Installing OpenOffice.org in Xubuntu

Xubuntu comes with Abiword as its word processor and Gnumeric as its spreadsheet. I don’t like Abiword for long documents, because it always seems to slow to a crawl when the page count gets too high. Besides, I need a more complicated word processor.

OpenOffice.org, which is a lot like Microsoft Office, runs just fine in Xubuntu even on an anemic computer like my test machine. It does take a while to start up–I won’t hide that from you. But it works fine once it gets going, and it comes close to matching Microsoft Office in features, at least the ones you’re likely to use.

Standard Ubuntu, the Gnome-based version, comes with OpenOffice.org installed and configured. If you want to install it in Xubuntu, though, you need to make some selections by hand to get the same functions. If you just install the OpenOffice.org package, you’ll get a stripped-down installation with no help and no thesaurus, and it won’t even use the “User Interface” theme you choose in the Xubuntu Settings Manager.

So here’s how to get a completely working OpenOffice.org in Xubuntu.

First, we’re going to use Synaptic Package Manager instead of Add/Remove. It’s not really any harder, but it does give you more options.

We’ll find what we need by searching for “openoffice.” It will go a lot faster, especially on a slow computer, if you search by “Name” instead of “Description and Name.”

Searching by name in Synaptic Package Manager.

First we find the “openoffice.org” package. Click the check box next to it and choose “Mark for Installation.” Synaptic will ask whether you want to mark the additional packages required for installation. You do.

Marking the “openoffice.org” package.

Now we’ve marked a bunch of packages, but they’re not enough yet.

Next we’ll find the package “openoffice.org-gtk,” which will teach OpenOffice.org to use the theme we choose in the “User Interface” setting.

This package adapts OpenOffice.org to use the “User Interface” theme you choose.

I plan on using the “Industrial” theme later on, so I’m also going to install “openoffice.org-style-industrial.”

Installing the “Industrial” theme.

To install the help files, mark the help package for your language–in my case, “openoffice.org-help-en-us.”

There’s no help for you without this package.

For the thesaurus, I install “openoffice.org-thesaurus-en-us.”

I feel baffled, bemused, bewildered, confounded, confused, mazed, mixed up, at sea, and perplexed without a thesaurus.

There’s one important item that we didn’t find by searching for “openoffice.” We still need a spelling dictionary so that we can use the spelling-checker. Search for “myspell,” and choose the file for your language–in my case, “myspell-en-us.”

Marking the spelling dictionary.

Now that we’ve selected everything, it’s time to apply those changes by pressing the “Apply” button.

Push the “Apply” button to install everything you’ve marked.

There’s a lot to download and install, so you have time to make a pot of tea. By the time it’s ready, OpenOffice.org should be ready to run. Note that all the OpenOffice.org applications end up in the “Office” submenu except for OpenOffice.org Draw, which ends up in “Graphics.”