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Tag: libreoffice (Page 13 of 20)

LibreOffice 4.0.3 packages ready for download (and a rant)

May 10, 2013 / / 11 Comments

LibreOffice 4.0.3

Yesterdaty I noticed the LibreOffice 4.0.3 release.by chance, and built Slackware 14 packages for it right away (they work on -current just as well).Noteworthy statement in these release notes is “LibreOffice 4.0.3 is another important step in the process of improving the quality and stability of the bleeding edge version of the suite, and facilitating migrations to free software by governments and enterprises“.

Relating to that statement, a personal rant is about to burst.

Because there is another interesting tidbit in those release notes: “another large migration to LibreOffice has been announced, as the government of Spain’s autonomous region of Extremadura has just begun the switch to free software of desktop PCs and expects the majority of its 40,000 PCs to be migrated by the end of 2013. Extremadura estimates that the move to open source – including LibreOffice – will help save 30 million Euro per year.“. I remember that the decision by the Extremadura government (this is a county in Spain with low industrialisation and therefore not rich) to move completely to Open Source was made more than 6 years ago. Cool to read about this achievement. I wish the dutch government had more focus on adopting Open Source and Open Standards… so far it has been an eternal uphill battle against the minions of Microsoft. I know, because I have been involved in several pilots, proposals and projects over the past 10 years.

Anyway, I am open to discussion about this, you dutchies and others!

Back to the topic of using LibreOffice on our cool Slackware platform. Get the packages from my 14.0 package repository while they are hot! If you are still running Slackware 13.37 you should stick with LibreOffice 3.6.6 for which I also have packages.

They are also available from several mirrors. Remember, the mirror sites usually have a bigger bandwidth available than the master site! If you are a mirror administrator, and want to be added to the list, contact me.

Here is the shortlist:

You can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

Cheers, Eric

LibreOffice 3.6.6 for Slackware 13.37

April 6, 2013 / / 5 Comments

The LibreOffice developers released another update to the old 3.6.x series very recently, but since there is a focus on advertizing the 4.0.x version, you won’t find an announcement anywhere. LibreOffice 3.6.6 is a bugfix release which was initially not planned in the release schedule, but an additional final release was added to the plan fairly soon after 3.6.5 was released.

These LibreOffice 3.6.6 packages which I am making available have been built on Slackware 13.37. They can be installed on Slackware 14 as well, but of course I have LibreOffice 4.0.2 packages (32bit, 64bit) in my repository for Slackware 14 and -current – it is up to you to decide which version you want to use on Slackware 14.

The LibreOffice 3.6.6 packages are available here:

Eric

LibreOffice 4.0.2 packaged for Slackware 14

April 5, 2013 / / 19 Comments

LibreOffice 4.0.2

I compiled packages for the new LibreOffice 4.0.2 release.(Slackware 14 and -current).This is another “bugfix and stability improvement” release.

Get them from my package repository . If you are still running Slackware 13.37 you should stick with LibreOffice 3.6.5 for which I also have packages.

Also available from mirrors like these (remember, the mirror sites usually have a bigger bandwidth available than the master site!):

You can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

Cheers, Eric

New LibreOffice; and KDE recompiled for Slackware 14.0

March 7, 2013 / / 33 Comments

LibreOffice 4.0.1

There is a new LibreOffice 4.0.1 release.This is a bugfix and stability improvement release, with the remark that “for enterprise adoptions, though, The Document Foundation suggests the more solid and stable LibreOffice 3.6.5, backed by certified level 3 support engineers“. I have LibreOffice 3.6.5 packages still in my repository – check out the 13.37 package directory.

Still, there are a few interesting things to mention about the 4.0.1 release:

  • LibreOffice Impress Remote (an Android app) is now available on Google Play. Instructions on how to use this are available on the LibreOffice wiki.
  • The Documentation team has released an electronic guide “Getting Started with LibreOffice 4.0?, which is available in PDF and ODF formats.

You can download the new packages from my package repository . The LibreOffice 4.0.1 packages have been built on Slackware 14.0 which makes them unfit for Slackware 13.37 (you can stick with LibreOffice 3.6.5 on that platform). Of course the new packages work with slackware-current!

Remember, you can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

 

KDE 4.10.1

 

Now that Slackware-current has an official set of KDE 4.10.1 packages, provided by Patrick Volkerding, I have rebuilt my own KDE packages (which I had built for slackware-current at first), but this second time I did it on Slackware 14.0. Users of this stable Slackware release can now enjoy the KDE upgrade as well.

I deleted the “current/4.10.1” package directory and added the rebuilt packages in “14.0/4.10.1“. Note that if you already had my KDE 4.10.0 packages installed on Slackware 14.0 and want to upgrade to 4.10.1, there are no new/updated dependencies. One notable change compared to the previous packages is the upgrade of Calligra to 2.6.1, just like Patrick did for Slackware-current.
The README has all the instructions you will need for an upgrade.

Enjoy! Eric

LibreOffice 4.0.0 has been released

February 8, 2013 / / 9 Comments

Yesterday the LibreOffice developers released their 4.0.0 milestone. This is essentially the same code as the 3rd Release Candidate for which I dropped some testing packages a few days ago.

Quoting the announcement, “LibreOffice 4.0.0 is the first release that reflects the objectives set by the community at the time of the announcement” (On 28 September 2010, several members of the OpenOffice.org project formed a new group called “The Document Foundation” and forked LibreOffice from their former project). These objectives are (quoting again): “a cleaner and leaner code base, an improved set of features, better interoperability, and a more diverse and inclusive ecosystem“.

The most important highlights of this version 4.0.0 are:

  • Integration with several content and document management systems – including Alfresco, IBM FileNet P8, Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, Nuxeo, OpenText, SAP NetWeaver Cloud Service and others – through the CMIS standard.
  • Better interoperability with DOCX and RTF documents, thanks to several new features and improvements like the possibility of importing ink annotations and attaching comments to text ranges.
  • Possibility to import Microsoft Publisher documents, and further improvement of Visio import filters with the addition of 2013 version (just announced).
  • Additional UI incremental improvements, including Unity integration and support of Firefox Themes (Personas) to give LibreOffice a personalized look.
  • Introduction of the widget layout technique for dialog windows, which makes it easier to translate, resize and hide UI elements, reduces code complexity, and lays a foundation for a much improved user interface.
  • Different header and footer on the first page of a Writer document, without the need of a separate page style.
  • Several performance improvements to Calc, plus new features such as export of charts as images (JPG and PNG) and new spreadsheet functions as defined in ODF OpenFormula.
  • First release of Impress Remote Control App for Android, supported only on some Linux distributions. (The second release, coming soon, will be supported on all platforms: Windows, MacOS X and all Linux distros and binaries.)
  • Significant performance improvements when loading and saving many types of documents, with particular improvements for large ODS and XLSX spreadsheets and RTF files.
  • Improved code contribution thanks to Gerrit: a web based code review system, facilitating the task for projects using Git version control system (although this is not specific of LibreOffice 4.0, it has entered the production stage just before the 4.0 branch).

You can read the “features and fixes” page if you want to learn the full scope of the new release.

Of course, the best way to experience this new feature set is to download and install packages which have been built on and for Slackware natively!

I rebuilt the “RC3” packages which I already had, this time also compiling a dictionary for every language pack, using a newly added LibreOffice “dictionaries” source tarball (the total number of source archives has still shrunk to four). I checked with other distro packages but so far, nobody seems to be incorporating these new dictionaries. I can not tell you anything about their quality yet, so what I would appreciate is if you comment on what you think of the quality of dictionary available in the language pack you install. If you are not happy with the included dictionary you can always download and install one of the dictionaries found at the LibreOffice extensions site.

Please note that LibreOffice 4 stores its configuration in a new numbered directory, “~/.config/libreoffice/4/” and I have not found a way to automatically migrate the settings from the old “3” directory. If you find a way, let me know in a reply to this blog.

Packages can be downloaded from one of the mirrors, and keep in mnd that they were built on Slackware 14, which will make them unfit for Slackware 13.37 or earlier (but of course the packages will work on slackware-current):

Remember, you can subscribe to the repository’s RSS feed if you want to be the first to know when new packages are uploaded.

Eric

 

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