Star Office 5.2 is an office suite similar to Microsoft Office for

Windows. It consists of Presentation software, Spreadsheets, Word

Processor, HTML editor, Database and can also be used as your e-mail

client! Lets look at the things you can do with StarOffice 5.2 beginning

with the installation procedure. You do need to install the software on

your PC to be able to use it!

Place the StarOffice 5.2 CDROM in the drive, then type

mount /dev/cdrom.

Change to /mnt/cdrom and press enter.

cd /mnt/cdrom/linux/office52

Some distributions like SuSE will mount the CD under /cdrom instead.

Then type ./setup and press enter. By doing this, the setup program

begins. If you have more than one user on the machine, we recommend you

use the workstation installation. To run this installation method, use

"./setup /net". Thereafter, all that each individual user needs to do is,

run the setup program from the program directory of their StarOffice

directory -- without the "/net" bit. Around 2MB of data will be copied

over to your home directory. This allows each user to maintain a unique

set of configuration files.

Follow the instructions step by step and you won't have any problems. The

installation is a good change from the standard rpm based installations that

you so often encounter. Full marks to the StarOffice installation.

Now that you have installed Star Office 5.2 on your PC, let us start with

the programs included. The first thing you will notice about Star Office

5.2 is that it integrates your desktop into its own window, giving your

desktop a different look and feel. It even has the same short-cut keys

like Microsoft Office 97. Having a standard desktop across various

platforms and OS' means that users can easily move from StarOffice on

Linux to StarOffice on Windows and work with the same familiar desktop. On

the other hand most people prefer distinct applications. Right now, if you

want to create a new text document, you have to start StarOffice and then

choose to edit a new Text document. This could have been a single step.

The desktop browser in StarOffice 5.2 even comes with a start menu. When

one clicks on the start button, the start menu appears, which is divided

into two parts. The bottom half has the same options like the GUI start

menu of your Operating System. (Example: Program Files, Documents, and