LibreOffice is a productivity suite that is compatible with other major office suites, and available on a variety of platforms. LibreOffice is a fork of the famous project OpenOffice project which is now under Oracle. It is free software and servers all your basic needs. It is the result of immense efforts by The Document Foundation aimed at making an Office suite or desktops that servers all your needs for free.

A group of key contributors to the OpenOffice.org (OOo) project have formed a new organization i.e.  ‘The Document Foundation‘ to manage a community-driven fork of the popular open source office suite. Their goal is to liberate the project from Oracle’s control and create a more inclusive and participatory ecosystem around the software & save it from sudden-death just like Opensolaris project.

Download :-

• LibreOffice 3.3.0 Beta2 32-bit
• LibreOffice 3.3.0 Beta2 64-bit

[Update] LibreOffice 3.3.0 Release Candidate 4

• RC4 32 Bit
• RC4 64 Bit

[Update] Installation via PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libreoffice

• sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome (For GNOME)
• sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde (For KDE

Installing LibreOffice in Ubuntu :-

Installing LibreOffice is same as that of installing OpenOffice, simple and fast. Locate the downloaded file (.tar.gz) and place it on your desktop (for convenience).

Open the terminal and type :-

cd ~/Desktop

tar xvzf LibO_3.3.0_beta2_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz

After the file extraction process is completed, access the directory of the extracted file to continue the installation.

cd ~/Desktop/en-US/DEBS

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Ok. Now we are done with installing libreoffice (#great).

To put LibreOffice on ubuntu-panel, type-in this :

cd ~/Desktop/en-US/DEBS/desktop-integration

sudo dpkg -i libreoffice3.3-debian-menus_3.3-1_all.deb

and done. So Easy!!!.

Now, access LibreOffice from Applications> Office > LibreOffice.

Take a look at LibreOffice -

Note:  In the command ‘cd ~/’  , the ‘~/’ corresponds to ‘/home/user’ directory provided that “user” is replaced by your own username.

For any queries regarding LibreOffice or any other regarding Ubuntu, feel free to ask at our Forums.

Njoy LibreOffice !!!

The Open Office Suite in Ubuntu is just the perfect blend you need for all your Office needs.As Wiki says OpenOffice.org (OO.o or OOo), commonly known simply as OpenOffice, is an office application suite available for a number of different computer operating systems. It is written using the GTK and supports plugins like Firefox which provides it additional functionality.

Comparing with MS-Office or WordPerfect,this pack just fulfils all the needs of a Rookie like me  that too for free.Now that’s something really satisfying since I don’t have to payout a hefty amount just for my small needs.Though online options too are available but they haven’t developed that much yet.

OOo has been divided into 6 components few of which are available by default in Ubuntu

Those six components are

• Writer (Available By Default)
• Calc (Available By Default)
• Impress (Available By Default)
• Base
• Draw (Available By Default)
• Math (Available By Default)

Note : To install rest components you may use Applications >Add & Remove and search for “OpenOffice”

To Access OOo go to Applications>Office and select the desired component.We’ll take  here the 3 basic components of it which are used most

Now lets take a quick look at these 3 components

OOo WRITER aka OOo Word Processor

Writer does all the basic stuff of word processing and is similar to MS Word and is can save files in PDF format (not available in earlier versions of MS Office).It can also save documents in multiple formats including DOC, ODF and many more.

OOo Calc aka OOo Spreadsheet

Calc is similar to MS Excel & is rather better than it in many fields. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing, based on the layout of the user’s data . Also it has functionality to have customised plugins according to your needs which can be downloaded from OpenOffice.Org Site.

OOo Impress aka OOo Presentation

Impress similar to Apple Keynote or MS PowerPoint and  is used for presentations.Its supports plugins like rest its counterparts and also allows exporting the files to swf format(Adobe Flash) that is generally present in our browsers these days .It also has presentation wizard that guides you through the presentation customization on go.

Unlike Windows, when you install Ubuntu (& many other Linux distributions), a lot of Office and other Basic applications also get installed. You don’t have to spend time installing applications after you’ve installed the OS (that’s another reason why Linux is preferred for Live Distributions).

Here is some info about the applications which you’ll be using:

1. OpenOffice.org: It is a free and complete Office Suite. It contains the following applications as a part of it:
   • Writer - a word processing software
   • Calc - a spreadsheet software
   • Impress – a presentation software
   • Base – a database management program
   • Draw – a vector graphics editor
   • Math – a tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae

You’ll really be surprise to see that OpenOffice.org has almost everything inspite of being free which it’s counterpart Microsoft Office 2003 had. We’ll not compare the Microsoft Office 2007 with OpenOffice.org 3.0 because of a different interface.

Most OO.o applications can be accessed in the Application —> Office menu

2. GIMP: GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is almost as powerful as Photoshop, but Photoshop users might find it’s interface a bit awkward.

GIMP can be accessed in the Application —> Graphics menu.

3. Brasero Disc Burner: As the name suggests, it’s a complete and simple Disc Burning software.

Brasero can be accessed in the Application —> Sound & Video menu.

4. Transmission: Transmission is a BitTorrent client which can be used to download torrents.

Transmission can be accessed in the Application —> Internet menu.

But but but, we’ll highly recommend installing Deluge as we feel, it is better than Transmission and gives you a ‘uTorrent-ish’feel.

Deluge can be installed by the following command: sudo apt-get install deluge-torrent or alternatively from the Synaptic Application Manager.

5. Pidgin: Pidgin is an All-in-one Instant Messaging client. It supports, Gmail/Jabber, Yahoo, MSN/Live, AIM, ICQ, IRC and everything right under one free program.

Pidgin can be accessed in the Application —> Internet menu.

6. Ekiga: Ekiga Softphone is a free VoIP and video conferencing client for GNOME and Windows.

Ekiga can be accessed in the Application —> Internet menu.