Re: LUG: Staroffice + amd64 = ? - Mon, 01 May 2006 00:37:57 -0400

Subject : Re: LUG: Staroffice + amd64 = ?

From : Jonathan Smith <smithj@gentoo.[redacted]>

Date : Mon, 01 May 2006 00:37:57 -0400

jahutton@ncsu.[redacted] wrote:
> So I've come nto my possession a free (but 100% legit) copy of staroffice 8. I want to install it and check it out (i know its almost exactly like oo, but i just want to try it out). I'm running a gentoo amd64 with sun's 1.5 jdk as my system vm (and its working fine). The problem comes when I attempt to run the installer I get a:

Google gave me the following:
http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/09/23/198225.shtml?tid=152&tid=93

This indicates that you need a real 32-bit JDK for your gentoo box. I'm
not quite sure how to achieve that, but asking in #gentoo-amd64 might be
in order.

Also note the following section:

"Lacking a Java environment, you can install StarOffice 8 on a GNU/Linux
machine by using the RPM packages that Sun provides on the StarOffice
CD. If your distribution does not natively support RPMs, you'll have to
convert them to tar.gz packages by using rpm2targz, unpack the resulting
tar archives, combine the untarred directories, then move them to their
proper destinations. In all, it takes about 30 minutes longer than using
the installer, and it's all manual labor."

I *might* could be persuaded to write an ebuild to do this for you (and
having portage manage the files is always a good thing). This would also
be great for others wanting to install StarOffice, and I might could
even put it in the official tree. But you'll have to persuade a fair
amount. I'm known to enjoy shiny hats...

And, if your persuasion foo is weak, you could always do that yourself.

> don't want to waste free software

OpenOffice.org is free (freedom, beer) software; StarOffice is neither.
Use OOo :-)

-smithj