LibreOffice Manager (lomanager)

[Pinoc]

Latest update: 2024-05-02

LibreOffice Manager, or lomanger, is a user-friendly tool to
a) install the latest LibreOffice in one of the 110 LibreOffice localizations,
b) add an additional LibreOffice localizations to an existing LibreOffice installation,
c) upgrade LibreOffice from any older version,
d) properly remove non-supported OpenOffice or LibreOffice installation.
e) LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice comparison see here

Important note:
1) lomanager is the successor of getopenoffice and will remove any existing OpenOffice installation!
2) make sure to properly update your system before running lomanager!



Quick Instructions:
-> run: PCmenu -> Software Center -> LibreOffice Manager
-> read the messages in the popup-windows, they are provided for a reason...
-> read the Important notes in this post, they are constantly updated and contain additional useful information for a successful installation of LibreOffice.
-> LibreOffice Manager will download LibreOffice and related files (Help, language packs) from LibreOffice. When a new LibreOffice version is available you will have to run LibreOffice LibreOffice Manager again to update to the latest LibreOffice version.


LibreOffice Manager has the following features:
* LibreOffice-upgrade or installation: if you upgrade from an older LibreOffice-version then it will completely remove the older LibreOffice-version and replace it by the latest LibreOffice-version. This is necessary to avoid any upgrade issues. When upgrading all user customizations stored in the hidden directory in the user's Home directory ~/.config/libreoffice are backed up to the directory ~/.config/libreoffice_old which can then be used to restore your customizations.
* Fixing a borked LibreOffice-installation: if your LibreOffice-installation is corrupt, or LibreOffice does not work anymore for whatever reason you can run LibreOffice Manager, select your LibreOffice-locale, and you will get a fresh working installation of LibreOffice.
* Uninstall LibreOffice: use this option to completely and properly remove LibreOffice from your system.
* Backup personalized settings: your personalized LibreOffice settings are stored in a hidden directory in your Home directory: ~/.config/libreoffice When upgrading to a newer version of LibreOffice, LibreOffice Manager will backup this directory to ~/.config/libreoffice_old from which you can then copy back your personalized settings.
* Disk-space: LibreOffice Manager will check for sufficient disk-space before installing LibreOffice.
* Localization: Confirm to install the pre-selected LibreOffice-locale or add any other LibreOffice-locale from the list.
* LibreOffice dictionary: LibreOffice Manager will provide detailed instructions on adding a localized dictionary for LibreOffice in the file 'getLOdictionary.txt' which can be found in your Home folder. Note: this info is only provided and needed for non en_US LibreOffice localization. The en-US, french, and spanish dictionaries are already included by default.
And for those who did not use LibreOffice Manager to install LibreOffice: ensure LibreOffice is closed, then go here, download the appropriate dictionary, open it with LibreOffice, and follow the instructions.
* LibreOffice user language interface: LibreOffice Manager will provide detailed instructions on switching between or applying different installed LibreOffice-locales in a popup window and in the file 'getLOdictionary.txt' which can be found in your Home folder. Please note that any LibreOffice-locale added to the system will be available in LibreOffice regardless of your current system language. You can select any LibreOffice locale from the LibreOffice tab: Tools -> Options -> Language Settings -> Languages User Interface.

Important notes:
====================
1) Alternative offline installation:
The LibreOffice offline installer provides the latest LibreOffice version in en_US language and can be downloaded from here.
Then follow these instructions on the new PC where you want to install LibreOffice:
a) if an older LibreOffice version is installed run lomanager and choose: Completely remove LibreOffice.
b) check in Synaptic that you have java-sun installed, if not, install it. Then close Synaptic.
c) copy the downloaded archive LO<version>.tar.gz into the user's Home directory, e.g., /home/Jim. Remove any previous directory LO-rpms. Next, extract the archive via a GUI-application or using the following command in a terminal, e.g.:

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tar xf LO<version>.tar.gz You should now have a new directory LO-rpms in the user's Home directory, e.g., /home/Jim/LO-rpms
d) Open a terminal in the user's Home directory and enter (copy/paste) the following command:

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/bin/su -c 'LO-rpms/LO_OfflineInstall.sh' provide your root-password, and wait for the final window showing 'LibreOffice is now installed' to appear.

2.) Linux/MS-Windows dual-boot:
If you have a LibreOffice-document shared between the two operating operating systems:
* Always save the LibreOffice-document and exit LibreOffice before you shutdown the operating system,
* Never suspend one operating system and then work on the document in the other operating system,
* Avoid working on the document in MS-Office and LibreOffice, use only LibreOffice in both operating systems,
* Use a common font of the two operating systems for maximum compatibility. Either automatically done by LibreOffice Manager or manually: open Synaptic, search for and install webcore-fonts, then open LibreOffice and you will have the new default font Times New Roman and other common fonts available.

3.) LibreOffice does not start anymore:
* MSEC: if you use this program ensure to apply the default settings. Setting MSEC on "secure" will prohibit installing and running LibreOffice!
* only for a given user: delete the hidden folder .config/libreoffice in the user's home directory, either graphically or open a konsole in your home-folder and enter in the konsole:

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/bin/rm -fr ~/.config/libreoffice and then start LibreOffice again. Please be aware that deleting the folder .config/libreoffice will remove all LibreOffice-customizations of this user!
* not for root nor for any user: your LibreOffice setup/configuration is borked. Start LibreOffice Manager, select your locale, and a popup window will tell you that this LibreOffice-locale is already installed. In this window, press Cancel to reinstall LibreOffice. Please be aware that reinstalling LibreOffice will remove all LibreOffice-locales and all LibreOffice-customizations of all users!

4.) Other problems: open a konsole window, enter:

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lomanager and post the konsole output here in this thread together with additional information like your window manager (KDE4, LXDE, etc), the PCLinuxOS version you use, is your system fully updated, do you get the same error when running lomanager as root, etc. Remember: detailed and concise information is a prerequisite to fix your problem and will help improving LibreOffice Manager.

7.) If you use a proxy server:
open a konsole and enter:

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export http_proxy="http://proxy.example.com:8080"or with authentication:

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export http_proxy="http://password:username@proxy.example.com:8080"then in the same konsole enter:

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lomanager
8.) lomanager command line options:
to learn about additional command line options enter in a terminal: lomanager --help
--debug: verbose output for debugging
--no-updatetest: skip the test to check if your system is fully updated
--vinfo: display information on installed and latest available version
Note: you must have root privileges to execute the script: either open a root terminal from the respective menu entry, or when becoming root from a user terminal you must use the command: su -

9.) Additional Information:
- working with LibreOffice applications: LibreOffice Documentation
- optional LibreOffice Extensions
- optional LibreOffice Templates

have fun 
-pinoc

[Howard]

I was going to install OOo 3.1 from the "official" OOo download, which I have done before with little problem, but I found this and thought I'd give it a try.  It was slower, especially as I already had a copy downloaded!  Interesting to watch what was happening though.

I was hoping that it would ask me which "locale" I wanted, as I would prefer the UK or Canadian version, maybe with a little Finnish on the side, but it just went ahead and installed the US version, but I'm used to that anyway.  However, how do I change locale?  And since my old laptop has 512MB memory (the maximum) am I constrained by the constraints?

However, how do I change locale?

I guess I should have looked farther up in the section!

[Neal]

Howard,
To change your locale, use addlocale.

On an installed system, 512 MB RAM is fine, but it isn't enough to use these apps in live mode. When in live mode, over 50% of your RAM is in use running the live system. In your case, around 250 MB would be available for these programs to use. That just isn't enough for an application as big as Open Office.

Neal

[Pinoc]

Howard,
at present, GOO is set to auto-detect your current localization and add the corresponding localized OO. Your idea to also add another localized OO is a good one and I will see how to implement this in the next version. Thank you for this suggestion!

-p.

[Howard]

Thanks for your replies, which I've only just seen.  For some reason I'm not getting e-mail notifications of replies at present, or getting odd ones (i.e.repeats of those I have already looked at.)  I'll check my junk settings, but I think it's a glitch here.

[Pinoc]

announcing GOO 0.4 with these changes/ new features:

*  all 104 OO-locales are now supported (with 0.3 only the 73 KDE locales were supported) and displayed in a list to choose from
* GOO will try to detect the system locale and then pre-select the corresponding OO-locale. The user can confirm to add this one or select any other one from the list
* checks for and offers to install Java on MiniME editions if sufficient space is available for Java
* provides information on OO-dictionaries and instructions how to switch between different installed OO-locales

And not to forget: a huge THANK YOU to Neal for testing and packaging GOO!!

[Texstar]

announcing GOO 0.4 with these changes/ new features:

*  all 104 OO-locales are now supported (with 0.3 only the 73 KDE locales were supported) and displayed in a list to choose from
* GOO will try to detect the system locale and then pre-select the corresponding OO-locale. The user can confirm to add this one or select any other one from the list
* checks for and offers to install Java on MiniME editions if sufficient space is available for Java
* provides information on OO-dictionaries and instructions how to switch between different installed OO-locales

And not to forget: a huge THANK YOU to Neal for testing and packaging GOO!!

And a huge THANK YOU for working this up. It makes it easy to install  Go Open Office now!

[Pinoc]

kudos from the boss, what shall I say...    It's just my pleasure to help where possible and to make the best Linux distro even better. Proud to be part of it!

[Neal]

Yes. Thank you very much for the work you've done on Get Open Office and addlocale, Pinoc. It was a pleasure to test for you. Get Open Office does exactly what it is supposed to do and does it very well.

[Howard]

Thanks, it works!  I now have the option to switch OOo to Finnish as well as UK English (not that I speak Finnish very well, but it should help improve one part of my vocabulary!)   There is no Finnish spellchecker in the OOo list though because the Finns have gone out on their own and provided software called Voikko.  I've never been able to install this as I don't know the language well enough to understand the instructions, but I noticed, during my short flirtation with Linux Mint, that Voikko was available in their repository, and would, presumably, install from there.  Is there any chance we could have it in ours too - I know there are some Finnish speakers involved in PCLOS?  I wonder what would happen if I tried to download it from the LM repository?

[Neal]

Howard,
LM uses .deb packages. PCLinuxOS uses RPM packages. The two are not the same. I'd advise against trying to install deb packages from LM or anywhere on PCLinuxOS.

[Howard]

Thanks for the warning Neal - I wasn't seriously going to try!

[Pinoc]

announcing GetOpenOffice version 0.5 with the following changes:
- improved check for Synaptic repo settings: from now on GOO will only proceed if you have only one (1) properly configured repo and no OO-repo is active/configured (most of the recent problems were due to misconfigured Synaptic repos)
- improved info on how to switch OO-locales

have fun,
-pinoc

[Neal]

It just keeps getting better.
Thank you, Pinoc!

[blackbird]

There is no Finnish spellchecker in the OOo list though because the Finns have gone out on their own and provided software called Voikko.  I've never been able to install this as I don't know the language well enough to understand the instructions, but I noticed, during my short flirtation with Linux Mint, that Voikko was available in their repository, and would, presumably, install from there.  Is there any chance we could have it in ours too

Voikko is in the repos. I haven't tested it (but I probably will).