OpenOffice.org

Coming from the Linux world, I’m a big fan of OpenOffice.org, the free office suite. I’d like to stick with it when I make my Mac switch. I don’t fancy shelling out an extra AUD $500 for MS Office when I get my Mac, and besides I have a lot of documents in the OpenDocument format already!

Now you can get OO.org for the Mac, but it’s supposed to be a bit “rough round the edges” (which seems to mean not as pretty as a native Mac app, and with menus and stuff in the wrong place). Still, if it works then that’ll do me. It currently doesn’t run on Intel Macs officially, though there are some “Community Builds” of it that run on Intel.

Seb Payne has written a couple of handy-looking tutorials on getting OO.org up and running on a Mac – one on installing X11 (a prerequisite for OO.org) and another on installing OO.org itself. I’ll give them a go once I’ve got the Mac in my grubby hands.

Have you used OpenOffice.org on a Mac? What do you think of it?

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Mac tips & tricks, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “OpenOffice.org”

1. Andrew Godden Says:
   May 16th, 2006 at 10:02 pm

   Hi Matt,

   First up, I’ve got to say I look forward to the Elated newletters. Great inspiration and ideas.

   There is a open office spin off project for a version with a prettier aqua interface called NeoOffice http://www.neooffice.org/

   I have been an open office user for about 18 months. I have downloaded Neo but haven’t got round to doing anything with it yet. I use Gimpshop instead of photoshop so I already have X11 running most of the time. I’ve mainly been using the writer but I am about to start migrating some excel files to calc to see what happens.

   I can say I don’t miss the annoying paper clip one little bit.

2. mattdoyle Says:
   May 16th, 2006 at 10:14 pm

   Thanks for your comments Andrew, and I’m glad you enjoy the ELATED Extra. 🙂

   I think Si uses NeoOffice and says it’s OK. I’ll defo check it out too when I get the Mac.

   I keep meaning to try GIMPshop on my Linux box – does it really make The GIMP feel more like Photoshop? I must say that much as I admire what the GIMP developers are doing, I always feel more “at home” in PS. I guess it’s down to what you’re used to…

   Ahh the joys of Clippy *lol*. Office 2007 does look like an improvement with its “results oriented” interface – even Jakob likes it! Time will tell of course,,,