I’ve been using OO 3 on Fedora since last year, and decided it really is about time I added it to my Ubuntu installs.

Here is what to do no searching and no command line access required.

1. First off we need to add the Launchpad repository for OpenOffice to our software sources, as it’s still not mainline ubuntu as yet.

To do this carry out the following:

From the task bar,

1. Click on ‘System’
2. Go down to ‘Administration’
3. Go Down to ‘Software Sources’

As shown in the screen shot shown below:

Next you’l be prompted for your password, as shown below:

Now enter your password, as prompted.

Once the Software sources application has started:
Select the ‘Third Party software’ tab

As shown below:

Click on the ‘Add’ button on the bottom left hand corner. This will generate a text box for you to enter the line to add the repository, as shown below:

In the text box for APT line enter the following :

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main

If you are still on ubuntu hardy, replace intrepid in the above line with hardy

Click ‘Add Source’
Click ‘Close’

After a little while the ‘Software Sources’ application will close.
Now all that is left is to simply ‘Update’ your system as usual.

You now have a fully functioning OpenOffice.org 3 installation.

The webbook

At this point, it’s normally considered good to reflect on the past year, and make resolutions for the coming 12 months. So, what do you think is really good about the webbook? What needs a little bit of work? What could be changed for the better?

Leave Alan some comments, and maybe he can look at things. Or if you’ve got any unsolved problems, welcome to the fastest-growing webbook community where everybody is happy to help anybody else they can!

The blog

And what have we been doing here? Well, the core ideas behind the blog have not changed (much) – it went from Alan keeping the world up-to-date with webbook developments to being a forum where Alan (and other “experts”) answer any webbook-related problems. On the blog, this is what we’ve done:

• Gave you threaded comments, so that solutions to problems appear right there under the problem
• Allowed you to register, so that (like me) you can add your own posts if you feel brave enough
• Added a recent comments box, so that you can see what people are talking about straight away
• Changed the colours, so that it’s really obvious when Alan (or other post authors) are talking to you
• Super-Cached the blog, to cope with the massive increase in traffic (we’ve had more than 10,000 unique visits so far)
• Used Gravatars, so you can see the person you’re talking to (or a monster-style representation of them)

And we want to do more – so why don’t you leave a couple of comments telling me how to make this blog even better? Anything you ask for, I can normally figure out how to do, because WordPress is a very open platform and there are hundreds of websites dedicated to providing tutorials!

One of my friends got one because he wanted a broadband dongle for his Macbook Air and this deal meant he got the webbook for free so he could give it to his mum.

Someone else I know wants one to fit permanently to his boat to run navigation software and link to his GPS (unfortunately the software is Windows only and won’t quite work under WINE so we are still hunting for a Linux based charting solution before this idea gets off dry land.)

Post your reasons and share your ideas here in a comment.