Installing new software
 

I am about to attempt my first software installation - upgrading my LibreOffice package to the latest version. Since all my software came preloaded with my computer I have not been involved in this exercise previously.

I realize how irritating newbies can be, by asking questions that have already been answered in other threads, so I have read the post offering basic software installation instructions, together with anything else that seemed relevant. Then I got the installation instructions from the LibreOffice website. When I compared these with the LQ version it was difficult to find much in common, so what do I do? I am inclined to follow the LibreOffice instructions. Apart from anything else, they are simpler. However, I notice reference to a 'desktop-integration' folder in the latter. I do not appear to have such a folder in my present system. Can I assume that it will be created as part of the installation of the updated package?

I am happy to experiment but one thing that terrifies me is the instruction to purge my existing version of LibreOffice before installing the latest one. I do not question the logic of so doing, it being pointed out that otherwise I will finish up with both new and old versions. The worry is that, if I remove the old version and am then unable to successfully install the new one, I will have well and truly 'burned my boats behind me'- and I have only just got the spell checker to work in the old version!

I have so far managed to download the .tar.gz file and extract the installation folder and associated files from it. I realise that the latter could well be lost when purging the existing LibreOffice installation but that does not matter. I have slightly renamed the .tar.gz file so that the purge command will not find it. I can then quickly re-extract the installation folder, with its .deb files, if I need to, the extraction process yielding exactly the same files whatever the .tar.gz file name.

I am just about ready to jump but I would like a handle on the 'desktop-integration' file, or folder, before I do.

Is there any particular reason you want to build LibreOffice from source?

99.99 of the time you are MUCH better off just using the version built into the distro's software repository. In which case, a simple "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" would bring all of the software on your system, including LibreOffice, to the newest version in the Mint 13 repository.

The reason is that I knew no better :redface: I will try your suggestion right away. It sounds much safer.

Well, that was relatively quick and easy - at least from my point of view. I just sat and watched while a very great deal appeared to be taking place in the terminal window.

I checked when the flurry of activity ceased and found that my original version of LibreOffice had not changed. It is still 3.5.7.2, presumably meaning that that is the latest version in Mint 13 repository.

Thanks for your help. That saved me a lot of bother. I am not fanatical about keeping my sotware bang up to date but it is now over a year since I acquired my Linux computer so I suppose a general update is no bad thing.

Yep, that must be the latest version in the repo. Most distros, especially stable LTS distros, "lag" behind the newest software releases to let the bugs get worked out before pushing it onto their users.

Installing from source allows you to have the latest and greatest if you need it (maybe some must-have feature has been added which isn't in your distro's standard version), but most people don't need the latest version and therefore don't bother.