[HowTo] get the latest LibreOffice when released?

Some of you guys can’t wait to have the latest release of LibreOffice installed on your system. To package Major releases will take a while for Distributions.

Therefore the The Document Foundation decided to provide the latest stable version also as Flatpak. We have Flatpak enabled by default, but not activated in Pamac. So go to settings, activate it and do a reboot of your system. As an alternative you may use the terminal console and issue flatpak install flathub org.libreoffice.LibreOffice to install LibreOffice.

flatpak install flathub org.libreoffice.LibreOffice
Looking for matches?
Required runtime for org.libreoffice.LibreOffice/x86_64/stable (runtime/org.freedesktop.Platform/x86_64/19.08) found in remote flathub
Do you want to install it? [Y/n]: 

org.libreoffice.LibreOffice permissions:
    ipc                    network      pulseaudio           wayland
    x11                    dri          file access [1]      dbus access [2]
    bus ownership [3]

    [1] host
    [2] org.gtk.vfs.*
        ID                                             Branch            Op           Remote            Download
 1. [?] org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.default            19.08             i            flathub            88,6?MB / 89,1?MB
 2. [?] org.freedesktop.Platform.Locale                19.08             i            flathub            23,5?MB / 318,3?MB
 3. [?] org.freedesktop.Platform.openh264              2.0               i            flathub           266,5?kB / 1,5?MB
 4. [?] org.freedesktop.Platform                       19.08             i            flathub           193,3?MB / 238,5?MB
 5. [?] org.libreoffice.LibreOffice.Locale             stable            i            flathub           867,4?kB / 68,3?MB
 6. [?] org.libreoffice.LibreOffice                    stable            i            flathub           258,1?MB / 279,1?MB

Installation complete.

If having Flatpaks is not your cup of tea and you want a lower footprint, there are also AppImage solutions. Simply download the AppImage file you need and make it executable. Having AppImageLauncher installed will do that automatically for you and even adds it to your Start-Menu.

sudo pacman -S appimagelauncher

6 Likes

@philm Do you offhand know if there is enough difference between the latest version of Libre pushed by Manjaro and Libre 7.0 to warrant going ahead and doing the update now? Thanks

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.0

2 Likes

as you can see here, libreoffice 7 is not even available in archlinux:
https://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/libreoffice-fresh/

the package is clearly marked as outdated, but has not been updated.

1 Like

there is also a note that if you are using an older flatpak release you should(?) uninstall it because they changed the naming
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/flatpak/

Ever since having unresolved issues with the Manjaro LibreOffice-Fresh, I have been using libreoffice-fresh-rpm from the AUR without any issues. This one is at 7.0 and is built from the TDF .rpm

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/libreoffice-fresh-rpm/

Great that we have options these days, but it’s still really confusing when the Arch ‘fresh’ version (6.4.5-2) is older than the Document Foundation ‘still’ version (6.4.6).

Think I’ll wait though as I‘m sure the flatpak version will require a lot of fiddling to work like normal.

Is there any official fresh package or is the AUR package the only one?

The Manjaro Official Repositories have libreoffice-fresh at 6.4.5 and libreoffice-still at 6.3.6.

As far as what the Document Foundation is considering “Still” and “Fresh”, They just released 7.0.0 on August 8th, so at that time the old “fresh” was now considered stable enough to become the new “Still” and the development of new features will continue in the fresh version.

So if you had visited their website 2 weeks ago there wouldn’t be anything confusing about it. In a few weeks when the packages have gone through the testing process and are part of stable it will once again be in sync with what the document foundation is publishing as the latest versions. That is going to be the case with EVERY piece of software developed by any developer. Just because a developer releases their “new shiny new version of XYZ Plus Ultimate edition” doesn’t mean it is instantly in the manjaro stable branch 30 seconds later.

The new versions just take some time to test before they can be rolled into the various distributions “Stable” release. Especially when you are talking about what is some people’s main productivity suite for getting work done it isn’t something you want to blindly jump into. But for those that want to live on the bleeding edge or they just can’t live another second without “Implemented support for semi-transparent text in Writer.” or one of the other new features those people have the options now since the manjaro team has integrated all of these other package choices for you so you can install the latest version from the developer as a flatpak or appimage as discussed above. The snap version isn’t on the new version yet either.

Personally there isn’t a single feature in the new 7.0 that I need or care about to move me from the reliable still branch that I’m currently on but everyone has their own level of stability or features that they need when it comes to an office suite.

Yep, I’m more than happy to wait for whatever new bugs 7.0 brings.

For me, Libreoffice 7.0 fix my old bug: Page size and page column on Libreoffice there's no drop down menu - Applications - Manjaro Linux Forum. Libreoffice 7.0 has a lovely Sukapura icon SVG and fix table compatibility from ms word. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

1 Like

You’ll be pleased to note, that libreoffice 7 has arrived in unstable/testing: Manjaro - Branch Compare,

3 Likes