__link__ - Openoffice Linux

Oracle was a database company. They were ruthless about profitability. The open-source community panicked. They remembered what Oracle had done to other Sun projects. The fear was that Oracle would either kill OpenOffice or lock it behind a paywall.

Whether you are a student, a professional, or a casual user, Apache OpenOffice provides a robust toolkit for managing your digital life on Linux. Why Linux isn't on the desktop yet - Rob Landley

Realizing they had lost the community's trust and were now maintaining a ghost town, Oracle did something unexpected in April 2011. Rather than killing the software, they decided to cut their losses. They announced that OpenOffice.org would become a project of the . openoffice linux

In 2009, the inevitable happened: Sun Microsystems collapsed and was acquired by .

Apache OpenOffice still exists. You can install it on Linux. But it serves a niche audience—mostly legacy enterprise environments that standardized on the Apache license years ago. It is the quiet grandfather of the office suite world; still alive, but rarely visited. Oracle was a database company

In the vast ecosystem of free and open-source software (FOSS), few pairings are as historically significant and practically emblematic as OpenOffice and the Linux operating system. While the modern landscape has seen shifts toward forks like LibreOffice and cloud-based suites, the relationship between OpenOffice and Linux represents a foundational chapter in the quest to build a viable, ethical, and accessible alternative to proprietary software dominance. For over two decades, Apache OpenOffice (and its predecessor, Sun StarOffice) has served as the essential productivity layer atop the Linux kernel, proving that an operating system without a bundled office suite is like a library without books.

For a brief, chaotic period, Linux distributions had to choose sides. Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian made the pragmatic choice: they switched their default installs from OpenOffice to LibreOffice. They remembered what Oracle had done to other Sun projects

From a technical standpoint, the marriage of OpenOffice and Linux is a study in native integration. Unlike office suites that rely on Wine or virtualization, OpenOffice was built with cross-platform toolkits (initially Motif, later its own "VCL" layer) that allowed it to feel like a first-class citizen on a Linux desktop. It respects the POSIX file system, uses native printing subsystems (CUPS), and integrates with Linux’s inter-process communication (D-Bus). For administrators, deploying OpenOffice across a fleet of Linux workstations is trivial via package managers like apt , yum , or zypper , ensuring uniform updates and security patches without per-seat licensing fees. This synergy lowered the total cost of ownership dramatically—a feature that appealed to governments in Germany, France, and Brazil, who deployed thousands of Linux desktops equipped with OpenOffice to avoid vendor lock-in.

Most Linux users can install OpenOffice through their system's package manager or by downloading the official installation files from the Apache OpenOffice download page .

Here is the detailed story of OpenOffice on Linux.

Apache OpenOffice is a full-featured office productivity suite that includes a variety of applications designed to handle everyday tasks: