LibreOffice Freezing on Me

LibreOffice Freezing on Me

It is time for me to write my experience with Openoffice and Libreoffice.

1. I was never happy with window's office with no particular reason.

2. Then I tried wordperfect from Corel but was not happy but I was really happy with its presentation package (similar to powerpoint but much better) with slide show.

3. I was getting fed up with windows anyway and I was into Linux by stroke of accident.

4. This was the period when copyright law was not in existence in this blessed land like in India (known for violating copyright, right, left and center, now overtaken by China) but the country was flooded with pirated software (in Colombo but later in provincial cities).

5. There was a chap in Nugegoda who had worked in Singapore but later established himself here in a showroom with all the pirated ( with few original) software.

6. He had a limited collection of Linux CDs and the first working Redhat 8.

I cold never lay my hands on Redhat 7 (I managed to find five CDs but unfortunately one CD was defective).

7. I managed to find 6 Cds of Debian (my university was using Debian in the Engineering Faculty).

It took years for me to master Debian installation, eventually I got a hang of.

8. Ubuntu was not on the scene but Knoppix was available.

One of our guys made a Knoppix ? Debian Sinhala version briefly.

He is now a Top Linux workaholic and an expert helping even the Debian Team.

9. My only Guru was Linux Bible/s and the CD/DVDs that came with the books.

10. Word Star (could not get it to work) was there but  open office was teething, then.

11. Managesd to find an open office (1 CD, then not as big as today).

12. I installed it in windows but no fonts for Sinhala.

13. Fedora (gave up at core 3) was making entry but I started hating it, coming back from Redhat.

But Fedora 3 and later Mandriva/Mandrake Linux had Sinhala font capability.

Sinhala UNICODE was not in existence, but a Budhhist Monk (Swiss I believe) of Western origin was developing Pali Unicode for Pali texts.
His name, if I remember correct was Metta Vihari.
He was dishing out Ubuntu then.

14. SuSe wasmy  next discovery (Koffice was there but I never used it) and I got hitched to it before OpenSuse.

I still have high regard for SuSe.

If not for SuSe, I would have by now given up on Linux.

15. I did not know there was a higher order of word processing (LaTEX) in existence and Vi was not my friend.

16. Then PCLinux and Live CD (I still do not know which was the first Live CD, ? Knoppix or ? MCLinux).

In each one of those distributions, I tried Open Office and never wanted to write my thesis, entirely on Open Office.

I used Microsoft Words and the university also insisted that, I should work on Microsoft.

But by no hindsight, I made a copy of my thesis also in Open Office.

17. When I first used it Open Office in one of those instances asked me whether to remove (hindering especially the page layout and sometimes numbering pages) the Microsoft Macros.
I said YES.
Then when I looked at Open Office file it was less heavy (there were lot of pictures, graphs, SPSS data) and the full file fitted with a Floppy Disc.

Microsoft file had to be written into a CD.

Then when I started printing in Microsoft, I could not get (finalized) my book into the format the university prescribed.

I was in a SHOCK and the deadline was nearing.

18. As a last resort, I went back to Open Office and removed the nasty Microsoft Macros and then the page layout came back to the prescribed format.

Beauty was it did not take even a minute of my precious time.

I said Good Bye to Microsoft Word, for good then, and was much more comfortable in Linux, not one distribution, but at least 20.


19. My first book was done on Abiword.

Abiword is excellent in removing Macros but it never warns you.

20. Lately I started using LibreOffice for my books and it did not give me any problems and it is sleek.

21. It has problem with page numbering and page sections etc; but since I use Abiword to begin my books (page layouts, sections are determined first with Abiword) I have only dealt with  minor glitches and hindrances with LibreOffice.

22. But I have not been able to deal with the Memory (partly my fault, I still download and test Linux as a hobby and my home folder get bloated in no time) and the memory Cash of the backup folder.

23. I had to go for the ultimate price, backup files and full format the partition and re-install Linux.

Then download the latest LibreOffice.

Since this happened twice (once before my regular overhaul, this time thankfully coinciding with my mid year overhaul-never end of the year), I think I should report it to the wider web instead of sending them an email.

24. I did something different, this time round.

I used SuSe to access my files specially the next two books.

25. It is advantages to have at least two Linux distributions (in my case minimum three and Knoppix Live CD to recover from major disasters-never would happen, I believe) in your hard drive. 

Better still have the files in the Cloud.

This scenario, made me to write a new (edition) book on Linux possibly.

Not a Bible!

Postscript
1. My advice for you is to choose a Distribution with LibreOffice as a default (almost all have it not CD versions of distributions).
LibreOffice is a huge file because of numerous language.

It fits in with a DVD over 1000 MiB.
If you are using it on windows and with only English, it is scaled down to about 200 MiB, but does not have the same functionality as in Linux.
It is based in France just like the MultiSystem booting from USB.
Getting the information to France in English is difficult.

If you want to use Open Office from Apache, you will have to use Debian, but Debian in General is for Linux experts.

Peppermint Reinstall

Peppermint Reinstall
I had some problem with LibreOffice.
For the second time LibreOffice froze saying I have exceeded the cash at backup folder.
Instructed me to FREE memory and try but it never re-started LibreOffice.
I immediately re-installed SuSe in my second hard drive and used LibreOffice from Suse and backed up my last two books in preparation (I am getting lazy to write now) and downloaded Peppermint and created a MicroSd USB using ImageWriter of SuSe and reinstalled.
Installing with USB was brisk except for the installation of language pack (local servers are very slow).
Just to wild the time till it installed the language pack, completed this blog piece.

Peppermint use a light weight window manager (unlike KDE and SuSe).
That let me do the background work using Google Document.
Peppermint does not have Office.
I will download it later.
Software center is excellent.

ImageWriter from SuSe-KDE based

ImageWriter from SuSe
SuSe has a good image writer.
This is the first KDE based USB creator that worked without a problem for me.
In fact I created a Peppermint in a MicroSD loaded to a USB adapter.

Postscript;
1.Make sure USB is formatted with FAT 32 using Gparted.
Most of the memory cards have proprietary files for booting, at boot level and they should be erased.

2. This is a very dangerous Utility, my advice is for you not to use it.

Reasons 
1. It renames the USB or MicroUSB and one cannot erase it, unless one uses the command line.

2. It cannot erase the proprietary MicroSDs (e.g; for example Sony).

3. Due to the above fact it won't boot.

4. It does not tell you what file systems it uses and Gparted cannot read them.

5. Its ?Grub or boot menu is pretty bad.

Once used, even MultiSystem utility cannot change its name.
In other words this utility corrupts the file systems and partitions, one might not use them again.

I lost only two MicroSDs (only 1 GiB capacity but expensive (one Sony and one non-proprietary).

I will use command line and recover them but it is bit of a hassle for any ordinary Linux user.

In hindsight, this is the utility I will use when I want to discard any USB utility in final cremation procedure, so nobody would recover my identity.