Debian Wheezy came with LibreOffice 3 (now two generations old). I want to upgrade or replace this with LO Ver 5 and manage this through the package manager. Online search for LibreOffice and Debian Wheezy produced only some old threads about updating to V4 via Wheezy backports, so I explored these methods:
Using a Debian Repository
It appears that Testing (Stretch) has it. Debian's package information is almost a year old, but it looks like no Wheezy backport has it. Jessie backports does. So this would require adding a repo or backport that is not Wheezy-specific. My understanding is that this isn't recommended as a general practice, and requires manipulation of other settings.
Problems encountered:
- Can't locate the precise specification for either repo.
- Can't locate the public key information.
- Manually editing the sources file requires knowing what to specify. The GUI tools are supposed to provide a somewhat automated way to do this (example), but Apper and Synaptic don't display the tools shown in online tutorials (ancient tool versions in Wheezy? Running as root required?).
Using Other Repos
LMDE has it. I guessed that the spec would be
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian main
. Problems encountered:- It is a Mint-customized version, so I don't know what complications that might introduce.
- Can't locate the public key information.
Ubuntu has several dedicated PPAs (Fresh and Still). I tried adding Still with this command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/libreoffice-5-1
. The system tacked on awheezy main
extension for my convenience and nothing was found.Using the LibreOffice deb tarball
The LibreOffice site and tarball-enclosed readme file have several alternate instructions for installing the tarball using the package manager.
Unarchiving the tarball and opening the terminal via right-click on one of the debs, followed by
sudo dpkg -i *.deb
. This did not request a password and produced an error message that no such file was found. Alternately:In the deb directory of the expanded tarball, select all of the deb files, right-click, and select
open with package manager
. This resulted in 30 instances of the package manager, one for each deb file, with complaints about missing dependencies.
I'm still learning my way around Linux and know just enough to be dangerous. The LibreOffice site recommends not using the tarball except if there is no other way. My assumption is that a version from a Debian repo will be more compatible (less customized for another distro), than one from an Ubuntu or Mint source.
LibreOffice offers a portable version that would seem to solve the problem because nothing is installed. However, it appears designed to run on external media and requires some portable infrastructure (Windows based that will run in Wine; I haven't dabbled with this, yet). This would also require manual maintenance.
I can't be the only Debian Old-Stable user with a problem loading a current version of LibreOffice. Is there a standard solution? Is that described in gory detail somewhere?