The 5.10 release of Ubuntu and Kubuntu was delivered with the 1.195 release of the Open Office package, which was the final Beta before the 2.0 release. It works fine and is much more stable than many other commercial Beta software I’ve trialled from “reputable” vendors. There are been a number of point releases since OoO release 2 and these include some additional features/bug fixes (or “enhancements in Microsoft speak”) which are of benefit.

So how do you upgrade your Open Office in Ubuntu? There are two ways to do this, from the command line or using Adept or Synaptic. The entire process takes about 15 minutes to download and apply all the updates.

Updating Open Office

From the command line:

  1. sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
  2. Add the line: deb http://people.ubuntu.com/~doko/OOo2 ./
  3. Save and close the file, ctrl-x and y to save changes.
  4. sudo apt-get update
  5. sudo apt-get upgrade

From theopensourceweblog and the Ubuntu Forums.

Using Adept:

  1. Launch adept and enter your password when prompted
  2. From the Adept menu, select Manage Repositories
  3. In the new repository text box add the line: deb http://people.ubuntu.com/~doko/OOo2 ./
  4. Click the Add button. You should now see that the people.ubuntu.com repository has been added
  5. Click the Apply button
  6. Note: On some systems (like mine) the repository will be added, but there will be some weird characters after the ./ in the Distribution column. If this happens on your system then just left-click on the ./ which should cause the column to go into edit mode and simply remove the weird characters. Click the Apply button.
  7. Click the Close button
  8. Click the Fetch Updates button (to get the new OoO packages)
  9. Click the Full Upgrade button (to apply all of the available upgrades)
  10. Click the Commit button to start downloading

Now go get a cup’o Tea as this may take a few minutes to update. After your cupper, you can happily launch OoO and if you check the About OoO box it should state release 2.0.1 (or higher).

How easy was that?

Performance Tip

There is also a tip posted in the Ubuntu Forums to enhance the overall performance of Open Office.

  1. Goto Tools -> Options > Memory.
  2. Increase graphics cache to 64 MB and memory per object to 8 MB.
  3. Exit and restart OpenOffice a couple of times (it takes a few openings before it helps).