I need a simple, card-index style database. I do not want to get involved with anything like SQL: the use I'd have for it wouldn't justify the time spent learning it.

The solution would seem to be the Base option in OpenOffice, but I can't get it working. The weird thing is that I actually used it last year with version 2.2 -- I now have 2.3.

The tutorials refer to the menu entry File - New - Database, but it's not there. I checked the configuration to ensure that it was recognising my Java, but that was OK.

Another tutorial says I should load a CSV file into the spreadsheet (easy enough) and then start Base. But how? It's not in the OpenOffice menu, or the Gnome menu, and "openoffice.org -base" has no effect.

Most of the time Linux is just fine, and then something like this happens. If I didn't need the data to be in Unicode, I could have done it in minutes using 1980s software under a QL or DOS emulator!

Another fine choice is Kexi. Check if it is available for install in your repo's.

All is revealed! My version of OpenOffice came without Base, which had to be separately installed. Surely the point of an office suite is that everything is included? And what were the Fedora team thinking about when they left Base off the DVD?

I spoke too soon! OO Base has no ability to import files except as read-only, and Kexi only imports Microsoft formats. Not very handy if you have a 700 entry database held in a tab-delimited file. Result: to get a one-record per page layout I had to strip the accents off letters, converting to ascii, and use Psion Archive from the 1980s :-(