STAROFFICE 8 INSTALLER FAILURE

I managed to get the installer going, by not following any of the instructions in the readme and just rebooting and kicking the installer off.

Installer screen came up and chugged along merrily, then died and backtracked, leaving me with an obscure message which I couldn't even be bothered to write down. Googling led me to the certainty that an RPM based installer is 'A BAD THING' on a non RPM based system.

Using the instructions I found on the Open Office site <a href="http&#58;&#47;&#47;installation.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadM sg?list=dev&amp;msgNo=609" target="_blank"> http://installation.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev &msgNo=609</a>

I managed to get Staroffice 8 installed. Another hour spent messing with permissions and I got it up and running.

It does look nice, it is cleaner and clearer than 7, and it accepts TT fonts which is a very good thing. That's as far as I got though, as every time I tried to scroll through the fonts (using either the up/down arrows or the scroll bar) Staroffice 8 would disappear with no fault, explanation or apology.

So I trashed the whole thing and am back to using SO7.

If anyone from Sun actually reads these forums (which I doubt given the TOTAL lack of meaningful, or indeed any, feedback) and they are interested in getting feedback, then here's some.

Googling for a solution made it apparent that the installer sucks big time. Using RPM based installer on none RPM systems makes the whole thing very distrocentric and WILL (and already is given the feedback I am seeing on other boards), alienate users of every other distro. Staroffice 7 installs very well and easily on my Debian box (x2), 8 was a nightmare. The disappearing programme with font scolls, well, it is a beta, one must expect these things. But, my advice re the installer is:

1.Keep it simple.

2.Make it work, out of the box, with all distros.

3.Very quickly, dump the RPM based install and go back to that WHICH WORKED with SO7.

4.When the non-beta version is released can you make it clear in the separately downloadable 'quick setup guide' if the installer is as it is now or has changed, as if it hasn't then I can save 200+m of downloading by not bothering.

Thanks

Legion at 2007-7-5 14:02:33 >

I managed to get it installed, but it was a pain. When the installer breaks, it still leaves the RPM's in a temp directory. I ran rpm2tgz, then extracted all of the .tgz's and placed them so that the StarOffice8 subdirectory was in /opt/

The only problem I have now is with the JRE's I have not being recognized.

bertaboy at 2007-7-5 14:02:33 >

<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>Legion wrote on Mon, 10 October 2005 08:18</b></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">

Well, nine months after I first posted and Sun have done..........Absolutly nothing about the installer, if anything it seems worse. At least I got the beta to load - eventually - this new piece of junk I've just downloaded won't even get me that far.

Well done Sun, for taking a good piece of Linux Software and making it useless to anyone not running an RPM systems, and for ostracising a great portion of your clientele.

Not that anyone from Sun actuallly reads this forum, or if they do they ignore it.

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Did you not read what I wrote? I got it to install. All I had to do was run rpm2tgz, and then untar the files. And I don't use an RPM-based distro, I use Gentoo. Nice, effective, bullshit of a rant.

bertaboy at 2007-7-5 14:02:33 >