switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice SOLVED(kinda, sorta)

[learner]

Last night, after some long debates with myself, instead of installing Kubuntu Gutsy over my Ubuntu Feisty, I took some advice in a post and installed the KDE desktop, and after rebooting and choosing the KDE environmnet, was pleased to see that everything was still intact.

Except Openoffice.

I clicked on a OOo file and it asked me what I wanted to open it with. OOo is not on the list. I had experienced great difficulty with Ubuntu OOo and had been advised to install it from the OOo website, not an Ubuntu derivative. It seems (holding my breath) to have fixed the problem.

However, now it is nowhere to be found.

I used "apt-get autoremove openoffice.org-core" which it did, with no errors reported, and then I did "apt-get install openoffice.org-core" thinking that the KDE didn't like the Gnome setup of OOo.

I can now find OOo in my Home folder, but it is not in any menus, and when I try to edit my menus, there is no place to click on OOo to add it to any menus.

Any ideas? I was considering Kubuntu Gutsy because I am tired of going to webistes and never being able to play multimedia on them, most notably the Fox News website. Plus I have had several instances of files getting lost and then re-appearing (or not) along with some just flaky problems now and then. Migrating to Kubuntu Gutsy seemed like a good way to go, but this install of just a desktop seemed (at the moment) a simpler route.

I also cannot get evolution to use KPilot to sync my pda, it only wants to use Gnomepilot, which worked well most of the time before, but does nothing now.

Help!?!

[learner]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

I forgot, this is on an AMD Athlon 1000, 1G RAM, 80G hdd, unknown video card, because I don't know how to pull that data out of the system.

[dibl]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

Your video card is irrelevant to finding/fixing Open Office, but for future reference the way to determine your card is (in the Konsole)

lspci

That's kind of a sad and not entirely "logical" litany of challenges in your Linux experience -- I guess you're learning a lot of things not to do! :P

It's fine to install the KDE desktop in Ubuntu, and end up having a choice of desktop environments. But really it probably would have been better to install kubuntu-desktop, which is the meta-package for the Kubuntu environment. But I don't know off the top of my head why either one of those would have any adverse impact on Open Office. It sounds like things went badly with OO from the very beginning -- it should never be necessary to install it in *buntu as a download from the OO site -- that doesn't make any sense at all. And it certainly does not belong as an installed application in your home folder -- not sure how that happened, but it's not going to ever work that way!

The "illogical" part of your story is the part where you thought KDE/Kubuntu is going to fix a non-functioning media player (flash?) on your browser. That was some real bad advice that you got there. :P

Are you running the 64-bit architecture? If so, you probably don't have a functioning flash player, which is fixable regardless of whether you have a Gnome or a KDE desktop. Run

uname -a

in the Konsole window, and post the output here, and perhaps we can patch you up.

[Fintan]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

Kubuntu being part of the ubuntu family "likes" things to stick in the family.

Installing kde proper will give you kde but not the "kubuntu" way of getting things like OO working.

Dible is right. Try purging kde completely and installing kubunu-desktop and you should get the

openoffice.org-kde

installed as well.
If not you will find that in adept/synaptic or

sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-kde

from a terminal.

As for flash (media), I don't see the logic either and wahtever advice you got .... ditto dible.

There are plenty of threads on this forum concerning flash

For multimedia sites which ones do you mean?

This may help:
http://www.medibuntu.org/
for codecs, etc.
Install mplayer and vlc for other web-media stuff. all in the repos.

Hope this helps

Edit:

I also cannot get evolution to use KPilot to sync my pda, it only wants to use Gnomepilot, which worked well most of the time before, but does nothing now.

Evolution is a gnome app and doesn't like kde stuff too much.

You can use kontact and depending on your pda it should work just fine.

[learner]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

OK, here goes.
For what it is worth in this, case but thanks for the tip, I have an ATI Radeon 7200 video card, and "uname -a" returns "2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Tue Feb 12 05:41:34 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux" which I was told by the young man who gave me this computer because the PS cooling fan was failing that it was 32-bit architecture.

The problem with OOo was that it would occasionally store a doc with a bad printer definition (or something like that) and the file would then crash OOo every time I opened it. I installed a non-Ubuntu OOo from the website, and it seems to have quit doing that. At least I don't have to open OOo, then insert my files to get them to work, and all new files since then have worked.

When I chose to install the KDE desktop, I did install the meta-package, which I understood would give me all of the KDE bells and whistles, and I did get an openoffice.org-kde. But it was nowhere on any menu that I could find, and nowhere that I could access it on any menu editors.

I then uninstalled using autoremove, (which is where I saw openoffice.org-kde go by) and re-installed openoffice.org-core using apt-get. When it didn't show up on the menus again, a search this time found it in the /home directory.

The media issue is one that I have fought since installing Ubuntu, with varying little degrees of success. Fox news appears to use Windows Media on its site, and I have never been able to access any video there. I followed two extensive tutorials on Ubuntu forums which claimed they would fix all streaming issues, and didn't. None of the problems I had matched any of the errors they asked about and none of the troubleshooting matched up in any way. I can nearly always play video that comes through email, but almost never any streaming video on websites, flash, WM, etc. When I had tried Kubuntu as an early live CD two years ago, I remembered that it worked fairly well, had used in on my hdd for a while, then decided to try Ubuntu. It installed better without errors or fixes, and functioned reasonably well, but never to my expectations (file problem, printer issues in finding the right drivers, and scanner issues until I dumped the scanner I had and bought an HP).

All of this lead me to where I am now.

I have (on Ubuntu desktop) flash, vlc, mplayer, totem installed, with all of the codecs that I have been told needed to be. I also use Firefox, and have installed all of the plug-ins for streaming media that I can find that seem to be relevant, following the threads that I have found on Ubuntu forums. It is streaming media that seems to give the most frustration, and as I said, Fox News is the biggest hurdle that I have had.

Regarding KPilot, is that installed with the meta-package for KDE, or is that a separate download/install?

BTW, I have changed the repos in Adept after installing the KDE meta.

[dibl]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

At the upper right of this page is a black "Install this script" button:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1371

If you have Firefox with Greasemonkey installed, it should be easy enough to install, and will allow you to see the Fox News videos. If you don't have the Greasemonkey plugin, install that first, then the FoxNews Friendly script.

About your OO problems, I don't know -- that's too long and tortured a trail of installs and removals to know for sure what is left. I've installed Kubuntu many times and OO is always available in the standard repo to install, with Adept Manager. It "just works" when installed that way -- it shows up in the KMenu>Office menu. It's hard to tell what all issues may be involved with your system at this point. I would try

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

and then select OO from Adept Manager. If that doesn't work, I'd be pulling out my GParted Live CD to partition the hard drive ..... :P

[MoonRise]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

If he installed from the Web Site, that install should be removed as well. What ever method the OOo web has should also be reversible. Any OOo install that isn't completely removed will likely cause issues. Do you know if you followed the uninstall procedure stated by the OOo web site? I'd look at that and removing other OOo installs before starting over to make sure all traces are removed.

[learner]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

All right, I give up.

I went to the script page, clicked on the black button and it asked me to save as or open with Kate.

I then got intelligent and opened Firefox, ( I have been using Konqueror after the desktop debacle, until I get things figured out) checked that Adept had installed the Greasemonkey plugin, and then went to the script site, clicked the black box, and nothing happened again. The Fox website still play the audio wonderfully, but all I get is a black screen where the video should play (I assume).

Now when I check Adept, which tells me it has installed Greasemonkey, I have to call it a liar, since Firefox, with "aboutlugins" in the url, tells me it does not have Greeasemonkey.

This has been so much fun, I have thought of going back to the frustration of rebooting Windows!

[learner]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

I did, when having all of the fun with OOo before go through using Synaptic and remove everything OOo from the system before installing OOo from their website.

I have not done that this time around since I had a working system to begin with, and haven't thought of going back through and sanitizing it again.

[learner]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

I have since rebooted, checked adept again, and it says it installed Greasemonkey, checked "aboutlugins" in firefox and it says it has not installed Greasemonkey.

"screams of frustration" and words unprintable!

[learner]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

I went to the script page one more time, tried to click on the box, and it asked me if I wanted to install the script, to which I answered yes, and Fox news videos now play perfectly, even though "about-plugins" still tells me greasemonkey is not installed.

Am I going insane, or just missing something really stupid, or should I be locked up somewhere?

[dibl]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

I answered yes, and Fox news videos now play perfectly ...

Heh. Take your little victories and celebrate!

Seriously, I'd back up my data, make an Alternate Install CD (might as well get Hardy Heron Alpha 6) and start afresh. Among other benefits, you'll lose that nasty Gnome stuff .....

[learner]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

I have a Kubuntu Gutsy freshly burned iso with md5sums verified waiting on me to take the plunge.

I am a little gun-shy of fresh releases, since I am obviously a green newbie.

Things that make me hesitant to format and install are things like the large number of emails in Evolution that I would like to have when I get a new system going, other things like that which are in my /home folder now. How do I save those, and know that they are in a usable, importable format when I get a Kubuntu system up and running? I have saved the four critical folders, my docs, sermon files, gnucash folders etc., but how do I save the emails?

A little more help would be a great boon!

HDA is currently partitioned into a 2G Swap, 10G root, and 68G /home

[dibl]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

That's a good partitioning scheme -- should work fine.

I dunno about your Evolution e-mail -- I'd say burn it on a CD if you can figure out how. Maybe it allows for "export" or "archive" or something that will let you capture the files.

I think you really want to re-format both the root partition and the /home partition -- you don't want anything lingering from the present mess. :P

FYI, I think I installed Kubuntu 4 or 5 times before I got it right (the first time). Repetition brings increasing knowledge, I guess. (Especially to hard-heads like me!).

[Fintan]

Re: switched from Gnome to KDE - lost Openoffice

I have to agree, good plan.
Sorry I missed the fun but I was asleep over on my side of the world when all of this was going on.

but how do I save the emails?

You can export the mails and contacts to a folder and then save on a CD/DVD.

You can then import them from Kontact or thunderbird when you have your new and shiny system up and smiling.