Yet Another HowTo: Install OpenOffice (any version)

I had some annoying issues with OpenOffice and after a lot of Googling and forum-trawling I did the following.

1. Select and download OpenOffice version 2.1 or version 2.2RC1 and save on your Desktop.

2. Make sure you have alien installed (it should be, but just make sure)

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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install alien

3. Completely remove the current version of OpenOffice from your machine by using Synaptic Package Manager, or as like this:

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dpkg -l | grep -i openoffice | cut -d " " -f 3 | sudo xargs apt-get -y --purge remove
sudo apt-get autoremove

4. Right-click on the downloaded tar.gz file and select to Extract Here

5. On your desktop, double-click the newly extracted folder to open it. There should be 3 files - licences, readmes and RPMS. Right-click on RPMS and select Open In Terminal

6. Now you need alien to convert the RPM files to DEB. this will take some time so when it starts go and have a beer, coffee or whatever.

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sudo alien --scripts --keep-version *.rpm

7. Once the conversion has completed you can start the install of OpenOffice using that same Terminal.

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sudo dpkg -i *.deb
cd desktop-integration/
sudo dpkg -i *.deb

That's it, you should now be done. All that remains is to go to Mint Control Centre - Desktop - Menu Layout and do the tick/untick/tick thing in the Office menu. And just to play it safe; reload the Mint Menu Plugins

Hope this helps someone...

derived from original source