[CentOS] Trying to get up and running with Open Office beta

[Phil Schaffner]

On Wed, 2005-08-03 at 23:51 +0900, Dave Gutteridge wrote:
> I was using the beta version of Open Office on Windows for... I don't 
> know how long, but many months now. I quite like it and would like to 
> replace the current stable 1.1 build of OpenOffice that came with CentOS 
> with the beta.
> 
> So i downloaded the RPMs from the OpenOffice site and dutifully followed 
> their installation instructions, and it went well. I think. I mean, 
> there were no errors and it did a whole bunch of unpacking and stuff. 
> But any office document I try to open still opens with the previous 
> OpenOffice, I can't find any icons for the OpenOffice Beta in any of my 
> menus, and any documents I had created with OpenOffice Beta in Windows 
> aren't recognized by CentOS.
> 
> In short, I think it's installed, but I don't know how to start it.
> 
> How do I do that, and how do I remove the "old" Open Office?

The CentOS packages are "openoffice.org..." and the Beta I have on one
machine is openofficeorg-base-1.9.113-1, etc.  The CentOS version
installs on the standard paths like /usr/bin /usr/lib, whereas the Beta
is under /opt and will not be on your standard paths.  The two can
coexist, but that is probably not a good idea - too much room for
error/confusion; although works-for-me on the test machine.

[root at hazard2 root]# yum remove openoffice.org         
... snip ...
Dependencies Resolved
Transaction Listing:
  Remove: openoffice.org.i386 0:1.1.2-24.6.0.EL4

Performing the following to resolve dependencies:
  Remove: openoffice.org-i18n.i386 0:1.1.2-24.6.0.EL4
  Remove: openoffice.org-kde.i386 0:1.1.2-24.6.0.EL4
  Remove: openoffice.org-libs.i386 0:1.1.2-24.6.0.EL4
Total download size: 0
Is this ok [y/N]: N
Exiting on user Command
Complete!

Answering yes above would presumably have cleanly removed the standard
packages.

There are a whole slew of packages in the Beta.  On my system they are
on the KDE menus and the binaries can be found in
/opt/openoffice.org1.9.113/program/ - this needs to be on your path.

My $0.02 - wait until somebody comes out with a set of CentOS4 upgrade
packages.

Phil