Easily testing the latest builds of OpenOffice-fork LibreOffice in Ubuntu is now a cinch using the dedicated LibreOffice packaging PPA for Ubuntu users.

Bye bye .deb downloading

Up until now users have had to install via the oh-so-not-so-painful task of downloading a bunch of .debs files. This manual approach to installing updates has meant many users are running older versions, unaware of subsequent releases.

Adding a PPA ensures you are notified of pending updates whilst also offering the advantage of being able to upgrade easily.

Better still adding the LibreOffice PPA won’t affect OpenOffice (if installed) so feel free to take it for a test sans undue stress.

Download

The PPA provides packages for Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04 users.

To add the PPA and install LibreOffice add ‘ppa:libreoffice/ppa’ to your software sources or run the command below in a new Terminal session: –

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install libreoffice

Now to make it appear a tad nicer under your desktop environment of choice: –

Ubuntu users should run

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-gnome

Kubuntu users should run: –

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-kde

Thanks to F.Z.