How to replace LibreOffice with OpenOffice?

Question

To put it simply, I do not want LibreOffice.

How can I remove LibreOffice and install OpenOffice. I have tried installing the .deb packages from the OpenOffice download but nothing visibly happens.

The menus aren't updated and I can't browse for openoffice in the search.

Any help please?

Solution

Starting with Ubuntu 11.04, openoffice.org packages are "transitional" packages facilitating migration from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. That is, they are packages that provide no actual files, but which have the corresponding LibreOffice packages as dependencies, so that LibreOffice gets automatically and smoothly installed.

Therefore, if you want to continue running OpenOffice.org instead of LibreOffice in Ubuntu 11.04 (or higher), installing Ubuntu's openoffice.org packages will not accomplish this. You will have to install OpenOffice.org from the packages provided at the official OpenOffice.org website. Before doing so, you should remove all the openoffice.org and libreoffice packages currently installed on your system, along with their global configuration files. The easiest way to do this is probably in the Synaptic Package Manager (as suggested by Uri Herrera). Mark these packages for complete removal. These packages' names are listed at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org and https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice (the lists overlap only partially, so check both).

Before you replace LibreOffice with OpenOffice.org, you should be aware that:

1. LibreOffice is currently a very close fork of OpenOffice.org. So any functional changes (including new bugs) you are seeing from the version of OpenOffice.org in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or Ubuntu 10.10 to the version of LibreOffice in Ubuntu 11.04 are likely also to be present in the newer version of OpenOffice.org.

2. Once you install the upstream version of OpenOffice.org by running the installer obtained from the official OpenOffice.org website, OpenOffice.org will no longer be updated when you update the rest of your Ubuntu system in the Update Manager. Therefore, you will have to make sure it receives updates, and perhaps update it manually. It does have an automated mechanism for checking for updates, however. (I think this is in the Help menu.)

Comments

[Uri Herrera]

Open synaptic, type libreffice and remove the packages