(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

SoftMaker FreeOffice 2018

For the 'Anniversary' update packages,, please see here

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>>>Lucid users, please see post here.<<<

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Evening, all.

This side of things is a bit of a departure for me; but, following a discussion in 'Users - for the regulars' earlier this evening (and noting the much more compact size of FreeOffice, compared to LibreOffice), I thought I'd take a look at it.

So I registered for the free key, downloaded the .deb package, and after some titivating, and making up the missing desktop entries for the Menu, have produced both .pet & SFS packages of this very M$-like office suite.

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Personally, I like L.O.....but I have to admit to being quite impressed with this. I may even change things over to this throughout the kennels, instead of L.O.

I've just done a new install of Tahr 6.0.6 (uefi), and have been trying out several new items in it, so.....this may well join them.

For those who don't know FreeOffice, there aren't as many 'components' as there are in L.O; primarily a word processor, spreadsheet, and a presentations application. But that's probably as much, if not more, than most folks will want; I believe I'm correct in saying that the majority of people want a good word processor that's compatible with modern M$ formats.....and not much else. Not too many folks use spreadsheets on a regular basis, or put together (and maintain) large databases. And so on.

Tips & tricks can be found here:-

http://www.freeoffice.com/en/support/tips-and-tricks

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You obtain your free registration 'key' when you arrive on the downloads page, since you're asked to register before downloading:-

http://www.freeoffice.com/en/download

.....and as soon as you click on your download link, the 'key' is sent to you via e-mail, at the a/c you've just registered with. So there's no point in using a 'fake' e-mail addy; the suite is unusable without the key!

Since you only want the key, you can cancel the download almost immediately, to save on bandwidth. The email will by this point have been sent to you. You'll probably find it in your 'Spam' folder.

This is the single, 'negative' aspect of FreeOffice; the only way to obtain the serial key is to download the suite. SoftMaker have provided no way to obtain the key by itself. You can't have the one without t'other..!

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At a total of 80MB, as against the current L.O's 200MB+, it's an acceptable size for what it is. You can find the packages at my MediaFire a/c, as usual, here:-

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/2av9g55 ... FreeOffice

Navigate through, and help yourselves to whichever you want. These are only 32-bit packages at present; the 64-bit stuff is only available as a Red Hat .rpm file, although I believe UExtract can handle that OK. I'll add the 64-bit packages as & when I get time.

Enjoy.


Mike.

Been using the 2012 version (6.97) for a while. Won't convert to the new M$Office formats, but its for older 'puters anyway.

And you can trim this to single language, moving the pdf manuals off the distro... very small is possible.

Regards
8Geee

G'day,

For those with many Pups and not so much hard-drive space and a poor memory for passwords.

I have the 2016 Softmaker freebie and share the single package across many Pups on this computer.

The sfs route is simple for Frugal Pups if the Pups are on the same partition which also has the Softmaker sfs.

To avoid having to enter the password code for each Pup's use of Softmaker, use a sym-link of the hidden .softmaker profile directory located in /root. This is NOT the Softmaker directory in /root, not the capital 'S' one. Look for hidden one starting with '.s'.

Set up (run) Softmaker in your first Pup adding the required password.

Now, copy the new .softmaker directory in /root (that now has the verification in it somewhere) to a shared auto-mounted partition - somewhere every Pup on your computer can access during booting or once booted.

Now, to check the symlink works, delete the original hidden /root .softmaker directory (in the Pup you're using).

Finally, make an absolute symlink from your shared partition of the just copied .softmaker back to /root in this Pup. Use two Rox windows - drag the .softmaker directory from your shared partition window to the second Rox window showing the /root for your Pup (which now has no .softmaker directory as you've just deleted it). Check you have a link - look for an arrow on the directory icon - check screenshots).

Check Softmaker will now open without asking for the password. That is, it's using the share-able symlinked .softmaker profile which has the password information.

Now, for each extra Pup that you install this free Softmaker version to, before running Softmaker, add a symlink of the shared .softmaker directory to its /root. If there's already a .softmaker directory there, delete it and replace it with the symlink.

This is the same process I've been using with LibreOffice for some years, symlinking my stored version of its profile (libreoffice) in my data partition to the /root/.config/ default location for LibreOffice in every new Pup. In Full Pups, I also run LibreOffice itself via symlinks from its program files kept on a shared partition. Just one copy of LibreOffice shared by all Full Pups. Frugals all share the sfs.

David S.

Mornin, David.

Thanks for the info about the ~/.softmaker directory. I wasn't aware of that (like I said, this side of software is new for me), but it should cut the need for re-registering every time.

I've made up a sym-links .pet for this, anyhow.....which should cut down on 'installation' times across the kennels..!

Cheers.


Mike.

Just used my 'Symlinks.pet' to 'install' FreeOffice2016 to Racy 5.5. Running nicely.....although whether that's because I also have battleshooter's 'glibc-upgrade' installed on here, I wouldn't like to say.

Bodes well for the rest of the kennels, anyway. The only one I can see that might give problems would be Lucid, but.....well, we'll see.


Mike.

Thanks for this software and the pet and sfs of it!

However, I wonder if you are in violation of their license agreement?

YOU MAY NOT:

Make copies of the accompanying documentation;
Sublicense, rent or lease any portion of the Software or accompanying documentation; or
Reverse-engineer, decompile, dissassemble, modify, translate, make any attempt to discover the source code of the Software, or create derivative works of the software;

Hmm. That's a possibility, I suppose.

I can easily modify the .pet and SFS to remove the documentation, since that's mostly the 'beef' in your quote above. I'm definitely not messing about with the source-code.....I'm just re-packaging the components, that's all . Nothing that says you can't do that.

Leave it with me. That's easily fixed.


Mike.

That moment you realize you need a bigger monitor.

Thanks for the file. Trying it now.

I'll be uploading modified packages shortly. Documentation will be removed (just to stay on the right side of the license agreement), and there won't be any need to 'register' now, as I've included the necessary .softmaker registration directory in /root.

Please don't 'abuse' this, boys & girls, as that registration stuff is linked to my e-mail addy..! I trust you to 'behave' yourselves, please.....

EDIT:- Modified packages now uploaded @ 13.15.


Mike.

I think you had it correct the first time with the product key.
That key is your key and no one else's!

Softmaker requires a key, and it is assigned to each person, as their own key.

I do wonder if they are using the information you have to give them to get a key, as a way to make some money.
Personal info is money to the right people!

Works really well for me on a Xenialpup 32 bit freshly made from Woof-CE.

I need to make the .desktop files and set some icons..but really nice so far.

Hey, bigpup.

Once again, I reckon you're right about the 'data mining' issue.

Nah, I trust Puppians. I don't think any of 'em on here have any malicious intent.....and besides, that e-mail a/c is the one I use for all my forum stuff (plenty of those!) It's not my 'main' one; the GMail a/c I have had for many, many years. I think I used the GMail a/c to open my Forum account on here; the GMX a/c was opened a few months later.

Nobody who might abuse it gets the link to that one..!


Mike.

rockedge wrote:Works really well for me on a Xenialpup 32 bit freshly made from Woof-CE.

I need to make the .desktop files and set some icons..but really nice so far.

Hi, rockedge.

Yes, that's the only thing really missing in the package.....the .desktop files. You can use these as a template if you want:-
I'm in 32-bit Xenial myself, ATM. I've linked to the existing icons within the package, for now; I might dig up some nicer ones at some point, when I get round to it.

I found I had to use 'WordProcessor' for the category, since it was the only one that would get it to show up in the Menu at all. If you know the correct entry to use, feel free to modify and re-use as you see fit.

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The other thing I kinda miss is L.Office's StartCenter. Click on one icon, you've got access to the whole suite. FreeOffice doesn't have an equivalent.

I might study some of Smokey's GTK-dialog tutorials he's been publishing in the Newsletter, and see if I can't knock up a wee combi-box with three selection buttons.....one for each app within the suite.

Might take me a little while, mind you....!!


Mike.

Just for information, FreeOffice even works in Lucid. You do, however, get a wee box come up initially, saying 'OpenGL initialization has failed - Xrender library will be used instead.'

Click 'OK' to that.....and off it should go, on its merry way. Good to know for Lucid users. I'll link this to the first post, so Lucid Puppians will see it at the top.


Mike.

G'day,

I think the directory Softmaker in /root (NOT the hidden one) is also worth running from a symlink if you want to run Softmaker Free on your multi-Pup computer, and economise/ease its use to each Pup.

This directory seems to hold the Templates, so if you have personal template files, having just a single, shared /root/Softmaker directory could reduce hassles between Pups. There may be other stuff in /root/Softmaker to make this worth doing as well.

David S.

davids45 wrote:G'day,

I think the directory Softmaker in /root (NOT the hidden one) is also worth running from a symlink if you want to run Softmaker Free on your multi-Pup computer, and economise/ease its use to each Pup.

This directory seems to hold the Templates, so if you have personal template files, having just a single, shared /root/Softmaker directory could reduce hassles between Pups. There may be other stuff in /root/Softmaker to make this worth doing as well.

David S.

Cheers for that, David. Yes, I always sym-link all /root-related stuff whenever I'm doing this with a 'program by remote'. Since that's where most configuration settings are stored, it's not a good idea to miss out anything, I find.

On another note, I've made a pleasant discovery. I said earlier that I'd be making up a 64-bit package for this. I probably will still do that.....but if you have the 32-bit_compat_libs SFS loaded (for Tahr64, at least), then the existing, 32-bit FreeOffice will run without incident.

SoftMaker themselves provide just the one .deb package, and state it's for both 32- and 64-bit. I believe this is to do with the Debian 'multiarch' stuff; I don't think Slackware or most of the Red Hat 'family' have a direct equivalent to this.

(I'm perfectly happy to be corrected, mind you...)


Mike.

Thanks Mike for this softmaker sfs, working well on my dpup stretch frugal install.

Also nice tip by dabids45 regarding .softmaker hidden directory. Thanks.

Have re-uploaded packages again, this time to remove the hidden /root directory called .softmaker, which contains the registration info.

As greengeek found out earlier this evening, there's only so many times you can use the serial key..!

Please refer to the instructions in post #1 for how to obtain your own, personal serial 'key'.


Mike.

Ahh... that's why it didn't ask me the key.
It seemed strange but, since I already was registered in SoftMaker (around 2011 - 2012). Now that I think about it, it was in another Linux and in another computer...
Now I'm using it with my key.

Anyway, thanks Mike for the .sfs

Saludos.

You're very welcome, Galbi.

I hope this one serves you as well as the older version..!

Enjoy.


Mike.