StarOffice 3.1 Mini-HOWTO

1. Introduction

This document deals with installing StarOffice 3.1. The current version of StarOffice is 5.1. Version 5.1 is considerably easier to install and less buggy than version 3.1. In fact, in my opinion there is no need for a HOWTO for version 5.1, since StarDivision has written a fairly complete installation guide. The StarOffice mini-HOWTO was useful while it lasted, but it is now being archived only for the few who still wish to install StarOffice 3.1. For information about StarOffice 5.1, check StarDivision's site at http://www.stardivision.com.

The StarOffice Office Suite is a collection of office tools for Linux, written in C using the Motif toolkit.

StarOffice includes:

• StarWriter, a word processor
• StarCalc, a spreadsheet
• StarImage, an image editor
• StarDraw, a draw program similar to Corel DRAW
• StarChart, a chart-making program
• StarMath, a math editor

The StarOffice Office Suite for Linux is free for non-commercial use. Commercial use requires a license. The cost for a commercial license seperate from Caldera's OpenLinux system is currently undecided.

1.1 Motif info

StarOffice is written using the commercial Motif 2.0 GUI toolkit. The dynamically linked version will *not* work with Motif 1.2/LessTif.

The static version (with Motif 2.0 linked in) will work regardless of whether or not you have Motif. However, performance drops.

I run StarOffice on a Pentium 100 with 48 megs RAM, running Redhat 4.1 and Motif 2.0. Dynamically linked StarOffice takes about a minute to load. However, it is noticable that, once it loads up, StarOffice dynamically linked takes up much less resources than the static version.

1.2 History of this document

• Version 1.1 991128 - updated URLs and changed references to StarOffice 4.0 to the new 5.1
• Version 1.0 980602 - added information on StarOffice 4.0 and about how this document is now outdated
• Version 0.8 971109 - added tips, installation w/o libc upgrade, etc.
• Version 0.7 970707 - changed section 3.1.1, changed license
• Version 0.6 970609 - added fix for the LANG variable problem
• Version 0.5 970608 - updated info to StarOffice 3.1 final
• Version 0.1 970505 - the initial release.