Whether you're an experienced Ubuntu user or a beginner, LibreOffice is an excellent office suite that can significantly enhance your productivity. It provides various useful tools for word processing, presentations, and spreadsheets. This article covers LibreOffice installation on Ubuntu using different methods.
LibreOffice is an open-source and free office productivity suite. It is one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Office on Linux and is compatible with many other major office suites. You can use it to create and edit documents, spreadsheets, drawings, presentations, databases, and more.
Luckily, most Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, come with LibreOffice pre-installed. However, the default LibreOffice is not the most up-to-date version. Follow this guide to get the latest LibreOffice suite on Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu repository doesn't always have the most up-to-date version of LibreOffice. Typically, it lags behind the official LibreOffice releases. So you might miss out on some new features or bug fixes. However, to get the latest stable release of LibreOffice, we recommend downloading it from its official PPA.
To install LibreOffice using Snap, all you have to do is run the sudo snap install libreoffice command. Snaps are versatile software packages that operate on various Linux distros. They come prepackaged with all the required dependencies, so they run smoothly and are isolated from the system.
Installing LibreOffice via the DEB package requires downloading and extracting the package file. A DEB package is a standard format for installing software on Debian-based Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu. It contains the executable files, configuration files, and software metadata required for a program to run.
LibreOffice provides DEB packages that you can get from the official website and install on your Ubuntu system. To download and install the LibreOffice DEB package, visit the LibreOffice download page, select "Linux," and click on the "Download" button.
Next, open the terminal and head over to the directory where you saved the package file. For example, if you have saved the file in the "Downloads" directory, navigate to it using the cd command followed by the directory name:
This command will install LibreOffice and its components on your system. It uses the dpkg tool to install the packages with the -i option. The *.deb part of the command means that you are selecting all the files that end with ".deb" in the current working directory. It will install all the Debian packages present inside the directory.
LibreOffice provides AppImages that you can download from the official website and run on your Ubuntu system. An AppImage is a portable and self-contained software package that can run on any Linux distribution and platform. You don't need to install or extract it and can execute it directly from a single executable file.
If you see the version number in the output, it means that LibreOffice was successfully installed on your PC. If not, it's recommended that you go through the installation steps again, or choose another way to install the app.
And that wraps up the guide on how you can install LibreOffice on Ubuntu. You can start working on your documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more with this powerful and free office suite. To make things even better, you can also explore LibreOffice extensions and templates to enhance your productivity and creativity.
If you have never installed LibreOffice in GNU/Linux or if you are just trying to install LibreOffice to get a job done or to have a working Office Suite, these instructions are probably not for you.
For normal everyday users we strongly advise that you use your distribution's installation processes, especially those with graphical interfaces. Check your distribution's help for how to do this.
The instructions below are for those who need to install LibreOffice packages directly from our site. This happens if the LibreOffice version that comes with your distribution has some configuration options that are undesired, or if you want to run a development or newer version than the one available at the distribution's repositories, or if your distribution has expired and no longer provides up-to-date software versions. If you just want to run a developer version of LibreOffice alongside with your distribution's version, we strongly recommend you to follow the instructions from this page. Our team member Wolfgang Pechlaner has written a script to do this for (open)SuSE which also work with slight changes on Ubuntu. This may also work for other RPM or DEB based distributions, but has only be verified to work on openSuSE and Ubuntu.
No, though we advise users to install these packages in a "clean" environment in case of a problem. It should not be a major problem to have as many versions of LibreOffice as you wish, but there are some reported installation problems and there are theoretical problems with conflicts in these cases. Again, nothing bad should derive from this, but it could be the reason for some unexpected hassle.
These instructions are also presented in the "README" file included with the downloaded archive files (look in the "readmes" directory). That official information is maintained by the LibreOffice Documentation Team, and is stored at the following address.
In most modern GNU/Linux distributions, the desktop is well integrated with the installation process, so it is very likely that if you have a stock Debian or its derivatives (Ubuntu, Aptosid, Mint, etc.), Mandriva (or Mageia), openSUSE, or any other distribution on your system, you could do a full LibreOffice installation without having to type a single line of code.
We have put a lot of work in LibreOffice being able to be installed by anyone. So if you have a stock (out of the box) installation of one of the many GNU/Linux distributions, this section is for you. We are assuming that you have already downloaded the appropriate packages for your system (if not please read the previous section)
(where "" is your downloaded version like "5.1.5.2", "5.2.2.2" or something else. For simplicity's sake, we will use "$version" in the following text. You should remember there to replace it with your downloaded version.) which we affectionately call a "tarball". This is a special type of file that serves as an archive. It is actually a collection of folders and files that are packaged together under one file name (that's what ".tar" signifies), and makes downloading easier. The file is also compressed for quicker downloads; identified by the ".gz" part.
NOTE: The file name you end up with can be quite different from these examples; the ".tar.gz" is the common element though. The changes occur if you are running a 64bit system (then it will have a "x86_64" instead of "X86" in its name) or if you are running an RPM based system (then it would contain an "-rpm" instead of "-deb"). But the instructions work the same, regardless of the variations.
We will try to make as much sense as possible. If any of these instructions won't work for you, we have instructions for a detailed Terminal-Based Install that is guaranteed to work, in the next section.
Attention: Some users have reported problems while trying to select and install multiple packages with the "Package Manager" tool of their distribution (specially Ubuntu). This step might result in the package manager/installer opening multiple windows at once, which can hang your system (e.g. with GDebi). Please try to use Synaptic (if it is already installed. Otherwise you need to install it first.) for this step if you encounter problems, or go directly to the Terminal-Based Install instructions below.
(you could also try "soffice", if this does not works for you). If LibreOffice doesn't start up, see Testing the Installation below. But be aware: if you want to install a language pack for a different GUI language than en_US and want to use this language from the beginning, then you should wait with this test after installing the language pack. Otherwise you need to change the GUI language later to your preferred language.
The following instructions are for advanced users or for users who encountered problems during the Graphical Install. We have tested LibreOffice in a lot of distributions. It can be installed in all of them, so these instructions should work. If they don't work for you, we suggest you to follow these steps:
When you have unpacked the downloaded archive, you will see that the contents have been decompressed into a directory called something like "LibreOffice_$version_Linux_x86-deb" (or -rpm) (with naming differences depending on what you have downloaded).
Enter the following command to have your system incorporate and recognise the installation (you will be prompted to enter your root or user password (depending on a distribution without a root user like *buntu etc) before the command will be executed):
But be aware: if you want to install a language pack for an other language as en_US for your GUI language and want this language from the first start of LibreOffice, you should wait with this test until you have installed the langauge pack.
Note the ppa at Lauchpad is now almost always in sync with upstream, so please use that version whenever possible. Other distributions may have also a repository with newer versions of LO than in your distribution. If this is the case, use your distribution's repository whenever possible.
It should be easy to install LibreOffice in other GNU/Linux distributions not specifically covered in these installation instructions. Besides the .deb and .rpm we make it possible to download source code tarballs from But it may also be possible that your distribution has a repository with newer versions of LibreOffice (especially distributions with "rolling releases"). So it might be easier to add their repository instead of compiling your own LibreOffice version.
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