[lsb-discuss] A day's adventure with a brandnew klik bundle of OpenOffice.org 2.1

Kurt Pfeifle k1pfeifle at gmx.net
Tue Dec 12 17:59:54 PST 2006


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OpenOffice.org 2.1 released... But where can I get packages for my  
SuSE 9.1 box? Or even for a more recent SUSE 10.0? *NOW*, I mean !!
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Diary of Dec 12, 2006. 

OpenOffice.org version 2.1 has been released.

1st Question: 
   Is there available, or will there be a suitable OOo 2.1 RPM 
   package for my good ol' SuSE 9.1 box?
1st Answer: 
   No, there is none, and most likely there will never be one. 
   SuSE/Novell don't support that "old" system any longer.
1st Solution: 
   Download probono's ready-made klik package [p] from the klik 
   website [w] and use this. Works like a charm for me, on SuSE 9.1.
1st Consequences, (I): 
   Makes me loudly shout "Cool!" and "Great..." and "Oh look! 
   They've improved their PDF export here!"
1st Consequences, (II): 
   My guttural noises poke my collegue's curiosity, who now starts 
   to look on the web for native packages of his Linux test system.

2nd Question: 
   Is there available, or will there be a suitable OOo 2.1 RPM 
   package for my colleague's SUSE 10.0 box? (Note the different 
   "suse" spelling here, hehe...)
2nd Answer: 
   No, there is none available yet; but most likely there will be 
   one in the next couple of days. He just can't keep his patience...
2nd Solution: 
   Pass a copy probono's ready-made klik package [p] as downloaded 
   from the klik website [w] on an USB-stick to the colleague and
   ask him to use this. Turns out it works like a charm on SUSE 10.0 
   too; even directly from the stick!  :-)
2nd Consequences, (I): 
   Colleague's jaws drop; makes him phone our IT guy who recently 
   started to use Linux on a spare box in the shape of a Kanotix 
   Live CD.
2nd Consequences, (II): 
   Phonecall makes the IT guy come upstairs & ask me about Kanotix 
   and klik; makes me tell him that there's a good chance the *.cmg 
   will work even for his Live CD system if started off a USB stick
   or off a second CD drive. Turns out his Live CD he'd converted 
   into a harddisk install this morning. Makes me tell him about 
   Sidux [S] (Psssst! It's a sleeper; Sidux is a successor project 
   to Kanotix, since Kano wants to move away from Debian Sid, and 
   maybe towards Ubuntu).
2nd Consequences, (III): 
   Makes us all go downstairs, to convert his harddisk Kanotix into 
   a Sidux [S] system using the wonderful du-fixes-h2.sh [d] script 
   which automatically converts everything needed (especially the 
   apt sources.list) and dist-upgrades the system.

3rd Question: 
   Is there available, or will there be a suitable OOo 2.1 .deb 
   package for our IT guy's Sidux box?
3rdAnswer: 
   No, there is none available yet; but most likely there will be 
   one in the next couple of days. He just can't keep his patience....
3rd Solution: 
   Download of probono's ready-made klik package from the klik 
   website is put to good use one more time. Works like a charm on 
   Sidux-current as well   :-)
3rd Consequences: 
   Two more people in my direct environment now saying and sighing 
   "Oh, if only software installation was *THAT* easy on Windows as 
   it is on Linux." (Yes, I know that they do see the world of 
   Linux software installation through a set pink glasses right now. 
   But I'll not disturb it for now. It will be soon enough that 
   I'll have to teach them about the C++ ABI instability ugliness, 
   about the GCC binary format incompatibilities, about cross-
   distribution library naming nastiness and other obstacles which 
   do still lay ahead on our road to LSB 4.x or 5.x which will 
   finally create a more friendly environment of reliable software 
   installation.) For now, klik works wonderfully (given that it is 
   more an Alpha version of a software idea than a Beta); for the 
   future, klik will have even more goodness to offer (if you help 
   develop and test it).

4th, 5th, 6th... Questions: 
   Will the new ooo2.1 cmg file work on a Kanotix Live CD system? 
   On a SuSE 9.2? On a SuSE 9.3? On a SuSE 10.1? On a SUSE 10.2? On 
   Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian?
4th, 5th, 6th... Guesses Of Answers: 
   Yes. But we won't know for sure unless *YOU* test it on your 
   systems and report back...

Note 1:
   (a) One relocatable file of 134 MByte on the system to have OOo 
       2.1 up + running, instead of 4000 files, spread over 400 
       sub-directories and claiming 400 MByte of harddisk space -- 
       isn't that a cool efficiency gain?
   (b) Startup time and runtime speed of this OOo2.1 .cmg file not 
       noticeably different from a native OOo 2.0 installation -- 
       isn't that worth while exploring a bit more closely?
   (c) A "time to market" achieved by 4 'amateurs' that beats all 
       Linux distributions with their fulltime packagers (and we 
       klik-ers lost more than a day because I had no time to write 
       up this little promo piece) -- isn't that an argument that 
       should make many Linux ISVs think again about their chosen 
       way of distributing their software packages?

Note 2:
   To run this .cmg file, you need the klik client installed. Run 
   (as user, not as root!)
        wget klik.atekon.de/client/install -O - | sh 
   and follow instructions. (It asks you for the root password to 
   add 7 additional mountpoints into the /etc/fstab file so klik 
   .cmgs can be loopmounted in user space for running securely.) It 
   needs a Kernel with cramfs support.

Note 3:
   This klik bundle is (exceptionally) ready-made; it ships as the 
   final *.cmg file to be used by the klik client right away. (The 
   standard way klik works is different. It is like this: it just 
   downloads a "recipe" from the klik web service, and uses this 
   recipe (a) to fetch required *.deb or *.rpm [or other] packages 
   from their original package repositories, and (b) to convert 
   these *.deb or *.rpm [or other] packages into a *.cmg archive 
   image on the client computer itself.)

Note 4:
   Currently there is only the "en-US" version of klik's OOo 2.1 
   available. It is extremely easy to create other language 
   versions; but the disk space on the klik server is too small 
   to host dozens of locale versions right now. We can have 2 or 
   3 more. So if you require a OOo 2.1 klik bundle in your locale, 
   tell us so through the feedback space of this blog. If you find 
   at least 2 supporters who back up your request, you'll get it 
   done. 1st come, first serve...

Note 5:
   No harm will be done by klik to any system installed files owned 
   by the native package manager and meant to stay with his control 
   (apt, dpkg, yast, smart, yum, rpm...). No touching, no replacing, 
   no conflict. Just take care of the personal "dot files" and the 
   config files the new OOo version may be modifying. (But that's 
   not a klik specific problem; you've to do it in every case where
   you are testing a more current version of a software while 
   keeping an option to go back to the older one...)


[p] -- http://klik.atekon.de/cmg/openoffice_2.1.0en-US.cmg
[w] -- http://klik.atekon.de/
[S] -- http://sidux.com/
[d] -- http://techpatterns.com/forums/about736.html
[c] -- http://klik.atekon.de/wiki/index.php/User%27s_FAQ#Basics




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