The Document Foundation finally announced the release of LibreOffice 5.0 and updated its PPA for Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, and derivatives (e.g., Linux Mint 13/17, Elementary OS Freya/Luna).

What’s New in LibreOffice 5.0:

Below are the descriptions from its new features page. For more, see the release note.

LibreOffice 5.0 ships an impressive number of new features for its spreadsheet module, Calc: complex formulae image cropping, new functions, more powerful conditional formatting, table addressing and much more. Calc’s blend of performance and features makes it an enterprise-ready, heavy duty spreadsheet application capable of handling all kinds of workload for an impressive range of use cases.

New icons, major improvements to menus and sidebar: no other LibreOffice version has looked that good and helped you be creative and get things done the right way. In addition, style management is now more intuitive thanks to the visualization of styles right in the interface.

LibreOffice 5 ships with numerous improvements to document import and export filters for MS Office, PDF, RTF, and more. You can now timestamp PDF documents generated with LibreOffice and enjoy enhanced document conversion fidelity all around.

How to upgrade to LibreOffice:

For all current Ubuntu releases and based systems, the best way is to upgrade LibreOffice 5.0 through the official PPA.

1. Open terminal from the Dash, Launcher, or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run command to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:libreoffice/ppa

2. After that, open Software Updater/Update Manager and install all updates for LibreOffice after checking for updates, though the new packages named with ~rc5:

As the PPA description says “This PPA might contain the release candidate that is assumed to become the final release even before it is declared so by the Document Foundation (e.g. usually release candidate 2 for minor updates).”

Or you can run below commands to do the upgrade process after adding the PPA:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install libreoffice

LibreOffice 4.4.5, the final stable release before LibreOffice 5.0 stable which is scheduled to be released next week, has been announced today.

It is the fifth bugfix release from the 4.4 branch of LibreOffice which contains new features and program enhancements. As such, the version is stable and is suitable for all users. This version may contain a few annoying bugs which will be fixed in the next bugfix versions to come.

How to Upgrade to LibreOffice 4.4.5:

For Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivatives (e.g., Linux Mint 17.x, and Elementary OS Freya), follow below steps to upgrade the office suite from PPA.

1. To add LibreOffice PPA, open terminal either from the Dash/Launcher or via Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut keys. When it opens, run below command:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:libreoffice/ppa

2 After added the PPA, open Software Updater and you’ll see the new LibreOffice release available for upgrade after checking for updates.

Just click Install Now button to install/upgrade it.

You can also use Synaptic Package Manager to upgrade the office suite.

3. Optional For those who want to revert back to the original LibreOffice version in Ubuntu, run below commands to install ppa-purge and purge the PPA which also downgrades all installed packages from that PPA:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:libreoffice/ppa

A new release of the open-source office suite, LibreOffice 4.4.3, now is available for upgrade in Ubuntu 15.04, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, Ubuntu 14.10 and derivatives.

LibreOffice 4.4.3 is the third bug-fix release from the 4.4 branch which brings over 88 bug-fixes. As such, the version is stable and is suitable for all users. The Document Foundation does not announced the 4.4.3 release at the moment, but the official PPA has been updated with packages for Ubuntu 12.04 and higher.

How to Upgrade LibreOffice:

As the PPA description says, it is way better to use packages from the PPA than using the *.deb files that The Document Foundation provides upstream in its website, which are intentionally build against a very old baseline for maximum compatibility.

1. So if you want to upgrade LibreOffice, open terminal from the Dash/Menu (or press Ctrl+Alt+T). When it opens, run commands to add its PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:libreoffice/ppa

2. After adding the PPA, you can install/upgrade the office suite by:

• opening Software Updater and installing available updates after checking for updates.
• or by running below commands one by one directly in terminal:

  sudo apt-get update 
  
  sudo apt-get install libreoffice

3.(Optional) If for some reason, you want to remove the new release and revert your office installation. Run commands to install ppa-purge and purge the Libreoffice PPA which also downgrade all installed packages from that repository.

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

sudo ppa-purge ppa:libreoffice/ppa

That’s it.

This is a beginners’ guide about how to install or upgrade to the latest official build of LibreOffice in Ubuntu or Linux Mint.

As you may know, the open-source office suite LibreOffice 4.2 has been released recently which is focusing on performance and interoperability, and improving the integration with Microsoft Windows. See what’s new in LibreOffice 4.2

To install LibreOffice 4.2 in Ubuntu:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the command below to remove the previous installation:

sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice*

2. Check out your system type, 32 bit or 64 bit, by going to System Settings -> Details

3. Download:

LibreOffice_4.2.0_Linux_x86_deb.tar.gz (32 bit)

LibreOffice_4.2.0_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz (64 bit)

Go to this page when a new release is out.

4. Right on the downloaded package and extract it. After that, you’ll see the result folder: LibreOffice_4.2.0.4_Linux_x86-64_deb.

5. In previous terminal window (or press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a new one), run the command below to navigate to LibreOffice folder:

cd ~/Downloads/LibreOffice_4.2.0*

You may replace “LibreOffice_4.2.0*” with your full folder name.

6. Now install all the debian packages under DEBS:

cd DEBS && sudo dpkg -i *.deb

After that, you can Launch LibreOffice 4.2 from Unity Dash or Menu.