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I don't see, what a new version of LO (or any application) might have to do with stability and reliability. If the minor releases don't get released at all (which have in case of LO nothing than fixes, usually for stability and reliability (more or less bug fixes), it is the contrary of stability. IMO this is a phrase. I don't say this against you, but against this half-hearded nonsense. (Where LO is only the on topic example.)

Cosmo. wrote:I don't see, what a new version of LO (or any application) might have to do with stability and reliability. If the minor releases don't get released at all (which have in case of LO nothing than fixes, usually for stability and reliability (more or less bug fixes), it is the contrary of stability.

But the LO in the Main repo is very stable.... Both in the days when Ubuntu had Open Office, and now Ubuntu/Mint with Libre Office, this fine office suite has always run stable and reliable on my machines.

So I have no objection at all, to this system of cherry-picking security fixes and backporting them.

Note that backporting security fixes requires more efforts from the Ubuntu developers, than simply pumping the latest minor LO version from upstream, unchanged into the Main repo. They do this effort because of the extra stability that it brings.

There is no extra stability with the repo version. Otherwise i must have seen in those years a minor stability with the builds from the Document Foundation. The extra stability is a red herring.

Cosmo. wrote:There is no extra stability with the repo version. Otherwise i must have seen in those years a minor stability with the builds from the Document Foundation. The extra stability is a red herring.

Maybe there are use cases which you haven't tried, in which this extra stability can be seen.... At the very least, backporting gives theoretically a more stable result. Which is why it's being preferred by enterprises.

You don't hear me complain about enterprise-grade reliability. I don't care one bit about the new features I might be missing. They can stick 'em where the sun doesn't shine.

Cosmo. wrote:LO 5.3.x will most likely never appear in the official repositories. So you have either to add a matching PPA or download the file and install it.

Charlie wrote:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

A very dangerous advice, as it circumvents the safety of the level system of the update manager. Don't be astonished, that at one point your system will give you troubles.

I would not call this method "dangerous", but there is a warning: with the newest versions of LO come also some bugs. My "bleeding edge" LO sometimes crashes. I can live with it, but it's annoying...

Pjotr wrote:Maybe there are use cases which you haven't tried, in which this extra stability can be seen.

There is always a thinkable "maybe". Where are the practical and documented cases? And what about the fixes, which the Document Foundation had applied, but did never make it into the repo version? Bugs for extra stability? A strange case.

BTW: I use LO daily. Do you really believe, that I find - and report - in all places of the OS, but not in the daily used office?

Again: This a red herring without substantiated proof.

xfrank wrote:

Cosmo. wrote:I would not call this method "dangerous", but there is a warning: with the newest versions of LO come also some bugs. My "bleeding edge" LO sometimes crashes. I can live with it, but it's annoying...

It is not dangerous for LO, it is dangerous fr the system, as I already wrote.

Cosmo. wrote:Again: This a red herring without substantiated proof.

Well, it's the "fixed release" principle.... If you don't like it, maybe you'd better switch to a rolling release, then?

No, I don't like a rolling release - as far as it goes about the system.

IMO it is a mistake to take applications into the repos, if they do not fully updated. And examples, where even minor bug fix releases do not arrive there and far too often even security related updates come far to late (examples as usual Firefox & Thunderbird) demonstrate, that this has not the least to do with "extra stability". The opposite is true. Proven here by countless updates from their respective original sources (developers) since many years. Every update I do with this method confirms this method.

Cosmo. wrote:countless updates from their respective original sources (developers) since many years.

Note that such a setup might break expected behaviour.

Many applications share libraries; if those libraries are being updated to newer versions from outside the official repo's, some other applications (and even the system) might not function as before.

That's why I would never recommend that. It's "best practice" to treat your operating system as it was designed to be used: be careful and sparing with your exceptions. In general, you do well to go with the flow....

Off topic: maybe this also has something to do with your Xed not behaving in the expected way?

Pjotr wrote:

Cosmo. wrote:countless updates from their respective original sources (developers) since many years.

Note that such a setup might break expected behaviour.

Nothing broke in all those years.
It does not help to write about things, which "might" break, if actually there is in reality nothing than broken security and stability because of missing or heavily delayed updates in the repos.

Pjotr wrote:Many applications share libraries; if those libraries are being updated to newer versions from outside the official repo's, some other applications (and even the system) might not function as before.

This is not the case. LO creates a link in /usr/bin and some more links in /usr/share/applications. All binaries go to /opt.
Besides that simple facts: If you would be right about possibly exchanged libraries, which can possibly affect other applications or even the system: How do you want to explain the direct contrary, which is described in the help file of the update manager (LM 18.2)? (Rhetorical, as you cannot.) All applications I mentioned here are set as level 1. So what you write is not even to be expected.

Pjotr wrote:Off topic: maybe this also has something to do with your Xed not behaving in the expected way?

Really off topic. As I described in the other tests the test systems are as pure Mint as can be. But to make it even more clear: All here named applications (LO, FF, TB) and also here not named applications and tools and whatever are installed as they come by default and only updated by the update manager. I don't use them in the test system (except if needed to do a test, e. g. the test which showed, that the change case issue does not apply for Writer), so missing or delayed updates for those applications bother me less than a grain of sand at the coast.

FWIW, on my 32-bit Dell with M17.3 Cinnamon I installed LO 5.3.4.2 with the LibreOffice *.deb - it installed and is running perfectly. I did completely uninstall the repository version beforehand and would not try to install over the top of an older version:

http://anglehit.com/how-to-remove-libre ... -line-way/

The Mint 17.3 repository now shows libreoffice core 1:5.3.4-0ubuntu0.14.04.1~lo0

(I'm only testing M18.2 on a thumb drive so would never install or update anything big on that format.)

I need to save the post as a reference.