Fresh installation of Open Office.org 3.0.1

OS: UBUNTU 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)
Kernel: 2.6.27-11-generic
Date: April 4th, 2009

[EDIT - April 5th, 2009: My experience with it was just flashy, just GUI was too pretty (maybe for Windows :P). However it seems to have some problem with file recovery option. Even if I try to open new open office writer - it used to try to recover untitled document and thats all no progress at all. It worked great for first day though (after recovering document obviously). However after that it completely failed, even if I recover that document thousands of times it never actually recovered it or run without recovering. So please try on your own and please let me know if I went wrong somewhere. So I went back to synaptic and reinstalled 3.0.1 through repositories and its working great.]

Hi,
Well upgrading from 2.4.1 was a good option however have you ever tried it through fresh install. You would be awestruck to see the features and obviously GUI. I always wondered how come windows version looks so great - now I know install it manually. Enough of jargon lets get to work. And yes this method will work for any version of UBUNTU without any problem.
Go through these steps:

• sudo apt-get remove openoffice*.*

Yes I know it will remove every package related to open office installed currently on your system but believe me thats what you want to do.

• Goto Ooo3.0.1 download page and download deb package (any debian system user) in your preferred language.

OR

• Direct download from Open Office.org 3.0.1 for US-English.
• Extract the download (most probably in your home directory) either by GUI tool OR:

tar -zxvf OOo_3.0.1_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz

• This will creat a directory something like OOO300_m15_native_packed-1_en-US.9379

P.S. the directory name will change with package

• Switch to DEBS directory in this directory :

cd OOO300_m15_native_packed-1_en-US.9379/DEBS/

• Now you need to install all .deb packages present in there. Easy way to do is:
  

sudo dpkg -i *.deb
once you input the password, it will install all packages required.

• Well now you have the packages but you may like to have file association and proper menu for Office and all so go through next steps:

Goto desktop-integration folder in DEBS:
cd desktop-integration

• It will have probably only one package install it:

sudo dpkg -i openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9376_all.deb

P.S. for last package (desktop integration) please don't use copy paste command from here as name tends to change with package this one works for Ooo-3.0.1

And hurray you are done. Now you have properly working Open Office with base system and all.
Now you may need to reinstall aspell-en spell checking (I didn't need to do it though I suppose it was the problem for 3.0.0 and not for 3.0.1 but still if someone needs)
Enjoy :)

This solution was posted at: http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3363 (last checked April 4th 2009)