OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a suite of office software. It comes with many Linux distributions or you can download it from www.openoffice.org. This software provides your Linux (or other operating system) with a complete set of office software for free. You can download many other great products to your Linux system, but I included OpenOffice in this introductory desktop chapter because it demonstrates the power of the Open Source community. The software is easy to download and configure and provides a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing, and presentation program...all for free. At the time of this writing, the software is not available for Integrity servers, so the examples in this chapter are from a Red Hat 8.x system but plans are for it to be available in RHEL 3. Because the Integrity servers are new, there is still some software yet to be fully certified on the platform. I included the next section because the tools will be available at some point in the near future. As a sidenote, the "retail" versions of Red Hat, such as 8.x used in this section, have been replaced by Fedora. Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project. Fedora Core 2 is available at the time of this writing.

I'm not going to describe the download and setup of OpenOffice.org in detail. I am only going to show you enough to get you started. The Web site provides all the information that you will need. Instead, I'll show a few screen shots of OpenOffice.org so you can see how powerful it is. The screenshots should also indicate how similar it is to Microsoft Office, thus illustrating that you won't have to learn a new way of working with office software. Lets start with the download. Figure 3-11 shows how easy it is to download OpenOffice.org from the Open Office Web site.

Figure 3-11. OpenOffice.org Download

After selecting the language for OpenOffice.org that you want to download, you simply select the destination for the software (as shown in the upper-left corner of the figure) and download. Notice that OpenOffice.org is available not only for Linux, but for other operating systems as well. After the download is complete, you simply run the setup program. The complete instructions for the download and setup are on the Web site.

If downloading is a problem, OpenOffice is available with the Red Hat 8 or 9 CD-ROMs. If you didn't install OpenOffice.org when you installed your Red Hat product, select System Settings System Settings Package Management tool opens, find the Applications section and check Office/Productivity and then click Details. When the Office Productivity Details window opens, check the box next to OpenOffice, then click Close to close the details window. When the Package Mangagment window reappears, click Update to install the suite.

After the download (or CD-ROM install) and setup of OpenOffice.org are complete, your user environment is enhanced to allow you to use the OpenOffice.org programs. Figure 3-12 shows the OpenOffice.org menu structure together with all the great tools available in the suite.

Figure 3-12. OpenOffice Menu Picks

You create new OpenOffice files in much the same way you would create them using the tools included with Microsoft Office. Additionally, if you already have Microsoft Office files, many can be read and modified using the tools supplied with OpenOffice.org. Figure 3-13 shows an file created with Microsoft PowerPoint file open for editing in OpenOffice.org.

Figure 3-13. Existing File Read into OpenOffice.org

I have found that OpenOffice.org can create new (or modify) old files created in Microsoft Office easily and efficiently. I believe it will only get better. With the open-source community working on this application, you can only expect better things. I am using version 1.0.1 at the time of this writing, and it works great. I'm sure that future releases will include even more functionality.

Of all the almost unlimited number of applications of all types available for download and use on your Linux system, I've found that this is one of the best. It really enhances your Linux user environment and office tools.