This is about the new free download of the Sun Star Office product. Sun is now offering, in case you didnt know, a very good Unix based product, that competes with Microsoft Office. It has complete readability with the MS product as well as the WordPerfect tools. It runs as a server based solution, again, on Unix (although it can run on NT as well), and best of all, its free.
I chose toinstall it on a Solaris (Intel x86) machine with 64Mb RAM, and a 166 Mhz Pentium chip. The install took about 10-15 minutes (after the initial 3-5 minute delay to launch the java interface). I will probably install it on my Linux machine next, because it has much more "horsepower". I will add any updates at that time.
I am sure more Operating Systems will be supported in the future, as the product is so new to Sun. You can check with Sun, but the Operating Systems I see on my CD are :
First of all, you will need to get the product itself. You can download Star Office right from the web site, or you can order the CD. I ordered the CD, so that I will always have a copy, that wont take up alot of room on my servers, and will have all versions on it.
Below are the notes from my Solaris install :
Well, that takes care of the initial installation. Now we of course want to use it. To do so, you need to run the soffice script located in the .../staroffice/bin directory. It is a VERY good idea to include this directory in the users path.
Additionally, I remember there being some issue that the two users that I setup on my system, needed to have a java runtime environment setup. You may be better served having ONE environment, and allowing the users to share it. In my haste, I setup two different environments, but will surely rectify this at some point in the near future. I will post any problems here.