LibreOffice

Revision 22 as of 2012-04-23 12:37:32

Clear message

LibreOffice installation on Ubuntu

If you’re using Ubuntu, don’t install LibreOffice manually from the “.deb” files available at libreoffice.org. Otherwise you will not get automatic updates, upgrades when new versions come out, integration within Ubuntu, and is unsupported for Ubuntu bug filing purposes. Using official packages also ensures you get the best assistance from the community as this is the recommended method to install and use LibreOffice in Ubuntu.

Please note OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice don’t coexist. Install LibreOffice following these instructions will effectively remove OpenOffice.org.

If you find any issues when using LibreOffice with Ubuntu, please follow the bug reporting guidelines.

Making sure LibreOffice is available for your Ubuntu version

Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, 12.04 LTS

Starting with Ubuntu 11.04, LibreOffice is part of Ubuntu. Since LibreOffice is already part of the standard packages, just search for “libreoffice” in your favorite package manager.

Note: if you want to get the very latest version of LibreOffice, you may do so by following instructions below for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

For Ubuntu 10.04 LTS it is recommended that you use the LibreOffice Personal Package Archive (PPA) repository. A PPA is always considered a third-party application and unfit for production purposes (as far as official commercial support goes), however LibreOffice is becoming part of Ubuntu in April 2011, and this PPA is the source for such official version. Make sure you test this appropriately if you intend to use this in a production environment under Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

Follow these steps to make LibreOffice available for installation in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:

  1. Open a terminal window under Applications > Accessories > Terminal

  2. Once the repository is added, we need to let the system know about the new packages available:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa 1

  3. Update the packages list:

    sudo apt-get update

LibreOffice is now available for installation. Read below to either selectively or fully install LibreOffice.

Installing LibreOffice

Selective installation

To install only part of LibreOffice, you can install the appropriate meta-package:

  • libreoffice-writer: Word processor
  • libreoffice-calc: Spreadsheet
  • libreoffice-impress: Presentation
  • libreoffice-draw: Drawing
  • libreoffice-base: Database
  • libreoffice-math: Equation editor
  • libreoffice-filter-mobiledev: Mobile Devices filters
  • libreoffice-filter-binfilter: legacy filters (e.g. StarOffice 5.2)

Full installation

To install all the LibreOffice core packages:

  1. Install the LibreOffice meta-package with this command: sudo apt-get install libreoffice

  2. Complete the installation by including the Ubuntu (Gnome) desktop integration:
    • If you’re using Ubuntu (Gnome) use this command:

      sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

    • If you’re using Kubuntu (KDE) use this command:

      sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

Additional language modules, help files and extensions are also available if you search for libreoffice in your package manager. Example how to search:

  • apt-cache search libreoffice-help-en

Here are a few examples:

  • libreoffice-help-*: help files
  • libreoffice-l10n-*: localization files
  • libreoffice-pdfimport: LibreOffice extension for importing PDF documents

  • libreoffice-presentation-minimizer: LibreOffice extension for size-efficient presentations

  • libreoffice-presenter-console: LibreOffice Impress extension for a separate presenter's console

  • libreoffice-report-builder-bin: LibreOffice extension for building database reports -- libraries

  • mozilla-libreoffice: office productivity suite -- Mozilla plugin

Language localization, spell checking, dictionary, hyphenation, thesaurus, and help

To install proper support for language writing aids you may install the corresponding packages libreoffice-l10n-*, myspell-*, hyphen-*, mythes-*, libreoffice-help-* followed by your language ISO 639-1 code. A complete list of such language codes is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-1_codes

For example, the corresponding French packages are:

  • libreoffice-l10n-fr
  • myspell-fr
  • hyphen-fr
  • mythes-fr
  • libreoffice-help-fr

Please be advised that not all languages have these corresponding packages. For more information on language support in LibreOffice please check here.

LibreOffice Packaging

More information on the LibreOffice packaging for Ubuntu is available at LibreOfficePackaging .

  1. Some may find the add-apt-repository script is not installed, run sudo apt-get install python-software-properties to install it. (1)