News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
OnlyOffice announced the new 8.3 release for its offline Desktop Editor apps yesterday.
The new release now is able to open and view files created in Apple iWork’s Pages, Keynote and Numbers, as well as Hancom Office’s .hwp and .hwpx file formats. However, for editing support they need to be converted to OOXML first, i.e. DOCX for text documents, XLSX for spreadsheets and PPTX for presentations.
LibreOffice, the popular free open-source office suite, rolls out the new 25.2.0 release! LibreOffice 25.2 is the third release series after switched to date-based version numbering system. The official Flatpak package has been updated for all Linux users, though the announcement is not ready yet at the moment. 
OnlyOffice, the popular free open-source office suite, announced new 8.1 release for its desktop editors.
The Desktop Editors is the offline use version of OnlyOffice office suite. It’s made up of Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, and PDF Form apps, and, supports collaborative editing by connecting to a cloud service.
The new 8.1 release finally added full-featured PDF editing support for the both online and offline apps. After opened a PDF file, go to Home -> Edit PDF to toggle between viewing and editing mode.
When in editing PDF mode, you’ll see the tool-bar options to edit text, add, rotate and delete pages, insert various objects, such as text boxes, shapes, images, hyperlinks, tables, and more.
For users who prefer native .deb package, LibreOffice 24.2 is finally available to install via Ubuntu PPA!
LibreOffice is the default office suite for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and many other Linux. And, the latest so far is LibreOffice 24.2.x release series that was released a month ago.
The office suite provides official packages for Linux through Flatpak, Snap, Deb/RPM, and AppImage.
However, for Ubuntu users who prefer the native Deb package format, the LibreOffice Fresh PPA maintained by Ubuntu Team members, is a better choice.
“OTOH, it is _way_ _better_ to use packages from this PPA than using the *.deb files that The Document Foundation provides upstream, which are intentionally build against a very old baseline for maximum compatibility. So, _if_ you want to be on the bleeding edge, do it here, not with upstream *.debs.”
And now the PPA finally is updated that contains LibreOffice 24.2.1 for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and Ubuntu 24.04. While the Ubuntu 20.04 build is stuck at the last v7.6.5.
This is a step by step beginner’s guide shows how to install OnlyOffice Desktop Editors office suite and keep it up-to-date in Ubuntu 22.04. Though the title said for Ubuntu 22.04, it also works in Linux Mint (exclude Snap) and Debian.
OnlyOffice, formerly TeamLab, is a free office suite. The Desktop Editors is offline version, that’s made up of Document, Spreadsheet, Presentation, and PDF Form. Though, it supports collaborative editing by connecting to a cloud service.
The desktop editors is free and open-source (AGPL-3.0-only license) software works in Windows, Linux, and macOS. There’ also mobile version for iOS and Android, though called OnlyOffice Documents. It’s compatible with MS Office (OOXML) and OpenDocument (ODF) formats and supports DOC, DOCX, ODT, RTF, TXT, PDF, HTML, EPUB, XPS, DjVu, XLS, XLSX, ODS, CSV, PPT, PPTX, ODP, DOTX, XLTX, POTX, OTT, OTS, OTP, and PDF-A.
The office suite is available to install in Ubuntu in 4 different ways. Choose any one that you prefer:
OnlyOffice, the popular free open-source office suite, announced new 8.0 release this Friday.
The release introduced one of the most awaited features, RTL support. It now supports bidirectional text in documents and presentations. But, RTL input is partially available with some limitations, since it’s still in Beta. In the settings page, user can enabled RTL interface with a checkbox, then restart the app to apply.
The new 8.0 release also added local interface themes support. Besides the built-in light, classic light, dark, and contrast dark, there’s now a “Add local theme” option to apply a custom interface using local JSON file.
OnlyOffice announced the new 7.5.0 release for its desktop editors office suite few days ago.
Like online version, the desktop app can now open PDF files and do basic editing operations, such as text annotating, form filling, commenting and drawing. While, collaborative editing is planned for the next release.
Another new feature in this release is automatic hyphenation support. It automatically detects syllable boundaries and inserts hyphens for words at the end of the text line.
Other features in OnlyOffice 7.5.0 include:
The office suite is available to install in Ubuntu Linux in 3 different package formats: Snap, Deb, and Flatpak. Choose either one that you prefer.
1. Snap
Snap is an universal package format that runs in sandbox. Ubuntu 20.04 and higher users can simply search for and install OnlyOffice as Snap from Ubuntu Software or App Center.
The snap automatically receive updates, though the package at the moment of writing is still at version 7.4.1.
ONLYOFFICE Snap in Ubuntu Software
2. Deb
Deb is the native package format for Debian/Ubuntu and their based Linux systems. OnlyOffice provides the .deb package along with RPM, EXE, MSI, and DMG packages for downloading at the github releases page:
Just select download the “onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb” package, then click in file manager to open with “Software Install” and install it.
Or, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, and run the command below to install the package you just downloaded (say it’s stored in your ‘Downloads’ folder):
sudo apt install ~/Downloads/onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb
3. Flatpak
Linux Mint 21 user may prefer the Flatpak package a bit more, since it’s available to install directly from the Software Manager.
It’s another universal package format runs in sandbox. Ubuntu user can install ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors as Flatpak by following the steps below one by one:
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to install the Flatpak daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
Then, install the office suite via:
flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors.flatpakref
The Flatpak package is also in v7.4.1 at the moment of writing, use the command flatpak update org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors to update the package once new version published.
Depends on which package you installed, choose to run either command below in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) window to remove the office suite.
For the Snap package, remove it either via Ubuntu Software or by running the command below:
snap remove --purge onlyoffice-desktopeditors
For the native deb package, run command to remove it:
sudo apt remove onlyoffice-desktopeditors --autoremove
And to remove the package installed as Flatpak, run command:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors
Also clear useless runtime libraries via flatpak uninstall --unused command.
For best integration, the LibreOffice PPA is finally updated with the LibreOffice 7.6.x packages for Ubuntu.
LibreOffice 7.6 was released almost one months ago. It features document themes support, zoom gestures in the main view, new “Page Number Wizard” dialog for Writer, new compact layout for pivot tables in Calc, and various other changes. See release note for details.
LibreOffice provides official packages through Flatpak in Flathub.org, Snap in Ubuntu Software. However, both run in sandbox. It also provides official .deb packages, which are however build against a very old baseline for maximum compatibility.
For those hate the office suite run in sandbox, the LibreOffice PPA maintained by Ubuntu members is the best choice. Though, it always has quite a few or even weeks delay for the new major release packages. And, LibreOffice 7.6 is finally available via the PPA, after almost 4 weeks by releasing the first point 7.6.1 version.
1. First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When terminal opens, run command to add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa
Type user password (no asterisk feedback) when it asks and hit Enter to continue. NOTE: the new release is available for Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 23.04, Ubuntu 23.10, and derivatives at the moment.
2. After adding the PPA, just search for and launch “Software Updater” (or Update Manager), then update the packages from the pre-installed office suite.
Or, run the command below in terminal instead:
sudo apt install libreoffice
Linux Mint needs to run sudo apt update first to update package index first.
To uninstall the packages, just purge the PPA, which will also downgrade LibreOffice to the original pre-installed versions depend on your Ubuntu edition.
To do so, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run commands:
sudo apt install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:libreoffice/ppa
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors, the free and open-source offline use office suite, released new 7.4 version a few days ago.
The new releases feature a “Plugin Manager“, allows to easily install external functions support, such as ChatGPT, YouTube, OCR, and more. User can of course submit its own plugin to the market place for other user use.
ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors 7.4 also added a “Draw” tab with a few drawing tools. So far, the tools include ‘Pen‘, ‘Highlighter‘, and ‘Eraser‘. The ‘Print’ page is improved with more options, such as page range, number of copies, and printing on both sides.
Other changes in the release include:
There are as well many other changes, improvements, and bug-fixes, see the Changelog page for details.
For Ubuntu user, the office suite is available to install as official Snap package. Just open Ubuntu Software, then search for and install ‘onlyoffice-desktopeditors’.
NOTE: The snap is at v7.3.3 at the moment of writing. You can just install the package and wait it’s automatically been updated to v7.4.
ONLYOFFICE Snap in Ubuntu Software
For other packages, such as Flatpak, AppImage, and Windows EXE, macOS DMG, go to this download page.
OnlyOffice announced the new 7.3.0 release for its desktop editors office suite one day ago.
For Linux users, the new release now use native dialog windows (e.g., file manager and print). And, it adds support for xdg-desktop-portal in the file dialog window, meaning better desktop integration for application installed as Flatpak and/or Snap packages.
This release also add a Quick Print button right beside the original print button. Instead of bringing to the print configuration page, it will directly send your entire document to the last selected or default printer.
For the Spreadsheet Editor, there’s new Watch Window under Formula tab, as well as new functions include TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER, TEXTSPLIT, VSTACK, HSTACK, TOROW, TOCOL, WRAPROWS, WRAPCOLS, TAKE, DROP, CHOOSEROWS, CHOOSECOLS.
Other changes in OnlyOffice 7.3.0 include:
Date and time, Zip Code, Credit Card for creating forms.The office suite is available to install in Ubuntu Linux in 3 different package formats: Snap, Deb, and Flatpak. Choose either one that you prefer.
1. Snap
Snap is an universal package format that runs in sandbox. Ubuntu 20.04 and higher users can simply search for and install OnlyOffice as Snap from Ubuntu Software.
The snap automatically receive updates, though the package at the moment of writing is still at version 7.2.1.
ONLYOFFICE Snap in Ubuntu Software
2. Deb
Deb is the native package format for Debian/Ubuntu and their based Linux systems. OnlyOffice provides the .deb package along with RPM, EXE, MSI, and DMG packages for downloading at the github releases page:
Just select download the “onlyoffice-desktopeditors_amd64.deb” package, then click in file manager to open with Software Install and install it.
3. Flatpak
Linux Mint user may prefer the Flatpak package a bit more, since it’s available to install directly from the Software Manager.
It’s another universal package format runs in sandbox. Ubuntu user can install ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors as Flatpak by following the steps below one by one:
First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to install the Flatpak daemon:
sudo apt install flatpak
Then, install the office suite via:
flatpak install https://dl.flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors.flatpakref
The Flatpak package is also in v7.2.1 at the moment, use the command flatpak update org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors to update the package once new version published.
Depends on which package you installed, choose to run either command below in a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) window to remove the office suite.
For the Snap package, remove it either via Ubuntu Software or by running the command below:
snap remove --purge onlyoffice-desktopeditors
For the native deb package, run command to remove it:
sudo apt remove onlyoffice-desktopeditors --autoremove
And to remove the package installed as Flatpak, run command:
flatpak uninstall --delete-data org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors
Also clear useless runtime libraries via flatpak uninstall --unused command.
