[PLUG] Open Office Starts Slow

Robert Munro ramunro at speakeasy.net
Wed Nov 23 01:38:34 UTC 2011


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On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:38:00 -0800 Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> 
> Something has changed on my machine with regards to the amount of
> time it takes Open Office to load. I can't put my finger on exactly
> when I noticed the change, but I think it was in the last couple of
> weeks. I don't recall if there were any updates to Java or Open
> Office recently -- wondering if that might have anything to do with
> it.
<snip>

I don't know from Ubuntu, which you said you're using, but Open Office
(and Libre Office) use Java, specifically the Java Runtime Environment
(JRE) that is distributed by Oracle (nee Sun) or some other developer.

The starting point for learning what release of JRE you have
installed: http://www.java.com/en/ . Of course that likes the
'official' version.

I use the 'official' Sun (now Oracle) Java because I've found that
some other versions, like the "Iced Tea" Java maintained by my
distribution, (Mandriva), don't play well with a Java applet that I
use under Firefox.

That Java applet is an online poker client-in-the-web-browser that's at:
https://www.free-bwin.com/poker.aspx . It doesn't require Windows, yay!

(You're all welcome to come play poker for play money but I should
warn you that I have a 'bankroll' of almost $900k and don't take
prisoners.)

So, every once in awhile Mandriva decides to update its version of
Iced Tea, so I allow it to do that. Then... I remove the package
immediately using Mandriva's quite handy GUI-based RPM package
maintenance facility.

I always check to make sure it's truly gone by using "about:plugins"
in Firefox. Lately Firefox has this online under Tools -> Add-ons for
this.

Also, I occasionally update the version of Java that's on my system,
by downloading the latest version from http://www.java.com/en/ and
placing that into effect. That process requires that I remove the
older version first, then make the install file executable using chmod
a+x [filename] and run the the install file, which installs the RPM
and all libraries.

There's also a version of the latest 'official' Sun/Oracle Java
upgrade for Debian based Linux systems.

To tell Firefox where to find Java, I create a link to the Java
runtime launcher as root as follows, using the latest version for this
example:

cd /usr/local/firefox/plugins  # the latest Firefox lives in /usr/local
ln -sf /usr/java/jre1.6.0_29/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so libnpjp2.so

And Open Office is happy, too. I keep only the one version of Java as
I don't have any use for it other than to run Open Office and play poker.

ls -al /usr/java # date/time data removed for readability
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   16 default -> /usr/java/latest/
drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 jre1.6.0_29/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   21 latest -> /usr/java/jre1.6.0_29/

Best regards,
Robert
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