For many people, OpenOffice has proved to be a fantastic alternative to the Microsoft Office suite. OpenOffice can be used for creating and manipulating word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics modules etc. In fact, many options in OpenOffice are designed to work in a way very similar to MS Office. This makes the migration from MS Office to OpenOffice very smooth for new users.
OpenOffice.org was renamed to Apache OpenOffice in June 2011. It is now developed under the projects of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). A global community of volunteers supports Apache OpenOffice.
OpenOffice is available to download and install on Linux, Microsoft Windows, and macOS. However, it can’t be installed on mobile devices. Open Document Format (ODF) is the default file format for OpenOffice.
OpenOffice Features
- Since it is open-source, the source code is available to be customized.
- It is a mature and stable one. New features can be requested and bugs can be reported.
- It is very easy to use and since the interface resembles very much to Microsoft Office, it is very easy for native MS office users to migrate to OpenOffice.
- It is available for free usage for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. This makes it ideal for the general mass which cannot afford buying a higher-cost Microsoft office suite.
What will we cover?
In this guide, we will walk you through the process of installing OpenOffice 4.1.10 on Fedora 34 Workstation OS. At the time of writing this article, it is the latest available version of OpenOffice. Let us get started with this guide without any further delay.
What will we need?
It is very important to check the following requirements before attempting to install Apache OpenOffice.
- OpenOffice requires JRE for its full functionality. A JRE (Java Runtime Environment) comes pre shipped as with the 3.4 release of OpenOffice, but it is not the case now. At least Java 1.6.x (patch level 45) is recommended for OpenOffice 4.1.x.
- A kernel version ≥ 2.6 and glibc2 version ≥ 2.5 is required.
- Free System memory (RAM) ≥ 256 MB. Recommended size is 512 MB.
- Disk space of at least 400 MB.
- X-Server with resolution ≥ 1024 x 768 pixels with minimum 256 colors (recommended is 16.7 million colors).
- If LibreOffice is installed on your system do the following:
- Open a terminal and type “whereis soffice”.
- If the output of the above command returns a symlink to LibreOffice, just remove it.
- If the above does not work, then you should uninstall Libreoffice.
- If you have an older version of OpenOffice 3.x, it should be deleted for a clean install of OpenOffice 4.x. This task is automatically set in the new install or update process, but if that does not work then manually remove the OpenOffice 3.x packages.
- A user account with administrative(‘sudo’) access and basic knowledge of running commands on a Linux terminal.
Installing OpenOffice on Fedora 34
It is very easy to install OpenOffice on Linux provided that we meet the minimum requirements mentioned above. If everything has been set up correctly, we can continue our installation journey:
Step 1. We will now download the Apache OpenOffice setup file using the ‘wget’ command:
wget https://sourceforge.net/projects/openofficeorg.mirror/files/4.1.10/binaries/en-US/Apache_OpenOffice_4.1.10_Linux_x86-64_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz
<img alt="Downloading OpenOffice" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/echo/img_202106178_084237617.png60dc2281c9a09.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb3 src ng ngcb3" height="398" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”750″>
Alternatively, we can go to the download page and get the archive file using a web browser. Here you will need to select the ‘Linux 64-bit (x86-64) (RPM)’ option from the drop-down menu if your system is 64 bit. In the same way, select the language of installation and the version for the OpenOffice.
Step 2. Once we have downloaded the ‘.tar.gz’ archive file, we can extract it using the ‘tar’ command. An installation directory ‘en-US’ will be created after extraction. To extract the file, run the following command:
tar -xzf Apache_OpenOffice_4.1.10_Linux_x86-64_install-rpm_en-US.tar.gz
<img alt="Extracting OpenOffice archive file" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/echo/img_202106178_084358282.png60dc22825b849.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb3 src ng ngcb3" height="340" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”750″>
Step 3. Once the file is successfully extracted, navigate to the RPMS subdirectory and run the ‘rpm’ command to install the packages:
cd en-US/RPMS/
sudo rpm -Uvih *rpm
<img alt="installing packages from installation directory" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/echo/img_202106178_085001786.png60dc2282e249c.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb3 src ng ngcb3" height="324" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”750″>
In RPM-based installation, Apache OpenOffice will be installed in the /opt folder (which is set by default).
Step 4. Uninstall LibreOffice completely to avoid any dependencies conflicts while installing Apache OpenOffice:
sudo dnf remove libreoffice*
Step 5. Now cd into the ‘desktop-integration’ directory from inside the ‘RPMS’ folder (we are already inside it, so we don’t need to do this) and install the desktop integration specific to your OS. In our case, it is “openoffice4.1.10-redhat-menus-4.1.10-9807.noarch.rpm” which is specific to Fedora OS. If you get an error (as we got) like ‘redhat-release is needed by openoffice4.1.10-redhat-menus-4.1.10-9807.noarch’, then you should use the ‘freedesktop-menus’ rpm, which is recommended by Apache Openoffice:
cd desktop-integration/
sudo rpm -i openoffice4.1.10-freedesktop-menus-4.1.10-9807.noarch.rpm
That’s all, OpenOffice should now be installed and we are now set to launch the software.
Launching OpenOffice
To start OpenOffice either open a terminal and enter “openoffice4” The startup window is shown below:
<img alt="launching OpenOffice from terminal" data-ezsrc="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/echo/img_202106178_093134075.png60dc22845a0ed.jpg" ezimgfmt="rs rscb3 src ng ngcb3" height="553" loading="lazy" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”674″>
You can also use the Activities label at the top-left corner and search for the OpenOffice icon.
Conclusion
In this guide, we have learned how we can install the OpenOffice suite on Fedora 34 workstation. Installing JRE is recommended for the full functionality of OpenOffice. Also if you are facing difficulties in managing dependencies of LibreOffice with Openoffice, you should prefer to uninstall LibreOffice over installing conflicting dependencies. This will ensure a clean install. It is a good alternative to Microsoft Office especially if you are looking for a free and feature-filled solution.
