OpenOffice Setup for Unix

Real quick start on using OpenOffice in Linux and Solaris:

1. Open a shell
2. Type 'OpenOffice_setup'
3. Answer questions, and click finished
4. Type 'OpenOffice.org1.0/soffice', or choose OpenOffice from the menu (you may need to restart your desktop to see this)
5. Go nuts

Further details on use in Unix

OpenOffice should be easy to setup for use on all linux a solaris machines at slac. The office suite is already installed on the network, and the only thing each user has to do is setup the defaults directory for OpenOffice in their home directory.

To setup your defaults for use, and the links to the network install you will just need to type 'OpenOffice_setup' at the shell. This will start the setup script, which is graphically driven, and will ask you a number of questions to setup your defaults. The most important will be your name, address and e-mail. You can choose the defaults for the other questions, although the Java engine will be found for solaris, but the setup script does not find the java engine in linux. You can ignore this for now, and choose no Java engine for linux, this might be fixed in the near future.

One concern is: do you want the network install, or the local install? The network install is recommended for now, so we can manage just one installation for the site. But this will be slow on startup. If you have control over local disks on your machine, and have ~220MB free, you can choose the local install. This will be faster for use on that one machine, but then you will be tied to OpenOffice use on just one machine with your defaults, and if you log into other machines on site you may not be able to use OpenOffice from those machines, so you are warned.

Once the setup script has been run, there will be a new directory in your Home dir, named 'OpenOffice.org1.0'. This will contain the links to the network install of OpenOffice. To run OpenOffice from the command line, you can type '~/OpenOffice.org1.0/soffice', and this will open the Word Processor by default with a blank page. From there you can open other blank pages for spread sheets, drawing, presentation, and more.

There will also be links to OpenOffice put in the startup menu for your desktop. You may have to log out and log back in again to restart your desktop and see these menu items, but they are there. These will be setup for KDE, Gnome, and CDE desktop use. So you can run OpenOffice apps by just choosing the program from the startup menu items.

Warnings:

1. Do not use OpenOffice on RedHat 6.2 systems, such as a noric, or if you still have a RedHat6.2 desktop. OpenOffice will cause troubles on these machines, it seems.
2. Because the links to the network install are put in only one directory in your Home dir., you can only choose one version of OpenOffice at a time. The version of OpenOffice you setup will be decided by which system you are running your shell, if you are logged into a linux machine you will get the linux install, if it is a solaris machine, you will get the solaris install. So if you usually use Linux, run the setup from a linux shell, if you usually use solaris run the setup from a solaris shell. You can run this again to choose another setup in the future if you want, you will have to answer the default questions over again. But you can not use OpenOffice from linux and solaris at the same time, sorry. A little annoying I know.
3. Startup is slow, very slow. Especially the first time, sorry. This time is defined by the speed of networking to the computer and the amount needed to download to the machine to get started. Just be patient, it will get started, and become faster as the files needed get cached on your system. The program runs plenty fast once it has started up.
4. The programs run just fine over the network redirecting the X-window output to your desktop. I can run OpenOffice on shire and see it on my linux desktop just fine (and I think it runs faster this way). But the presentation program will try to take over your whole X-window session if you start the slide show. Over the network this will have the effect of hanging your X session. If you preview the slide show for presentations, make sure you are running OpenOffice on the same computer you sitting at. Without X-window redirection to another machine, presentations work just fine, actually very very fine.

If you have problems with setup and use, please tell me and I will add it to this page.
douglas@slac.stanford.edu

This page is maintained by Douglas Smith