I know this is "bleeding edge" but why a PPA for Lucid & Maverick?

Makes perfect sense, but seems strange; an "office" application being it's a "core" component of what Ubuntu is supposed to be, as I see it, and their obvious dissatisfaction in the "technicalities" at OO that spawned LO. One would think that they would devote efforts to "rebrand" the LTS line at least.

Regardless, it appears that this is going to be a well supported PPA and I will be exclusively using LO in all my applications here.

Thanks - marked as [Solved] :)

MRK

OpenOffice.org is a core component of Lucid and Maverick. Libreoffice is a core component of Natty. There are many office applications in the world, many of those run on Ubuntu, and most are still not core components of any given Ubuntu release.

Removing OpenOffice.org from Lucid and Maverick and replacing it with Libreoffice in those releases (as you seem to be suggesting) would be a bad thing precisely because OpenOffice.org is a core component. As explained in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates, maintaining a consistent system for users of stable releases is very important. Libreoffice is not just a rebranding of OpenOffice.org -- while they will (hopefully) contribute most of their code to each other as time progresses, it is a fully-fledged fork. OpenOffice.org cannot be turned into Libreoffice just by changing some artwork. (Even if that were not the case, however, the above points remain.)

Canonical's concerns about the direction OpenOffice.org may be going don't justify hijacking the stability of their users' systems or presenting users with confusing changes. Some vendors put their politics above the stability of their operating systems, but I am happy to say that Canonical doesn't appear to be one of those companies. Furthermore, the concerns about OpenOffice.org are primarily concerns for the future, which is why providing Libreoffice as the core office component of Ubuntu Desktop Edition (and Ubuntu Netbook Edition) in *future* releases only (Natty and higher) seems like a very appropriate solutions.

I'm glad the PPA is working out for you. I agree that it is likely that the PPA will be well-maintained and will likely ultimately provide as stable a Libreoffice experience on Lucid and Maverick as will be provided through the normal repositories on Natty.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Canonical Ltd. and I don't speak for them.

(To clarify something I said above: I do not mean to disparage companies or organizations that accept limitations in their software's technical abilities in accordance with consistently articulated and fully disclosed commitments on social and political issues. For example, I have no beef with the the gNewSense operating system. However, some companies roll out updates that break existing functionality, even though most customers wouldn't see any benefit, just to force their customers to use their computers in ways that the companies find more acceptable. DRM updates on most proprietary operating systems would be a key example of this sort of thing, and that's the kind of despicable corporate behavior that I'm praising Canonical for not engaging in.)

do what i do and take life in your hands. if i wanted something, i just go download it from the originating site and install it. nothing bad has ever happened yet (e.g. broke the system). the system only broke when i tried to fiddle with things through the terminal. i'm using 10.04.

you have to understand that ubuntu is bleeding edge because it's based on the unstable branch of debian, so it's always prone to breaking.

other distros, such as fedora, opensuse, linux mint, have the latest software releases in their repositories. however, each of these has its own shortcomings as well.

fedora doesn't provide updates to security problems. instead, they just issue another release 6 months later. opensuse has a very clunky gui. you can't use the touchpad for anything except to move the cursor. as well, the YAST and YUM package that's used to install apps at the CLI level is rather unnatural to me (e.g. sudo YAst install, sudo YUMM install). sudo apt-get install is way more natural, as apt-get is close enough to application-get and i can do it in my sleep.

linux mint is based on ubuntu and is more stable. however, i find that its installer is wonky. it reports my sda, sdb partitions as sdg.

@marcus

"you have to understand that ubuntu is bleeding edge because it's based on the unstable branch of debian, so it's always prone to breaking."

You're talking about Natty, right? Production releases of Ubuntu tend to be reasonably stable.

"fedora doesn't provide updates to security problems."

*Sometimes* they do... ;-)

Interesting... If any one wants to clarify, it's not essential, but may be interesting.

Yes, Ubuntu post-beta is as stable as it can be (in theory, the RC, too).

I was specifically talking about the LTS, and by association, the next "newer", Maverick.

I haven't "digged all the blogs", but AFAIK OO is now LO because Oracle bought Sun and there's some "burrs under their saddle" regarding the Open Source/FOSS issues; enough for the "Document Foundation" to step aside with OO as it was and move forward.

IMHO, I have been appalled at the support iIt's up to the users "unofficially") and perceived attitude of OO as what should have been a triumphant and public example to "out-MS MS". Plus, I have heard more than one MS user say, "Yea OO, what a PITA that was..."

As one who espouses stability and security, and cost management, I valued OO for its cost and function, but not beyond simple documents and spreadsheets; anything beyond was a trudge to the message boards for 3 year old threads or "home-made" tutorials from an older versions. Yes, "ya get what ya pay for", but one would think that at least there would have been a real "voice" to OO for the users - and many users would pay for support and advice too, in a more "corporate" world - regardless if it's a Ubuntu core item, it's still a multiplatform "stand alone" program!

Considering the evident "bad taste" Canonical has with OO, I am suprised, as I said, they are not making that change to the current releases too, to streamline support for only one "flavor" of an open office for the next 3-5 years.

Regardless, if it works for Natty, and is what Canonical is doing, then ( main question follows)...

What logical reason is there to stick with OO? Especially, with this "new start"; at least the support issues are only a month old instead of half-a-decade old... ;)

Thanks for the info and any comments welcomed!

MRK

"Yes, Ubuntu post-beta is as stable as it can be (in theory, the RC, too)."

I think Ubuntu is a fine operating system, but I don't think it's as stable as *possible*. http://openbsd.org is probably vastly less suitable for most desktop users, but it's probably more stable than any release of Ubuntu. Plus, I think Ubuntu has gradually become more stable over the years, and I expect that to continue, which means that it can't be *maximally* stable already. ;-)

"I valued OO for its cost and function, but not beyond simple documents and spreadsheets"

I agree that OpenOffice.org is disappointing in many ways, primarily with respect to performance and resource usage, but I have written plenty of complex documents in OpenOffice.org Writer, which embed images, complex tables, charts from OpenOffice.org Calc, mathematical formulas involving symbols that most people have never seen, and the like. I've *never* had any serious problems while doing that. I define a serious problem as a problem that takes more than 10 minutes to solve. Sometimes I faced up to something I didn't know how to do. In those cases, the built-in help almost always gave me everything I needed.

I have had plenty of problem converting documents and maintaining important formatting, but I think that's primarily due to Microsoft deliberately concealing the way the .doc and .docx formats work.

"Yes, 'ya get what ya pay for', but one would think...."

Leaving the bigger argument about software development models aside, I think that is a bit too easy on OpenOffice.org. AbiWord is somewhat rough around the edges, but it tends to be very stable and easy to use, and it performs well. Gnumeric is rock solid, and has fantastic performance. Neither of those programs started as proprietary software, and neither one is presently (or has ever been) directed by a for-profit company. OpenOffice.org is a fork of the proprietary office suite StarOffice, and is essentially a project of Oracle America (formerly Sun Microsystems). I think that the primary reason Sun Microsystems initially bought StarOffice from StarDivision (and made it into Sun StarOffice) was so there would be a fully-featured office suite for the Solaris platform, which they would control and ensure provided their platform with what they thought it would need to have in order to be maximally competitive. So plenty of money has been changing hands in relation to OpenOffice.org, from the very beginning until now...and still, many of us who used to use it for years (I remember using StarOffice 5 on Red Hat Linux 6.0) have largely, though often not completely, migrated to other applications.

"I am suprised, as I said, they are not making that change to the current releases too, to streamline support for only one 'flavor'..."

Telling users "hey, we've decided to stop supporting the software we told you we would support for N years" is always effective at "streamlining" support. That's doesn't mean it's a good idea, ever.

"What logical reason is there to stick with OO?"

The release engineering policy requires it (as explained above) and it would piss off thousands of users who are used to OpenOffice.org, if they suddenly updated and found that OpenOffice.org had become LibreOffice. I would (speaking personally) love for LibreOffice to be provided by the official repositories on my Maverick system, and I'm pretty sure would too, but that doesn't mean most users would.

Adding LibreOffice as a separate option in Lucid and Maverick wouldn't be nearly so bad, but it would also suffer from plenty of new bugs that users of Lucid and Maverick aren't used to seeing. "Half-a-decade old" bugs stink, but at least we're used to them... Plus, people who tried to install some components from OpenOffice.org and other components from LibreOffice might have a Bad Day (primarily because of dependency conflicts, but also because they share configuration files and they might not always treat them the same way).

Correction: "and I'm pretty sure would too" --> "and I'm pretty sure you would too"