How to install OpenOffice.org 3.2 on Ubuntu

Posted on February 3rd, 2010 at 0:43, in How To, Ubuntu.

Since I’m against upgrading my systems to Ubuntu 9.10, when it comes to the OpenOffice.org office suite I am stuck with the 3.0 version from Jaunty’s repositories. Therefore, if I want to put my hands on a newer release of OpenOffice the only way to do this is to use the packages provided by Oracle (Sun was acquired by Oracle).

The process of installing OpenOffice.org from other packages than the ones from the repositories is not very complicated, but it might not come in handy for new users. It’s good to know though that the 3.2 release of OpenOffice will be available on Ubuntu 10.4 (codenamed Lucid Lynx) due to appear this year in April. But if you want to use the latest version available, here’s what you have to do:

  1. Download OpenOffice.org from here (make sure to download the DEB package for your system’s architecture – 32/64 bit). At the moment of writing this post, the 3.2 release is still in RC stage (release candidate 4).
  2. Before installing the new version, remove your existing OpenOffice.org installation using Synaptic or Add/Remove…
  3. Extract the downloaded archive and open a terminal into the resulting folder.
  4. Browse to the DEBS sub-folder from that directory.
  5. Install OpenOffice.org 3.2 by issuing the following command:
    6. sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite *deb
  6. Install the menu entries by going into the desktop-integration folder:
    7. cd desktop-integration
sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite *deb

You are all done. OpenOffice.org 3.2 is installed on your machine and all the file associations have been set up automatically. To see a complete list of the new features for this latest release go here.

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6 Comments

Justin said

on February 11th, 2010,

at 01:39 hours

Hello, sorry to bother but I’ve only been running Ubuntu for about 5 days. :)

When I go to remove OpenOffice in Synaptic, there are over a dozen installed packages related to it. Do I need to remove ALL of them before installing the release candidate, or just the base-core package?

Radu said

on February 11th, 2010,

at 08:39 hours

You should remove all packages. In Synaptic search for all packages that have “openoffice” in their name or description (click on search to enter the filter). Then sort the found packages by their state (installed/uninstalled), select all the ones that are installed and remove them completely (use the contextual menu).

Afterwards follow the instructions I posted here and then you should have the latest OOo on your system.

Florin said

on February 15th, 2010,

at 13:59 hours

1) Why not add karmic’s repositories to your configuration and install via package manager? I don’t know if it works, just an idea.

2) Is there anything bad about karmic which you’d like to share with the rest of the world? Why I’m asking: I run karmic for months, on pretty recent hardware, and had no problem at all until now.

Radu said

on February 15th, 2010,

at 16:32 hours

I do not like to mess with the repos by adding ones from newer releases. Even though you’ll gain that GNOME/Ubuntu better integration, it’s not a clean solution for having the new OOo.
Regarding Karmic, when I first used it libnotify had some bugs related to the on-screen position for notifications, VMware runs horrible on it, X restarted several times without any reason. I really don’t know what’s the status now about all these, but I prefer to have a stable environment when I work, whether I develop software or I write articles for Linux Identity. It’s really important to have an environment that you can rely on, from which you can easily predict its outputs regarding to the inputs you produce.

hershy said

on March 5th, 2010,

at 00:08 hours

Thanks for the instructions! They worked great with only a minor issue. I am staying with Jaunty as long as I can.

One Problem with OO3.2 Installation was finding a package that included the desktop-integration file. I had to download several .deb.tar.gz from mirrors before I found the right one. By the way, I could not download directly from OO site. I have good bandwidth but it never successfully downloaded even when I let it run overnite. Mirrors worked just fine.

I enjoy your Web Site, tips, etc.. Many thanks!

Radu said

on March 5th, 2010,

at 00:30 hours

Hershy, luckily OOo 3.2 will be by default in Lucid Lynx and from what I’ve seen until now the new desktop themes are amazing. Since it will be a LTS release I think it will be more stable from the start.

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