New AbiWord looks solid but suffers from age-old Linux problem

I found this to be an interesting exchange between an Abiword dev and Ubuntu:

http://msevior.livejournal.com/20890.html

"it suffers from the oldest Linux ill of all -- it's a pain to install."

You've got to be kidding me. Who needs to build their own Abiword? I've yet to find a Linux or BSD OS that doesn't have a package or port. Sure, some have better packages then others. I'd like to thank whoever maintains Abiword in Debian for including the spell-check plugin. Many distros don't.

Installing Abiword in Ubuntu or Kubuntu is as simple as going to the package manager, clicking on the little box and clicking the install button...

I think he is talking about installing the latest version, it may not be in the package manager for your distro yet.

As bigg pointed out with the link above, abiword 2.6 was released about a month ago after the Ubuntu 8.04 software freeze, so it won't be shipping with 8.04.

Ffedora and others were able to get it in with similar release times.

I checked and there is an Abiword 2.6 package in PPA for both Ubuntu Gutsy and Hardy.

Surprisingly, the binary distros that I view as "cutting edge", Debian Sid, Arch, and Frugalware, don't have it. Even the AUR doesn't have it. Is it really not an important program? I've given up on it due to problems, maybe that is true of everybody else.

> Surprisingly, the binary distros that I view as "cutting edge", Debian Sid, Arch, and Frugalware, don't have it.

It's in the version of GSB intended for use with Slackware 12.1 when it comes out. The stable version for 12.0 has Abitword 2.4. Gware will probably have it too, and I think it's already available from Slacky. Dropline Gnome doesn't seem to have a list of packages on their site, so I have no idea what versions it includes.

Abiword is a perfectly nice lightweight word processor. It's too bad that the review got derailed by the author's odd comments about installation. Maybe he's been trapped in a time warp or something, and hasn't caught up yet :)

Quoting:It's in the version of GSB intended for use with Slackware 12.1 when it comes out.

What's GSB?

I got Abiword for Slackware from Robby Workman's site.

> What's GSB?

Gnome SlackBuild, formerly Freerock Gnome.

There are at least 4 implementations of Gnome for Slackware: GSB (http://gnomeslackbuild.org/), Gware (http://www.gware.org/), Dropline Gnome (http://www.droplinegnome.org/), and Gnome Slacky (http://www.slacky.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...).

And that doesn't count Garnome (http://www.gnome.org/projects/garnome/), which isn't Slackware specific, but works fairly well.