[Solved] Minor menu problem in Linux.

[HowardJ]

This may be related to the problem reported by some Windows users, but as it's a different platform I thought it better to open another thread. I have upgraded OO in various forms starting right at the beginning with Star Office 5. Currently I am running PCLinuxOS (fully updated), which is a Mandriva fork I understand. Anyway, installing the Mandriva rpm from "desktop-integration" has always worked up to now.

This time it refused to install it due to a conflict with the 4.1.1 version entries in the registry.

The panel icon and the items in the menu still appeared as 4.1.1 even though they worked without any problem bringing up 4.1.2. After a reboot the panel icon label was corrected, but not the menu items; even though they correctly point to 4.1.2 they are still labelled 4.1.1.

No problems with 4.1.2 - but it's early days!

As I said it's a minor problem, but a problem nevertheless. I am not sure how to delete the old entries so that the new ones can install.

[RoryOF]

My first reaction would be to

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sudo apt-get purge openoffice*

reboot, then install OO 4.1.2 again.

If you have much customisation or macros in your OO user profile, back that up, just in case the purge command takes it away (I don't think it does, but take no chances).

[kingfisher]

I first removed 4.1.1 completely using Synaptic. I used the 'freedesktop' integration rpm when installing 4.1.2. No problems so far.

You can remove the old applications from file associations in KDE, don't know about other DEs.

[RoryOF]

I note that I had no difficulty installing OO 4.1.1 and later 4.1.2 on Xubuntu 15.10 from the 64 bit deb files.

After the upgrade to 15.10 I had used

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 sudo apt-get purge libreoffice* 

before installing 4.1.1 or 4.1.2, whether this purge was in fact required; my previous experience with linux distros carrying libreoffice by default had shown that it was so I just did it automatically.

All the icons show up for 4.1.2

[HowardJ]

Thanks Guys, Your suggestions pointed they way. I checked in synaptic and found that all the 4.1.1 files had been removed except for the mandriva one which was still showing 4.1.1. I completely removed that, and just tried the mandriva rpm again without touching anything else.
It worked, but needed a reboot to restore the panel icon. All looks OK now, but obviously I haven't tested it much.

(I'm using the LXDE desktop in PCLinuxOS.)

[Villeroy]

If the conflict is between LibreOffice's symlink /usr/bin/soffice pointing to their executable and OpenOffice's symlink /usr/bin/soffice pointing to the executable to be installed, then you have 3 options to resolve that conflict:

0) First of all, you need to shutdown any running office suite: Close all office windows and then call killall soffice to kill any remaining "quick-start" tool.

1) Uninstall the other suite before installing the new one. No, removing /usr/bin/soffice would not help because it would be still registered as belonging to the old suite.

2) Keep the other suite and install the new suite without "desktop-integration" as second choice. You can easily start the second suite at /opt/openoffice4/program/soffice through a link on your desktop, custom menu, whatever.

3) Keep the other suite making the new one the first choice: Install everything except for the "desktop-integration" package and then the "desktop-integration" with --force-overwrite switch. With the Debian package system, --force-overwrite tells the installer that it is OK to overwrite any existing file and the registration of that existing file so /usr/bin/soffice belongs to the new suite. I don't know how to do the same on a RPM based system.
--force-overwrite is perfectly OK when /usr/bin/soffice is the one and only conflict. Unfortunaltely, you did not tell us. Under Linux any error message has a clear meaning even if it does not mean anything to you.

[HowardJ]

Thanks Villeroy. I guess you hadn't seen my solution post when you posted.

I always remove all traces of Libreoffice when doing a new installation of PCLinuxOS before adding AOO - there are just enough differences that some of my old, more complicated files with lots of embedded pictures (especially magazine issues) don't load correctly.

[Villeroy]

Thanks Villeroy. I guess you hadn't seen my solution post when you posted.

I always remove all traces of Libreoffice when doing a new installation of PCLinuxOS before adding AOO - there are just enough differences that some of my old, more complicated files with lots of embedded pictures (especially magazine issues) don't load correctly.

And there are just enough differences where LO does a better job (foreign file formats) which is why I keep it on my system.