Table of Contents
Editions of OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org is open source under the LGPL and has splintered into many editions. Most editions are 99% the same. The 1% is typically system integration and progressive features.
To make it confusing, some editions use the OpenOffice.org brand.
The most popular edition is the “vanilla” edition, also called the upstream, mainstream, official, and Sun Microsystems edition. It is available from http://www.OpenOffice.org and is especially popular among Windows users.
The next group of editions is ooo-build. Many Linux distributions ship ooo-build. Editions based on ooo-build include
- Debian
- Frugalware
- Mandriva
- Ubuntu (list of patches)
- SUSE
Fedora ships a modified OpenOffice.org (list of patches), but Fedora does not use ooo-build.
Variations of OpenOffice.org with their own brands include StarOffice, NeoOffice, BrOffice, IBM Lotus Symphony, EuroOffice, and Beijing Redflag CH2000's RedOffice.
How to tell which edition you have
When OpenOffice.org is running, click on Help and then About. The vanilla OpenOffice.org about dialog is mostly white like this:
Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10's dialog is brown and mentions both Debian and Ubuntu:
Performance differences
Factors that affect performance include:
- Compiler options
- Which system libraries are included (slower) or linked (faster)
- Non-performance-specific patches (which generally down the application)
- OpenOffice.org base version
- Whether debugging features are enabled
- Prelink (Fedora only?)
- Java (or is this a myth?)
- SUSE has a program called preload which preloads SUSE OOo libraries (not other editions) so they don't cold start
See The Fastest OpenOffice.org for more information and for benchmarks.
Differences in ooo-build
Systems that use ooo-build may pick and choose from a menu of modifications that include:
- Improved Microsoft Office 2007 import filters
- Microsoft Office 2007 export filters
- Data pilot improvements
- Gstreamer multimedia support on Linux
- Kohei Yoshida's Calc linear optimization solver (before OpenOffice.org 3)
- Microsoft Works text document (.wps) import using libwps
- Microsoft VBA improvements
- T602 import
- Improved EMF rendering
- Cairo canvas rendering for anti-aliased graphics
- 3D transitions in Impress
- Small bug fixes and performance improvements
- Ubuntu ships a man page (manual)
Additionally, ooo-build distributions can choose to compile the vanilla OpenOffice.org with changes including:
- Enabling Quickstarter on Linux
- Including the 3D OpenGL transitions in OpenOffice.org 2.4+ (built in, not as an extension)
References
Path of executable
| Edition | Path to executable |
|---|---|
| Debian | ? |
| Ubuntu 7.10, OpenOffice.org 2.3 | /usr/bin/openoffice links to /usr/bin/ooffice |
| Fedora 8 | /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice |
| Fedora 10 | /usr/lib/openoffice.org3/program/soffice |
| Mandriva Linux One 2008 | /usr/bin/office2.2 /usr/bin/soffice links to /etc/alternatives/ooffice |
| StarOffice | ? |
| Ubuntu 7.10, OpenOffice.org 2.3 | /usr/bin/openoffice links to /usr/bin/ooffice |
| Vanilla 2.4 for Linux | /usr/bin/openoffice.org2.4 |
| Vanilla 2.3 for Windows | C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.3\program\soffice.exe |
| Vanilla 2.4 for Windows | C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org2.4\program\soffice.exe 1) |
| Vanilla 3.0 for Windows | C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3.0\program\soffice.exe |
| StarOffice 9 for Windows | C:\Program Files\Sun\StarOffice 9\program\soffice.exe |
Path of user configuration
| OOo Edition | OOo version | Operating system | Path to configuration |
|---|---|---|---|
| ooo-build2) | 2.x | Linux | ~/.ooo-2.0/user/ |
| Vanilla | 2.x | Linux | ~/.openoffice.org2/user/ |
| Fedora | 2.x | Linux | ~/.openoffice.org2.0/user/ |
| Vanilla | 2.x | Windows 95, 98, ME | C:\Windows\Application Data\OpenOffice.org2\user\ |
| Vanilla | 2.x | Windows 2000, XP | C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\OpenOffice.org2\user\ |
| Vanilla | 2.x | Windows Vista | C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org2\user\ |
| Vanilla | 3.0 | Linux | ~/.openoffice.org/3/ |
| Vanilla | 3.0 | Windows XP | C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\OpenOffice.org\user\3\ |
| Vanilla | 3.0 | Vista, 7 | C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org\3\ |