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Slow startup time is a bug to me.

So yes, a bugfix release.

Too bad they did not fix that bug where OOo crashes when you c/p text into Gaim. Extremely annoying.

On which platform do that happen? Is it a specific Mac OS X/X11 problem? I haven't encountered it on Windows, nor on Linux (however, copying text from OOo to Gaim always garbles danish letters).

//Slow startup time is a bug to me.

So yes, a bugfix release. //

A fairly important improvement in OpenOffice nevertheless, no matter by what name you call it.

I don't care if you call it "bugfix" or "significant improvement" or whatever, this release of OpenOffice.org removes one of the main points that naysayers have to hold up against OpenOffice.org.

Now there is no real reason not to use OpenOffice.org in place of MSOffice. OpenOffice.org is now comparable in speed and features with MSOffice, and it has immeasurably better standards compliance, interoperability and lack of lock-in over MS Office.

This new version of OpenOffice deserves significantly better accolades than "a bugfix release" IMO.

BTW: as for MS Office's new OOXML file format ... it seems it is to be hopelessly burdened by MS not doing "backwards compatibility" the right way. Apparently, the OOXML standard is written so that modern implementations of OOXML are required to replicate old Office bugs!

Reference: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/10/leap-back.html

Now there is no real reason not to use OpenOffice.org in place of MSOffice.
Except polish, performance, features, standards and lock-in. But the worst thing is that ooo cannot handle swedish spellchecking correctly. It doesn't recognise common words and offers wrong replacements. No grammar checking whatsoever.

However, I do use openoffice despite those problems.

//Except polish, performance, features, standards and lock-in.//

Performance is no longer an issue with OpenOffice.org. Did you miss that?

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/71233/index.html

For features, standards and lock-in OpenOffice is the winner.

Polish - we could argue about.

http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=15925&comment_id=164603

Polish - we could argue about.

I'd say there's not much to argue here - except that it's an enormous understatement to call the required interface improvements just "polish"

Honestly, OOo's GTK+ interface is so horrible it makes me retch. That is, at the moment, one of the big areas where OpenOffice has a massive quality problem, and the team should really, really start fixing it. Start, because it's not something that can easily be done on the side. It's not just a matter of adjusting some widget spacing here and there. I don't know the specifics, but for notebooks, for example, OpenOffice doesn't simply use GTK's default look and feel, it does strange things to it. This is probably deeply ingrained in the program libraries. Also, most of the dialogs need a complete overhaul. The current, rather sorry state of the GUI is the reason I use AbiWord and Gnumeric whenever I can.

Too bad they did not fix that bug where OOo crashes when you c/p text into Gaim. Extremely annoying.

I have been running Fedora Core through the cycles, and have never had GAIM crash when pasting text from an Open Office Writer document to a gaim window.

I'm not sure why you are, I would suggest raising a bug report (if you have not already).

you are giving desktop linux a whole new meaning

Oh please, there isn't only Linux on Earth. And OO.o is available on many platforms, not just Linux. This article isn't about Linux so I don't see the point.

"Oh please, there isn't only Linux on Earth. And OO.o is available on many platforms, not just Linux. This article isn't about Linux so I don't see the point."

I agree. We use OpenOffice crossplatform here (at work), mainly on Linux and BSD. It works just fine! Interoperability is good in version 2.0.4. No need for expensive MICROS~1 Office products. :-)

Hmm. I just tried downloading by torrent, and it works for me. Worked for me with 2.0.3, too.

What page are you using? I'm going by main OOo page -> Download -> Download OOo via P2P, and then selecting my desired version, platform, and language.

And wow, it just finished as I typed this. Incredible speed

I navigate to this page:

http://distribution.openoffice.org/cdrom/iso_downoad.html

And click on the two bittorrent links. They don't work.

And no matter what browser I use. They don't work.

And that still doesn't fix the problem of offering mirror sites as an alternate download location but not offering a link to find any mirror sites...

Ah. The page I used is:

http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/

But it doesn't seem to have the isos.

BTW.. I can download the 2.0.4 Installer fine. Without Bittorrent.

What I'm trying to download (if you will read the subject line...) is the ISO images of the Installation CD-ROMS so I can burn them and hand them out to friends who have dial-up connections.

Also, I signed on as an OO distributor but have been unable to download the ISO images in order to distribute it...

I've sent complaints 3 times in the past two months, and have gotten SILENCE as a reply and no fixes.

How hard would it be to add a link to the page pointing to a list of available Mirror Sites???

//The installer was nice because it could be used on any Linux distro, without having to mess around with rpm2tgz or whatever.//

The generic installer was rubbish because it bypassed the package management system.

Just get the new version for OpenOffice via your distribution's repository, rather than getting it from OpenOffice website. That way it integrates perfectly into your system.

You will probably get a better download speed, and you will certainly get a better ease of installation. No special instructions to follow ... just install it like any other package for your distribution.

Edited 2006-10-16 01:02

Yes, because every distro already has this in their repositories. Most will just backport the security fixes, such as SUSE and Ubuntu. [sarcasm] Great idea indeed! [/sarcasm]

They should offer the old installer as an option. Not that I care, I'm on OS X now, but it still would be nice for all the people who use Linux and not RPM.

Well, I can only speak for PCLinuxOS, but I can indeed confirm that they had the updates in their repositories yesterday! Installed it through Synaptic, no problems, works like a dream..

//Yes, because every distro already has this in their repositories.//

Well, I can report that PCLinuxOS has them.

For SuSe, I'd personally instally apt4rpm
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ and/or the smart package manager.

In fact, for any distribution, if I couldn't wait a few days for the distribution to update OpenOffice in its own repositories, I could install the smart package manager and download the OpenOffice RPMs to a local directory or server share. Then I could add that directory or server share as a "channel" for the smart package manager, and then install the RPMs (even on a Debian-based or Slackware-based distro) and pick up any dependencies via the normal repositories.

Once again a hassle-free means of installing that avoids "dependency hell". Just do it via the package manager system, and it is a painless install.

In my opinion, the generic installer was greet. Back then, it was easy for me to install openoffice locally. (I have to install software locally at work: I don't have root access.)
I use a strange combination of rpm2cpio and cpio to install the software.

Btw, not all linux distribution uses rpm.

I much prefer the way firefox is distributed. Uncompress it and voila!

Btw, the StarOffice.8 is even much harder to install. It requires root rights. And SP3 even did not install on gentoo.

Edited 2006-10-16 07:31

//Btw, not all linux distribution uses rpm.//

This is why one would use a tool like smart package manager.

http://labix.org/smart

"The Smart Package Manager project has the ambitious objective of creating smart and portable algorithms for solving adequately the problem of managing software upgrading and installation. This tool works in all major distributions, and will bring notable advantages over native tools currently in use (APT, APT-RPM, YUM, URPMI, etc).

Notice that this project is not a magical bridge between every distribution in the planet. Instead, this is a software offering better package management for these distributions, even when working with their own packages. Using multiple package managers at the same time (like rpm and dpkg) is possible, even though not the software goal at this moment."

As they say, it is not a "magical bridge" but it does at least allow you to install rpms on a distribution that is not based on rpm.

//I much prefer the way firefox is distributed. Uncompress it and voila!//

This breaks the package management database on your system. If you do this, you are more likely to end up with dependency problems later.

Install via the package manager, and keep your install database correct and complete. This is the better approach.

//is even much harder to install. It requires root rights.//

Any use of the package managers require root rights.

Either you own the hardware, or you don't. If you own the hardware, then you should know the root password. If you don't own the hardware, and you don't have root rights, then why are you installing stuff on someone else's machine?

// Either you own the hardware, or you don't. If you own the hardware, then you should know the root password. If you don't own the hardware, and you don't have root rights, then why are you installing stuff on someone else's machine?

Easy answer: because I don't have root rights at work.

In fact, I need to install not only one, but several versions of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice for development purposes. I also installed several version of Java and eclipse - because I needed them. These programs don't ask me "Hey, are you really root? If the answer is no, I will refuse to work on your machine".

It's usual for software developer to install software locally:. It is not the system administrator's work to install programs that I need for testing and developing.

Now, to come back to the point:
There are several thing that are really disturbing about the fact that OpenOffice.org only distributing their software as RPM.
1.This makes it harder to install OpenOffice.org on non-RPM based distributions
2.RPM is not really good at installing software locally.
3.The OpenOffice.org staff makes assumption about what kind of Linux distribution I am using. They should not believe that it is enough to care at a small majority of Linux user – the one who have an RPM based system.

I guess you could say it's the same stupidity that had the Java binaries or flash distributed as rpms only (Though I think for each of them now has a .bin for non-rpm distributions).

It really isn't that big of a deal though, install alien and it'll convert rpm, deb, tgz, etc all into aother formats. Hell, I think File-roller can open up rpm and deb packages just like normal archives, so all you'd have to do is extract it.

There are several thing that are really disturbing about the fact that OpenOffice.org only distributing their software as RPM.
1.This makes it harder to install OpenOffice.org on non-RPM based distributions
2.RPM is not really good at installing software locally.
3.The OpenOffice.org staff makes assumption about what kind of Linux distribution I am using. They should not believe that it is enough to care at a small majority of Linux user – the one who have an RPM based system.

I agree with you 100% here.
They had a perfectly functional installer that worked and for some strange reason it's rpms now.
They should have a bin for those distros that don't use rpm, and there are quite a few of those out there.
Not everyone runs Dead Rat, umm, Red Hat.

//They had a perfectly functional installer that worked and for some strange reason it's rpms now.
They should have a bin for those distros that don't use rpm, and there are quite a few of those out there.//

Sigh!

There are perfectly functional installers that work for RPMs for those distros that don't use rpm.

//Not everyone runs Dead Rat, umm, Red Hat.//

True. Utterly irrelevant, but true.

This breaks the package management database on your system. If you do this, you are more likely to end up with dependency problems later.

No it doesn't. It just isn't IN the database.
But both mozilla apps and OOo.org install in their own directories so they shouldn't interfere with the system libraries.
Besides, those package databases break all by themselves more than often enough.

Any use of the package managers require root rights.

Either you own the hardware, or you don't. If you own the hardware, then you should know the root password. If you don't own the hardware, and you don't have root rights, then why are you installing stuff on someone else's machine?

Sheesh! He said he doesn't have root on the machine.
Why are you stuck on this package management as if it was the Holy Grail?
People have their "home" directories where they can install their own personal apps they need.
It's not that uncommon, even on multiuser machines running *nix.
Never mind Windows boxes that usually are stuffed with crap to the brim. Company policy or not, people want their toys.

//Several people mention that startup time improved (5-6 sec is cited), but I haven't noticed any improvements, to me it's about 15 sec or more on Ubuntu Edgy (2.6GHz, 512M RAM).../

For me on Linux it is significantly better than that.

The real head-to-head is of course OpenOffice on Windows versus MS Office on Windows on the same machine:

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/71233/index.html

... where OpenOffice now wins, reportedly.

Edited 2006-10-16 06:25

Hmm. First load is still really slow on my end. Subsequent loads are pretty snappy though. (Is that what was improved?)

The real head-to-head is of course OpenOffice on Windows versus MS Office on Windows on the same machine... where OpenOffice now wins, reportedly.

By Jove, it's one of those rare Linux sites that claims that "their" offering is better than Microsoft's! Will wonders never cease?

8 seconds here, Edgy, Athlon64 3500+, 1GB of Ram. Was about 12s before the update.

[edit]
Maybe it's starting faster because I already run Java app (Azureus).

Edited 2006-10-16 15:26

//"Quickstarter" fature is what I see as ugly hack in place of fixing the bug. On my win machine Writer startup time is still WAY slower then MS Word. Of course, Quickstarter is disabled on my comp. Did they ever tought that users are closing apps because they want to free some memory? With quickstarter, closing program makes almost no difference in soffice.exe memory usage. That being said, OOo is very impressive peace of software feature-wise. If they only could fix startup time...//

Sigh!

I'm calling FUD here.

First of all, the new version speed improvements do not depend on Quickstarter.

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/71233/index.html
"Point. Click. Boom! Even without the preloader, it's still pretty darned fast. It seems to load in less than 2 seconds on a WinXP box with a 3Ghz Pentium chip and 512MB RAM."

Secondly, on Windows MS Word depends for its start time via a "quickstarter" of its own, which is built right in to Windows.

//"Quickstarter" fature is what I see as ugly hack in place of fixing the bug.//

So is this same type of preloader which operates on Windows for MS Office also an ugly hack and a bug? If not, why not (since you can't disable it on Windows, but at least you can disable the OOo quickstarter).

//Did they ever tought that users are closing apps because they want to free some memory?//

This criticism therefore applies equally well to MS Word as it does to OpenOffice and quickstarter. Except of course that you can't turn of the preloader for MS Office in Windows, but you can turn off the OOo quickstarter on any platform if you want to.

//OOo is very impressive peace of software feature-wise. If they only could fix startup time...//

Thirdly, they have fixed the startup time.
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/71233/index.html
"If OpenOffice.org is any slower than Microsoft Office, it's only by half a blip. In fact, I loaded both at once, first clicking on MS Word, then on OOWriter, in my task tray. OOWriter came up first. Trying it the other way, Word still loses out to Writer. I suspect your mileage will vary some, but OpenOffice.org is still quick as a whip."

Edited 2006-10-16 11:14

RE: "Thirdly, they have fixed the startup time.
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/71233/index.html"

Instead of pointing to article with invalid benchmarks (according to my own test) do yourself a favour: install version 2.0.4 and test it. It will take some 5 minutes. Then you will see that article you a reffering to is load of BS. Windows has *NO* office components integrated and started on Windows startup that I ever heard of. Explorer has, maybe that is what you are talking about?

//Instead of pointing to article with invalid benchmarks (according to my own test) do yourself a favour: install version 2.0.4 and test it. It will take some 5 minutes. Then you will see that article you a reffering to is load of BS. Windows has *NO* office components integrated and started on Windows startup that I ever heard of. Explorer has, maybe that is what you are talking about?//

Windows doesn't have an Office preloader - Office does.

When you install MS Office on a Windows machine, a preloader for Office (similar to quickstart) is installed. {Edit required, this was wrong==> The only thing not similar to OOo quickstart about this is that you can't turn it off without uninstalling Office.} edit to ==> Most people run this because they don't know it was installed. Office 2003 apparently no longer makes it the default to have it enabled.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826318

When you start Windows, BTW, the GUI comes up well before the "start" has finished. Windows brings up the GUI and enables menus before it has finished doing tasks such as preloading Office components. This is why the hard disk continues to work for some time after you might think Windows has started.

I loaded OOo 2.0.4-5 on my PCLinuxOS install. This is a rather mundane machine, AMD Athlon 2800, 512MB. kernel ver = 2.6.16.27. KDE ver = 3.5.5.

Without quickstart enabled, 6 seconds startup on first load, 3 seconds for subsequent starts.

BTW - the author of the article I linked to did say that "YMMV".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YMMV

Edited 2006-10-16 13:33

"Without quickstart enabled, 6 seconds startup on first load, 3 seconds for subsequent starts. "

Thats correct, we have 3-6 secs. Now try to start MS Word and you'll get 0.5 sec. I have MS Office 2002 and process osa.exe you mentioned is not in my process list. Actually I am sure that none of processes currently running on my computer has anything to do with MS Office.

Thats correct, we have 3-6 secs. Now try to start MS Word and you'll get 0.5 sec

I have 2003 at work, and it is never usable before several seconds, even after one app (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) is loaded. Then again, I deactivated the preloading.

//When will someone create an installer that generate on the fly package for destination system? I mean, if you can build RPM or DEB, why not on the fly with binaries? There could be default scheme for major distro, and a customizer for unusual path. This way you could generate package that are installed in your package management system and then uninstall them easily (if deleting a directory is too hard for you ). //

Debian uses .deb packages, but it can convert .rpm packages to .deb using a tool called alien.

Smart package manager on any distribution can install either .deb, .rpm or .tgz packages.

apt4rpm is a program that emulates apt for installing and handling .rpm packages.

In any event the 2.0.4 version of OpenOffice will be in repositories for each main distribution (either official repositories for some, or unofficial user-supported repositories for others) if not already, then at the latest in a day or so.

One way or another Linux users can get this installed for their system either now, or at the latest very soon.

Your imagined "problem" is a non-issue.

Huh! I'm still waiting for 2.0.3 in Ubuntu

//I see a lot of opinions on the web that argue that the package management system is so good that everybody should just wait for the distro to package it.

Well, open source is about freedom and you actually take away freedom from the user by demanding that you have to use the package system.

At least everybody could make a distro-neutral installer that can be installed as non-root.

I wonder what linux users would do if they lost root password or couldn't use sudo anymore. That would open their eyes.

This *is* a problem. It has to be fixed. It does not go away because you ignore it.//

The Smart package manager on any distribution can install either .deb, .rpm or .tgz packages.
Refer: http://labix.org/smart

http://labix.org/smart/features
"Channels are the way Smart becomes aware about external repositories of information. Many different channel types are supported, depending on the backend and kind of information desired:

* APT-DEB Repository
* APT-RPM Repository
* DPKG Installed Packages
* Mirror Information
* Red Carpet Channel
* RPM Directory
* RPM Header List
* RPM MetaData (YUM)
* RPM Installed Packages
* Slackware Repository
* Slackware Installed Packages
* URPMI Repository"


This *is* a fact. It does not go away because you ignore it.

BTW: for an application that comes as a set of RPM packages ... the type of Smart Package Manager "channel" that that represents is "RPM Directory". If you don't want to wait for your distribution to package OpenOffice 2.0.4 natively for you, then you add a pointer to the directory where the distribution OpenOffice 2.0.4 .rpm files are stored, and Smart Package manager can install them. Properly. Even on a Debian system.

There you go. Enjoy!

Edited 2006-10-16 23:02

It still doesn't install packages as non-root.

Smart may be a solution for some things but it does not solve the non-root issue!

Well, open source is about freedom and you actually take away freedom from the user by demanding that you have to use the package system

BS. Do you actually believe such nonsense ?
They don't demand anything of you, they just make a recommandation. Can't you tell the difference ?

At least everybody could make a distro-neutral installer that can be installed as non-root

Tarballs are exactly that, especially those that use autoconf system.
Guess what : that's the base for every distro !! Shock !

I wonder what linux users would do if they lost root password or couldn't use sudo anymore. That would open their eyes

You don't know what you're talking about. This is not a problem at all for a knowledgeable person, who you can pay to restore your root password.

This *is* a problem. It has to be fixed. It does not go away because you ignore it

It is NOT a problem. It does NOT appear out of nowhere because you believe in it.
It's amazing, you people now try to invent problems for Linux, because you can't find any serious one now. This OS must be really good !