Review: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 2.0

Download from ftp://openoffice.mirrors.pair.com/contrib/rc/2.0bc/ into ~/OpenSource/OpenOffice cd ~/OpenSource/OpenOffice tar xzf OOo_2.0bc_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz mv openofficeorg-redhat-menus-1.9.79-1* conflict (I run Suse 9.1) # rpm -Uhv *.rpm Preparing... ### [100%] 1:openofficeorg-core01 ### [ 5%] 2:openofficeorg-calc ### [ 10%] 3:openofficeorg-core02 ### [ 14%] 4:openofficeorg-core03 ### [ 19%] 5:openofficeorg-core04 ### [ 24%] 6:openofficeorg-core05 ### [ 29%] 7:openofficeorg-core06 ### [ 33%] 8:openofficeorg-core07 ### [ 38%] 9:openofficeorg-core08 ### [ 43%] 10:openofficeorg-draw ### [ 48%] 11:openofficeorg-gnome-int### 12:openofficeorg-graphicfi### [ 57%] 13:openofficeorg-impress ### [ 62%] 14:openofficeorg-javafilte### [ 67%] 15:openofficeorg-math ### [ 71%] 16:openofficeorg-pyuno ### [ 76%] 17:openofficeorg-spellchec### [ 81%] 18:openofficeorg-suse-menu### [ 86%] 19:openofficeorg-testtool ### [ 90%] 20:openofficeorg-writer ### [ 95%] 21:openofficeorg-xsltfilte### [100%]

/opt/openoffice.org1.9.79/program/soffice Worked like a charm. Brought up few MS docs, Word, PPT, Excel. Everything worked good so far. It is much faster than previous versions. Good luck

Sigh. So far as I can tell, not X86_64 rpms. Looks like compile time to me. Bright side -- I do have an Athlon 64 to do the compile with...

Perhaps they'll be able to fix the HTML output now?

It was almost OK in 1.1.x but never improved because they "didn't have enough resources". I want to find a sugar-daddy to pay me to improve it. Forex, use Ruby for scripting instead of Java. (-:

A.C. - reread the earlier, more insightful review. One of the points made was that Java seemed to be forced into the new version, perhaps at Sun's behest. The latter reviewer was much more critical of the changes and trends in 2.0 than this once over soft focus love fest being cited in this thread.

As someone who has used OO extensively in the 1.1,1.2,1.3 and 1.4 incarnations, I am very disappointed in the 1.9 (2.0) betas. It's slow, key features have been nixed ( returning to where you stopped editing) and yes, Java (ugh). Now the developers make the case that Java is used because it's what they have unless someone bellies up to the bar to offer something else. Since I'm not a programmer by trade, I really can not comment on the logic of this argument.

Other compelling arguement have been made that far too much time has been spent on window dressing and not the nuts and bolts such as improving the dismal chart graphing capablities. Valid point. I managed to break OO by inserting Visio drawings into my document which 1.3 handled just fine and OO 1.9 crashed and burned on trying to save. Definitely not a step forward. They fixed it but it was a hard slog.

In terms of speed, I find much faster. In terms of the menu, I think it was a good improvment. It needs more eye candy, but that will come later. In terms of Java, would you have liked VB better? Of course not. Nothing wrong with using Java, and if you don't like it, you can use Python. In terms of not handling Visio,you are aware it is a beta release? aren't you? Couldn't you find any positives, like new database for instance? You don't like OOo, use MS Word. Plain and simple. Give them time and give them a break, will you?