The root of Apache OpenOffice (AOO) go back more than 20 years. It came out of the OpenOffice.org (OOo) project, which was an open source version of StarOffice. Millions of users have used it. It was once the default productivity suite in all Linux systems, including Ubuntu. It compatible with almost all major office suites, including Microsoft Office.

Until few years ago, after Oracle bought Sun Microsystem, the parent company of OpenOffice, some developers left the OpenOffice project and created a a new project called LibreOffice. Soon after, most Linux distributions, including Ubuntu followed and made LibreOffice the default productivity suite we now have today.

I am not going to tell you whether you should choose Apache OpenOffice over LibreOffice and vice versa. What I am going to show you is how to install Apache OpenOffice in Ubuntu and make it your default productivity suite.

Since LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice can’t live on the same machine, you will have to completely remove LibreOffice and install AOO.

To get started, press Ctrl – Alt – T on your keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to completely remove LibreOffice.

sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice* libexttextcat-data* && sudo apt-get autoremove

 

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Next, change into the Downloads folder of your home directory. Or the ~/tmp folder.

cd ~/Downloads

 

Then download the 32-bit version of AOO (US English). The current version as of this writing is version 3.4.1.

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/openofficeorg.mirror/stable/3.4.1/Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.1_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz

 

The 64-bit version (US English) can be downloaded using the commands below

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/openofficeorg.mirror/files/stable/3.4.1/Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.1_Linux_x86-64_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz

 

After downloading, run the commands below to extract the downloaded folder.

tar -xvf Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.1_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz

 

Next, run the commands below to install Apache OpenOffice Suite

sudo dpkg -i en-US/DEBS/*.deb

 

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Finally, go into the desktop-integration folder of the DEBS folder and run the commands below.

sudo dpkg -i en-US/DEBS/desktop-integration/*.deb

 

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That’s it! Go to Dash and launch the program.

 

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If the above links don’t work in downloading OpenOffice, here’s the download page. Use it to download language-specific version.

http://www.openoffice.org/download/other.html 

 

To revert the changes and completely uninstall OpenOffice, run the commands below.

sudo apt-get purge openoffice*.* && sudo apt-get autoremove

 

To install LibreOffice back in Ubuntu, use the commands below.

sudo apt-get install libreoffice libreoffice-gnome

 

Enjoy!