Installing LibreOffice in Ubuntu

LibreOffice is considered one of the best office suites for the Ubuntu operating system. The program was created back in 2010, then it was an offshoot of OpenOffice, but already today more than 400 developers are working on LibreOffice. There is a version for Linux, as well as for Windows. The office product is delivered to many other distributions, including Ubuntu.

New versions appear frequently, approximately every three or four months an update with many interesting features is released. But the Ubuntu distribution doesn't update its software between releases, which means you'll have to use the old version and wait for the next distribution release to get the new one.

Installing LibreOffice 7 in Ubuntu

Next, let's look at the instructions for installing LibreOffice in Ubuntu 20.04. We will install the program from the developers' PPA repository.

With the release of universal packages for installing applications became as many as four available and convenient ways to install LibreOffice in Ubuntu 16.04:

• Initializing LibreOffice with FlatPack;
• Initializing LibreOffice with Snap;
• Initializing the deb package;
• Initializing from a PPA.

But the most convenient one is installing LibreOffice in Ubuntu from PPA, which in the future will allow you to automatically update the version of the program in the system when new versions are released.

Installing LibreOffice from a PPA

In order to add the LibreOffice developer PPA to the system, open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the command:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

You will need to press Enter during the process. This repository supports Ubuntu 16.04 - 20.04. It is possible that newer versions will be added in the future.

Then update the list of packages from all repositories:

$ sudo apt update

The utility can be installed on your system, but only an older version, then you don't even have to install anything, just update the system completely. For example, using the command:

$ sudo apt dist-upgrade

If for some reason you previously uninstalled the program, then you can install it very easily. To do this, execute:

$ sudo apt install libreoffice libreoffice-gnome

If you are using the Kubuntu edition, execute:

$ sudo apt install libreoffice libreoffice-plasma

Then you will be able to open the program from the main menu:

Installing from Snap

You can also install Libreoffice using the snap package. To do this, you can use the graphical application center in Ubuntu or you can use the snap package manager. In the graphical application center, type libreoffice in the search bar:

Then open the desired package and click on the Install button:

You can find a newer version as opposed to a more stable PPA. In the terminal to install LibreOffice, execute:

$ sudo snap install libreoffice

You will then be able to run the program:

Uninstalling LibreOffice

If LibreOffice of the new version is no longer needed, and there is a desire to return the version from the official repositories, perform:

$ sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:libreoffice/ppa

A to completely uninstall the program:

$ sudo apt purge libreoffice-gtk2 libreoffice-gnome

To uninstall the program from the snap package, perform:

$ sudo snap remove libreoffice

As you can see, installing LibreOffice in Ubuntu 20.04 for the newest version does not take too much time. Everything is easy and straightforward.