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OpenOffice.org 2.0 Released
Da Massive writes "The official release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been pushed to the download servers, as of Thursday the 20th." From the article: "OpenDocument is an XML file format for saving office documents such as spreadsheets, memos, charts, and presentations. It was approved as an OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) standard at the beginning of this year. OpenDocument, set as a default in OpenOffice, is cited by proponents as a way of fighting vendor lock-in associated with proprietary formats. Already, it is the required office format for internal archives of the US State of Massachusetts." You can download, or read past coverage including a preview or a comparison with MS Office. Update: 10/20 17:22 GMT by Z : Made date reference more topical.
I've been eagerly awaiting 2.0 Official release for 6 months - its about time!!!
Going to download and install it tonight - WOOT!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
Can someone explain to me why the gang at OpenOffice can't create a printer for windows ala Adobe Acrobat in order to "Print to OpenDocument"?
This seems like the answer to all of the issues.
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Surely cross-platform nature of OO.o is the whole point?
It'd be nice if they released a build for OSX. The only 2.0 build they've had for as long as I've been checking is a development build in french.
No support for the Mac OS X is a show stopper for me. :(
I just recently restored my laptop, and rather than go fishing for my MS Office 2001 disk with the faded product key, I opted to give OpenOffice.org a shot. For me, a casual .doc reader who just needs something light and quick to open and read with, OO.org is a great solution. It does just about everything a cheap guy like me could want. Plus I didn't have to dig in that dreaded closet of PC past and type in a cd key I can barely make out anymore. I had no idea a new version was coming out so soon, so this is great news to me! I even began spreading whispers about it at work, it may not be the juicy Lost roundtable, but a free alternative to something Microsoft for our Macs always perks some ears.
-Buddy of DoQ
I'm hoping to be able to run v2 on my AMD64 box sometime - but reports of it even compiling are pretty sketchy, and it runs like a dog, unless you disable java in the build. (Why are the words java and slow always appearing in the same sentence...)
Anyone know of any AMD64 v2 binary packages until that time? (Binary - I feel dirty saying that word.)
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This is great news for me - it should make my wife happy!
.doc files that she gets sent via email.
I switched over to OS X for our home computer when Apple came out with the Mac Mini (I love iMovie, it makes great movies of the kids). It's been mostly painless, except for one thing: MS Word Documents. My wife needs to open and edit
I tried installing OpenOffice 1.4, but it was slow and felt unpolished. More importantly: she didn't like it. We tried NeoOffice/J but the Java startup time is a pain, too. The AbiWord OS X port doesn't look done. And I did't think that Word 2000 running inside an emulator was going to cut it for her. Up to now, I have had to keep our old WinXP box around just to keep her from strangling me.
I welcome the opportunity to finally donate my WinXP box to the local kids computer recycling program!
Since you are downloading it....could you do everybody a HUGE favor (Really!)
If you use Azureus could you post the Magnet URI address for the dht: network? The Torrent site is overloaded. At least I could join the swarm without having to connect to the tracker.
thanks!
No, it does't run under OSX. It runs, poorly (meaning, without access to system fonts because it's an xwindows app, not an OSX app) on PPC Macs but not as released (you have to dig up the right copy) and it's not integrated with the OS in terms of style which annoys a lot of OSX users (which is one of the claims for OO 2.) It doesn't annoy me, I can deal with whatever interface, but the fact that it can't access the system's fonts is a stone killer problem.
I'm a little worried about the decision to use Java for the DB, too, but I may be buying trouble that doesn't exist. I'm just going by the various interplatform/interapplication incompatibilities that I see on web pages because the wrong Java is installed (eg, flickr works on firefox but not on omniweb, etc.)
Too bad they didn't write it in python. Make java look like the c-descended nightmare it is. ;-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yuck. they screwed up big time by getting rid of the linux installer.
now those of us that do not run a popular rpm based distro are forced to fight our way into installing it.
they had a great graphical/text installer that worked very well even had provisions for network based install and they dumped it.
worst move they could have made. I really hope that someone digs out the old installer and makes it work with 2.0 so we can get back to advancing linux software instead of stepping backwards by getting rid of the installer.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Compatibility or
Because it's not my money
People in large corporations don't care. If they install OOo, they save a bunch of money from the corporate budget, that doesn't affect them. On the other hand, if it all goes horribly wrong, the finger points at them.
For small businesses, they want to deal with everyone else, who uses Word.
Personally, I'd love to hear good ideas to get people switching. I'll be sending clients PDFs and anyone who wants to sell to me is going to have to use OASIS documents. And that's for practical reasons. I'm tired of having a document corruption that I can't fix.
No offence but if I need to download, install, configure, and learn how to use a third-party program, then work out how to integrate it with Open Office, I'll just stick with Excel.
Excel is a really shitty platform for data analysis for anything more complex than sophmore-level undergrad labs. At the least, using a dedicated analysis and charting tool or set of tools is like a breath of fresh air after dealing with Excel's cramped, business-oriented data toolset.
You're assuming everyone uses Excel for serious, hard-core scientific analysis. I use it for trivial purposes, in which case user-friendliness and an easy interface are more important than accuracy to 80000 decimal places.
Whenever OOo comes up, I make the same complaint, and invariably, someone tells me I'm a clueless asshole, but it's gotten to be a tradition now, so I'll do it again.
My benchmark for office suite comparisons is MS Office 97. I have used all of the subsequent versions of MS Office at work, but I always install Office 97 on my own machines. The reason for this is that, aside from functionality mostly aimed at group collaboration, there have been no significant changes in Word or Excel in the last eight years, so why bother upgrading?
Well, there has been one significant change -- the same functionality requires vastly more resources in later versions of Office. Office 97 runs comfortably on an old 120MHz Pentium I laptop with 32 megs of RAM that I like to haul around when I'd rather not risk losing my more recent and expensive desktop replacement laptop. Office 2003 or XP? Forget it.
As near as I can tell, OpenOffice has reached feature-parity with MS Office for single-user purposes; I can't speak to its collaboration features. There are some aspects of its interface that I don't much like, but I suspect that's mostly a matter of familiarity. But it is a giant, shrieking, slow resource hog, and I wouldn't use it on anything other than a fairly recent machine. It is, moreover, slower than Office 2003.
Now, as I noted at the start of the post, someone will inevitably -- and generally without much tact -- argue that some theoretical user population, like corporate office users, will have the latest machines and not be bothered by this. That might even be true in some cases, though my experience has been that most companies don't upgrade machines unless they absolutely have to. But that's the point to some extent: why should anyone have to perform a hardware upgrade to get the same level of functionality that was available back in 1997? Word processors and spreadsheets are mature application categories; shouldn't they become more efficient as time goes by?
Make no mistake about it, I am not a Microsoft partisan. I am as enthusiastic about the promise of FOSS as I was a decade ago. I am thrilled that OpenOffice exists. But I am deeply disappointed that in so many cases -- and OpenOffice is but one of many -- free software is just as bloated as its commercial counterparts. It may be that in the corporate environment, the cost of hardware upgrades is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of endless Microsoft software licenses. (In fact, I'm pretty sure it is true.) But for the private individual, that's often not the case.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
And it's much better for sorting, so my backup files are whatever_20051021.tgz, just sorted by date.