My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

LibreOffice updates for Slackware 14.2 and -current

This month, I am building different versions for LibreOffice, for our stable Slackware 14.2 and for the -current testing ground. During my holiday, new versions became available and last week I built packages from those sources.

The 6.2.6 release which was announced by the Document Foundation two weeks ago brings some security fixes to the 6.2 series. Therefore it was important to get rid of the old 6.2.5 packages. I built 6.2.6 for Slackware 14.2 and those packages have been available for download now since early last week. Go get them!

Note: as of this package release, I am no longer including support for KDE4. The “libreoffice-kde-integration” package is no longer available in my repository and you should “removepkg” the older version if you have that installed. The KDE4 support in LibreOffice has been broken for a while and your Office applications will run great on KDE4 without that “KDE integration”. The LibreOffice UI will be based on GTK3 widgets instead and KDE4’s theming engine will make that its User Interface blends in properly.

For Slackware-current I went for the new 6.3 series of LibreOffice instead. The sources for this new release were made public three weeks ago. The release notes state that the 6.3.x office suite should be a lot faster than the previous 6.2.x series with impressively notched-up interoperability support for the Microsoft Office document formats. Go check it out!

The packages for LibreOffice 6.3.0 which are ready for download in my repository, do contain “libreoffice-kde-integration”, yes! Unlike the packages for Slackware 14.2 I have decided to add KDE5 (aka Plasma5) support to my LibreOffice packages for slackware-current from now on.
If you do not have KDE5 packages installed at all, don’t worry. LibreOffice will work great. The KDE integration package will just not add anything useful for you. On the other hand, if you have Plasma5 installed you will benefit from native file selection dialog windows and other integration features. And even if you do not have Plasma5 but you do have Qt5 installed, then you will be able to run LibreOffice with Qt5 User Interface elements instead of defaulting to GTK3.

If you want to compile these Libreoffice 6.3.0 packages yourself, then be aware that by default no KDE5 support will be added. You will have to set the value of the script parameter “ADD_KDE5” to “YES”. Additionally you will have to install the packages that this functionality depends on. Those are: qt5, libxkbcommon, OpenAL, SDL_sound, and all the packages of KDE Frameworks 5. All of these can be  found in my ‘ktown’ repository: https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/

Enjoy! Eric

14 Comments

  1. gegechris99

    Upgraded to LO 6.2.6 on Slackware64 14.2. Works fine. Thanks

  2. Eduardo

    Thank you Eric! Plasma5 integration is fine in 6.3.0 and your packages seem to work great.

  3. Henry Pfeil

    Unable to launch LibreOffice with current boost. Need an upgrade to v1.71.0

    Current: boost-1.70.0 (21-Aug)
    soffice.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libboost_locale.so.1.71.0

    Welcome back!

    • Henry Pfeil

      Oops! Sorry about that. Already have 1.71.0, didn’t install it yet. Can I delete that message?

  4. Henry Pfeil

    Hmm, that’s odd, can’t find the l/boost update in slackware64-current/ChangeLog.txt. I got the 1.71.0 version from an rsync –update in my package cache.

    • alienbob

      Look better please.

  5. Henry Pfeil

    Nevermind. I’m still in the Labor Day weekend. Boost got updated on Aug 21, according to the Changelog. My bad. I’m going away now….

    Obquote: “Pray! burn this as soon as it falls into your hands.”

  6. Alex Kempshall

    Hi AlienBob
    I’m having a problem with your package LibreOffice 6.2.5 and 6.2.6.
    I want to add a macro to a personalised toolbar in Calc
    So I follow the menu

    Tools -> Customize -> Toolbars (tab)

    Then in the “Category” drop down menu choose the option “Macros”
    LibreOffice presents the “LibreOffice 6.2 Document Recovery” message box.
    I don’t have this problem if I use the Libreoffice 6.2.5 or 6.2.7 downloaded from SlackBuilds

    Alex

  7. alienbob

    Alex, what version of Slackware? And exactly which packages did you install? Do you still have libreoffice-kde-integration package installed for instance?
    And what Desktop Environment are you using, XFCE? KDE? …?
    Also, did you edit /etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh to force preference to a particular UI widget set?

    • Alex Kempshall

      I’m using 14.2 with KDE.
      Installed
      3686233940 1611960 libreoffice-l10n-en_GB-6.2.6-x86_64-1alien.txz
      2617498173 4049120 libreoffice-dict-en-6.2.6-x86_64-1alien.txz
      1915551789 164062620 libreoffice-6.2.6-x86_64-1alien.txz

      the 6.2.5 version would have had
      2258955321 136428 libreoffice-kde-integration-6.2.5-x86_64-1alien.txz

      I do amend /etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh from time to time currently it is

      #!/bin/sh

      # To force the use of a certain VCL UI interface, use one of these envvars.
      #export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen
      #export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kde4
      #export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3_kde5
      #export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kde5
      #export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=qt5
      #export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk
      #export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3

      I’m trying to replicate the problem in -current, but can’t start libreoffice because

      /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libboost_locale.so.1.71.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

      So might have to get back into step in -current.

      • alienbob

        If you try to run libreoffice-6.3.0 in -current and are getting that error you have a stale -current installation. Upgrade to the latest set of -current packages.
        I can not reproduce your issue by the way. I get a Macros dialog box.

        • Alex Kempshall

          I get the problem in 14.2 even when I move .config/libreoffice out of the way.

          I also get the problem running in a Current install in VirttualBox after upgrading to the latest set of -current packages.

          I don’t get the problem running the Willy Sudiarto Raharjo versions 6.2.5 and 6.2.7 from SlackBuilds,org in 14.2, so I sticking with the 6.2.7 package from SlackBuilds for the time being.

          Will have another look at this next week.

          Might be something to do with the UI rendering. Currently I see on Libreoffice

          Help -> About LibreOffice

          UI render: default; VCL: kde4;

          I shall look at /etc/profile.d/libreoffice.sh and see if changing the contents will improve matters. Currently it’s

          #!/bin/sh

          export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk

          Alex

        • Alex Kempshall

          Whatever environment I use I get the same problem. The problem being

          Tools -> Customize -> Toolbars (tab)
          Then in the “Category” drop down menu choose the option “Macros”
          LibreOffice presents the “LibreOffice 6.2 Document Recovery” message box.

          I’ve tried
          14.2 with kde4
          14.2+ with kde4
          14.2+ with kde5

          All the 14.2+ environment are up to date.

          2.6.5 and 2.6.7, from SlackBuilds.org all work as expected in 14.2

          I’ve also –
          compiled libreoffice 2.6.7 in a 14.2 kde4 environment and that works as expected.
          compiled libreoffice 6.3.0 (alpha0+) in a 14.2+ kde4 environment and that works as expected.

          I’m running out of ideas as to where to go next. Though I could try your autogen to compile and see if that makes the difference. in my environment.

          Alex

  8. alienbob

    I suggest you have a look at the packages you have installed. I have no other bug reports like yours and I cannot reproduce this either.

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