Best Office Suite for Gentoo?

Rob W · n00b Joined: 23 May 2002 Posts: 28

I've searched the Gentoo forums, and Googled, but I can't really get a good idea of the best Office suite for Gentoo. KOffice was rated 'not ready', as was Hancon Office. OpenOffice gets some raves, but is binary only for practical reasons. Kudos to Wilke, who posted on these forums (somewhere) some very clear instructions on getting OpenOffice to work in Gentoo.

What is the relationship between StarOffice and OpenOffice? The reason I ask is that I have experienced StarOffice 5.2 in Windows, even bought the 600+ page book from Amazon. I spent a lot of time (weeks) trying to make it work in Windows 2K, and it was one glitch after another. Even though I support open source, and run Gentoo on one of my four computers, I have to say that StarOffice 5.2 in Windows was the single most awful piece of sh*t I have ever run on my computer, even thinking back to 1994 when I started out in Windows for Workgroups 3.11. My point is that if OpenOffice is some kind of StarOffice clone, I have to be wary based on my previous experience.

Your suggestions appreciated.

Rob W.
2.4.19-gentoo / KDE 3.01 / 384 MB RAM / Asus P2B MoBo / 400 MHz PII / Diamond Viper V550 video (Nvidia Riva TnT) 16 MB VRAM

alec · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 270 Location: Here

Disclaimer: I haven't used StarOffice 6.

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Personally, I love AbiWord. I even installed it on Windows and don't use Word very much any more. It's nice, has all the features I need, and none of the really wierd ones I don't. 4MB download.

KOffice is not ready for primetime. It's lists just don't work right. Standard page formating sucks. Call me US-Centric, but it annoys me that everything is in centimeters, even when I ask it to be in inches.

StarOffice 5.2 went through a complete overhaul between that, OpenOffice, and StarOffice 6. The whole annoying integrated desktop environment is gone. You can actually use it like a normal program. It's good but not great. A bit big, and I'm not a big fan of the default margins/tabs, but those can be changed. It's ugly as hell, but works pretty darn well. If you have to open an Office document that even AbiWord can't do, try OpenOffice.

Give AbiWord a try. I love it. If you need a spreadsheet, go for Gnumeric - both of these have (what I consider) great MS compatability.

There really isn't a good PowerPoint-like program. OpenOffice has one, but it's ugly as hell.

TheWart · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2002 5:27 am Post subject:

yea, i love abiword as well. it is nice and quick and works like a charm
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On the box it said it was designed for Win XP or better, so why won't it work with Linux?

Guest · Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2002 5:14 am Post subject: How do you print from AbiWord?

To Alec:

How in the world do you get AbiWord to print? I get a segmentation fault from AbiWord everytime I try to print or print preview.

I would love to tryout AbiWord, but a word processor that cant print is a little useless.

So how are you using AbiWord?

jay · l33t Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 980

I am using StarOffice 5.2 from the very beginning and never had problems under Windoze. In fact I use it because I get the most compatibility out of it when exchanging files between linux & windows.

OpenOffice 1.0 IS Staroffice 6 without some licensed tools (Adabas database, spell checking and so on..) The Source code was made open by sun, so the OpenOffice aims at users that don't want to pay for it. On the other hand you can buy StarOffice 6 for abour $50 and you are able to use Sun's Installation support (it's just a commercial version, that's all).
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alec · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 270 Location: Here

Princess Firefly · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Apr 2002 Posts: 80

I'm also getting segfaults with abiword 1.0.1 on print or print preview.

This might be fixed in 1.0.2 but portage doesn't grab 1.0.2 yet... I hope it will soon...

I get the segfaults using cups or pdq.

Other than that AbiWord is definitely the way to go!

cyphos · n00b Joined: 30 Apr 2002 Posts: 33 Location: Canada

To get printing working in AbiWord, you have to disable GNOME support in Abiword because gnome-print is broken with the latest release:

do:

alec · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 270 Location: Here

That's probably it - I have a "-gnome" in my USE variable, and my printing never segfaults.

Princess Firefly · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 21 Apr 2002 Posts: 80

My printing doesn't segfault anymore, thanks.

Of course now print preview doesn't work, can't print to pdf, and it doesn't seem to like landscape page formats too much

flater · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 26 Location: Netherlands

Pitr · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Jun 2002 Posts: 90

I use KOffice, mostly because it integrates well with my KDE desktop and it has Danish spellchecking via aspell, but I'm emerging abiword now to try it out.

alec · Apprentice Joined: 19 Apr 2002 Posts: 270 Location: Here

As mentioned in the above post, the problem is with gnome-print. Since gnome 2 is out, I have no idea if there's a working version of gnome-print now or not. The AbiWord problem should not effect OpenOffice - it has its own printing panel and uses lpr, just as AbiWord will when not compiled with gnome (and thus gnome-print) support.

AutoBot · l33t Joined: 22 Apr 2002 Posts: 968 Location: Usually Out

I find both AbiWord and OpenOffice to both function in a nice and desirable fashion, if you have windows install it (OpenOffice) there and give it a go before wasting all the time to compile it and then unmerging it because it wasn't what you wanted.
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bmk1st · n00b Joined: 31 May 2002 Posts: 28 Location: Pennsylvania

What's best Linux version of Microsoft Access or database?

I'll take advanced database courses at my school in fall. I'd like to try database application from linux that can work with mdb files and rest of database files.

AutoBot · l33t Joined: 22 Apr 2002 Posts: 968 Location: Usually Out