This is about the 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 or Linux (although it can run on NT as well), and best of all, its free.

I chose toinstall it on a Solaris 8 (Intel x86) machine with 96Mb RAM, and a 233 Mhz Pentium chip. The install took about 10-15 minutes (after the initial 3-5 minute delay to launch the java interface).

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 :

• Linux
• OS/2
• Solaris Sparc versions 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.7 (Solaris 7), and 2.8 (Solaris 8)
• Solaris Intel versions 2.5.1, 2.6, 2.7 (Solaris 7), and 2.8 (Solaris 8)
• Windows 95, 98 and NT

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 Solaris8 install :

I recently installed star office as well. This is the newer version 5.2 and it seems pretty good. I installed it mostly because I am looking for a good, free, communal HTML editor for my entire group to use.

I installed it in a network mode, because I thought that would serve me in the most functionality with the least impact. So :

As root :

• mkdir /opt/office
• mkdir /opt/office/office52
• chmod -R /opt/office
• Insert the cd
• cd /cdrom/cdrom0/solaris8i/office52/program
• ./setup -net
• follow on screen prompts
• Installation script takes about 3-5 minutes to launch the java interface
• It gives a beautiful "windows" look and feel screen for the install
• The install takes about 10 minutes and has a clock and progress meter - I was very impressed
• I installed all components, but chose the custom installation anyway, this way I could be sure to pick my own directory.

Thats it for the server section - I used custom install (imagine that ....) and selected everything. It used over 250Mb, so be sure to have enough area in whatever filesystem you choose.

To use the product, you need to now setup a user account to run this stuff. I chose a basic account name of "souser" for star office user, but you could use any and/or all accounts on the system for this.

As souser :

• cd /opt/office/office52/program
• ./setup

Again, follow the onscreen prompts, and it will install about 2Mb worth of data into the user's home directory. I used the defaults for all options.