Sorry if it wasn’t too clear.

  • quentin thomas says:

    No problem Alan. I thought I must have made a wrong turn (lol). Thanks again for the correction and responding so promptly.

  • mmck says:

    Thanks a lot, for the tutorial.

  • […] big thanks to this article at The Open Sourcerer […]

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>