Alien Pastures

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Tag: libreoffice (Page 17 of 20)

LibreOffice 3.4.5 released, OpenJDK package update.

January 18, 2012 / / 32 Comments

There was a new maintenance release from the Document Foundation. We now have LibreOffice 3.4.5 and I spent the night (or rather, two virtual machines did the work while I slept) to produce packages for Slackware 13.37 and later.

You can find the packages in the usual locations (all of the mirrors below also offer  rsync access):

Also I rebuilt my OpenJDK packages (JDK as well as JRE and the browser plugin icedtea-web) to address the issues that had popped up in the comments section of my previous post:

  • The java web start (javaws, part of the “icedtea-web” package) would not work with just openjre installed – it worked fine with openjdk;
  • The openjre pakage missed two important configfiles which made it unusable,
  • The CA certificates file was empty in both JDK and JRE packages

Download locations for the updated packages: http://slackware.com/~alien/openjdk/ with a mirror here: http://alien.slackbook.org/slackware/openjdk/ . Please note that there is an updated (with regard to Slackware’s stock version) of ca-certificates. I needed that to generate a “cacerts” file for the openjdk and openjre package, but for you the upgrade is optional. You’ll see it appear in slackware-current soon enough anyway because the upgrade is well overdue.

Cheers, Eric

Fixes for LibreOffice in KDE

November 26, 2011 / / 7 Comments

Those of you who use KDE as their desktop environment and also use my LibreOffice packages, will know that there are two major annoyances, related to KDE’s theming engine but ultimately caused by bugs in LibreOffice.

Those annoyances are:

  • Tooltips in LO applications show up as black text on black background, effectively rendering them useless. You can fix that by changing the color of Tooltips in “System Settings > Application Appearance > Colors” and then in the tab called “colors” look for “Tooltip background” and change that to some lighter color. But that changes the behaviour of every tooltip in other applications as well, so this should really be fixed in LibreOffice.
  • When using KDE’s Oxygen window decorations, all LO applications will have a non-functional horizontal scrollbar – you can not grab hold of it or move it left-right with your mouse.

Two patches which I found in OpenSuse were needed to fix both these annoyances. I rebuilt my LibreOffice packages for Slackware after applying them. Get them if you were annoyed by these issues just like me.

Note that the mirror sites also offer rsync access as well as faster download speeds. Only taper.alienbase.nl and alien.slackbook.org are up to date at this moment (because I maintain those myself) but the other mirrors should pick up the updates automatically soon enough.

Eric

LibreOffice 3.4.4

November 11, 2011 / / 14 Comments

 Just released: Libreoffice 3.4.4. Please read the official announcement which tells us that “This is the fourth update to the stable version of LibreOffice. It contains only safe code fixes and translation updates, and is considered safe for production use“.

 

I have created some packages for you. Like the last time, there is the big “libreoffice” package containing all the modules and extensions, as well as US english language support (including a dictionary). Then there is the “libreoffice-mozplugin” package for those who want to be able to embed Office documents in their (Mozilla-compatible) browser window. And finally there are many language packs, containing the translated menus and help texts. Some of the language packs contain dictionaries too (german, british english, spanish, french, italian, dutch and  polish). You can of course download your own dictionary or other extensions at http://extensions.libreoffice.org/

I am contemplating another split-off. The KDE integration support is nice but has one glaring bug which has been around for ever and does not stand a big chance of getting fixed soon. Try moving the horizontal slider in a Calc spreadsheet when you are running KDE… your mouse will not be able to do it. It is trivial to split the four KDE support files into a separate package which allows you the choice of not installing it. I hesitate, because I want to keep the total amount of packages “small” (relative term, looking at all those language packs). I would only do this to alleviate the pain of KDE users. Do not think you can persuade me to split-off other things like extensions or the core components! Not going to happen.

Get the packages in the usual locations (all of the mirrors below also offer  rsync access):

Cheers, Eric

 

Libreoffice 3.4.3

September 2, 2011 / / 18 Comments

A few days ago the Document Foundation  released their newest version of the LibreOffice open source production suite. Version 3.4.3 is now also available in Slackware package format, the packages I built for you are available here (it’s better if you try the mirrors, they should be a lot faster):

 

Note that all mirrors also have rsync available (not the slackware.com server though).

Mostly this is a maintenance release, however I made one change to the packages: I have split off the mozilla-compatible browser plugin into a separate package “libreoffice-mozplugin”. A few users of my packages reported that this plugin caused LibreOffice to start whenever they would close their Firefox browser. If you use upgradepkg to upgrade your installed libreoffice to my version 3.4.3 package, the old plugin will be automatically be removed (therefore it is recommended that you close your firefox when you upgrade to this new version of LibreOffice).

You have to use installpkg to also install the new libreoffice-mozplugin package.

Have fun! Eric

LibreOffice 3.4.1 … almost production-ready

July 6, 2011 / / 5 Comments

Inbetween moving my office to another building (no not at home… at the customer site where I work as helpdesk controller / 3rd line UNIX support person and whatnot) my server has been compiling new LibreOffice packages for Slackware 13.37. A little while ago you could get my “stable” version 3.3.3 packages and today it is time for the “unstable” version 3.4.1. The LibreOffice developers expect that the next release (3.4.2) will be stable enough that it can be called “production-ready” so that 3.4 can finally replace 3.3 on the average user’s desktop. Remember that libreoffice-3.4 is a major move away from the old SUN/Oracle OpenOffice.org codebase with a lot of enhancements and cleanups – hence it took a while to get the new/polished code in a decent state.

As always, the primary location for my packages is at the slackware URL: http://slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/libreoffice/

Otherwise (and because they have bigger download speeds to offer), use one of the mirrors like:

and grab those packages (the mirrors may take a little while to get updated).

The 3.4.1 release’s announcement page states that it “can be safely deployed for production needs by most users” but adds the warning “Large enterprises deploying LibreOffice on desktop PCs, are still recommended to deploy LibreOffice 3.3.3“. The page sports a nice timeline showing that a new 3.3.x version should appear only after the release of 3.4.2. So take your pick… I guess that you should be safe with 3.4.1.

However, if the LO folks will declare the upcoming 3.4.2 as “unfit for the enterprise” then it is likely that I will compile one more set of LibreOffice 3.3.x packages – and on Slackware 13.1.

Have fun!
Eric

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