A Brief History of OpenOffice and Its Evolution on Linux Mint

The story of OpenOffice began when Novell, a software company, started a spin-off project called Go-oo or Go-OpenOffice. According to developers who worked on the project at the time, Sun delayed approving outside contributions in order to preserve its rights to close the code and sell it. Despite this, OpenOffice was never truly competitive with Microsoft Office.

In 1998, just a year before being acquired by Sun Microsystems, the developer company started offering StarOffice for free. Over the years, it incorporated new programs and was ported to other platforms under the name of StarOffice. Both OpenOffice and LibreOffice have their roots in StarWriter, a word processor developed for the CP/M platform.

In 2002, one year after being acquired by Sun, the source code was released, giving birth to OpenOffice. Since then, both OpenOffice and LibreOffice have continued to evolve and improve. In this performance comparison, we'll take a look at how OpenOffice version 4.1.11 performs on Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon desktop.

We downloaded and manually installed the latest available version of OpenOffice from their website, which is 7.3.0. For comparison purposes, we've also used LibreOffice 7.2.5.2, which is pre-installed in Ubuntu Studio 22.04 (still under development).

In this article, we'll explore how these two popular office suites compare and contrast on Linux Mint. Whether you're looking for a free alternative to Microsoft Office or just want to try out a new office suite, OpenOffice is definitely worth considering. With its rich feature set and compatibility with a wide range of file formats, it's an excellent choice for anyone looking to switch from proprietary software.

In the following sections, we'll delve deeper into the features and performance of OpenOffice on Linux Mint. So if you're interested in learning more about this popular open-source office suite, keep reading!

Openoffice linux mint