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OpenOffice 641d Released, Next Stop: 1.0
Damek writes "In the spirit of the proliferating news about Office alternatives and 1.0 versions this week, OpenOffice.org has released a new version of OpenOffice, 641d, the last planned release before 1.0. They're calling for help in pinning down and eradicating final bugs before they hit the big milestone: "...we would like you to download it, test it, and finally vote on the feature set.""
I am artificially intelligent.
While i like the features of Openoffice, i hate the way the whole thing works. The desktop of Staroffice 5.2 has been removed, but OO is still one big process and the different applications are just modules. If only one of these modules hangs and you have to kill it, all your OO aplications get killed. Another result is, for me starting up the Writer takes as long as starting up the whole 5.2 Desktop.
I hope that this changes in one of the future versions, but i have the feeling that it won't.
Now comes the important part. in a month, I'm switching over to a completely linux system, and I'm gonna need a replacement for Office. so who's it gonna be?:)
OpenOffice looks good, but when I tried it several times during 2001 it was slow and crashed all the flaming time. I'm sure it's improving but I got bored waiting. Therefore:
To replace Word: KWord looks cool, but I couldn't get equations to work properly. LyX is really nice if you take the time to understand the concepts behind LaTeX and WYMIWYG. LyX especially rocks for editing equations, but it'll do everything else you could want too, and the output is beautiful. Abiword isn't there yet (tables etc.) but might be one day.
To replace Excel: Gnumeric.
To replace Outlook: I actually use IMP, a webmail application. I retrieve pop3 email with fetchmail, make it available via IMAP (one of Debian's IMAP packages) and access it with IMP, on apache-ssl for security, from home and anywhere else with an internet connection. Best thing about IMP is it's the fastest email client I've used! I have folders with hundreds, some with thousands, of emails and the likes of Balsa or Evolution can take forever to access them (if they don't crash). IMP takes seconds, and it never crashes! (I use Galeon for my web browsing/ IMP access). The HORDE project of which IMP is a part is actually an entire groupware suite, but I've only used IMP.
PowerPoint: MagicPoint looks pretty good but I've never used it.
Access: Postgresql or mysql should more than meet your needs. There are nice GUI tools available for both.
Best of luck.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Try http://whiteboard.openoffice.org/screenshots/index .html. A bit outdated, though.
I grabbed 641D a couple of days ago, and I have to say that I'm impressed! Other than a few fonts that I haven't migrated to Linux, it's done a great job with complex tables and formatting.
The only thing that would stop me from using it as my regular word processor is that I can't figure out how to make it use imperial units (inches) instead of metric.
Hi,
To clear that up OO642 is the first wave for new development and has lots of new code that breaks and things.
If you want what will be OOo 1.0 eventually, simply grab 641d and ignore 642.
Hope this helps,
Kevin
Hi,
OOo now runs on Solaris Sparc, Linux x86, Linux PPC, Solaris x86, Win32 (XP, NT, 2000, 98).
Ports are nearing completion on NetBSD (x86, ppc).
FreeBSD is in progress and so is MacOSX.
So from a portability standpoint, I'd say this tree is quite portable.
The big issue on BSD is the lack of standard kernel threads, JDK's etc.
Kevin
But after using for about 1/2 an hour, I'd say this thing is pretty impressive.
Just a couple of notes:
1) I find the interface a little (stress "little")clunky, but I'm a long time Office user. But I'd get used to it in about a week.
2) The Document default views are awful. I'm going to see if I can mess with this to make it more livable for me.
3) It opens Office XP Spreadsheets, Documents, and Powerpoints pretty well. I haven't thrown the kitchen sink at it though.
4) 1/2 hour isn't long enough to judge stability. But I haven't had any crashes or oddities yet.
This is a good package so far as I've looked. I'm going to try to work in it for the next few days and see if its good enough to recommend to relatives who need MS Office compatibility.
Hats off to these guys. This is excellent work.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I am running 642, the developer version. I am yet to encounter any buggies.e ase_notes.html -- Release notes. I guess it's the stable version that's important.
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/642/rel
Slow down there hoss.
OpenOffice is quite portable. It's being developed on Linux and Win32 x86, Solaris (both architectures, Linux PPC, NetBSD, and FreeBSD.
Not all of the ports are keeping up with the main tree, it's true. Since it's a volunteer effort you know what to do about that... the tree itself is probably as portable as anything out there.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
A few days ago, I posted a quick personal review of OO 641C. I've been impressed by the software, and my main complaint was the speed of the program as a whole.
I can gladly say that 641D has introduced significant speed increases under Linux. Startup time fell by half; whereas I used to wait 20 seconds to get a workspace, I now wait 10 seconds or less. The interface in general has sped up. Things feel much snappier, far less laggy. Dialogs open faster, new windows open faster, the whole thing feels like the developers spent much of their time between releases on optimizations and speed increases. I'm already very impressed.
The one thing I used to dread about starting up OO was the speed. I don't think I'll have any such worries anymore, as it doesn't seem to bog down the system either anymore - or at least, not as much.
I'm a happy user.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I've read this comments that suggests the GNUe designer is a possible replacement for access.
Latest news on the Debian packaging effort can be found here. There is also a mailing list, debian-openoffice, if you're interested in helping with this project.