Ubuntu 8.04 LTS gets OpenOffice 2.4 -- and I finally get Flash working in the Firefox 3 Beta

I've been wondering if and when OpenOffice 2.3 would give way to version 2.4 in the Ubuntu 8.04 LTS beta. It finally happened with one of my recent updates of the system.

Like I said in my review of the 8.04 beta, I rarely use OpenOffice, preferring a plain ol' text editor or more-fancy "development" editor (Geany, Bluefish, Scite, Mousepad, Nano, even vi) for most writing, using a lighter-weight word processor (AbiWord, Ted) on occasion.

But for "fancy" writing -- i.e. stuff that needs to see print in a certain, specific format (which for me means "smart" or "typographical" quotation marks), OpenOffice is essential. It's one of free, open-source software's killer apps -- and the fact that it runs on Linux, all the major BSD projects, Windows and sorta, kinda on the Mac (depending on whether you run the X11 environment or Mac's normal Aqua interface) only adds to its power.

And since Ubuntu 8.04 LTS has a desktop life of three years (beginning on April 24, 2008), and at that point the package versions will, to some extent, be locked in, I'm glad that the Ubuntu team continues to front-load 8.04 -- nicknamed Hardy Heron -- with the most recent packages. It'll make the prospect of sticking with 8.04 for a year, two or three (remember that Ubuntu issues a new release every six months, and the non-LTS releases receive 18 months of desktop support) becomes more palatable with every new version of an app that Ubuntu offers.

To that end, the Firefox 3 Beta in Ubuntu 8.04 hasn't been performing as well as I'd like. For one thing, whenever I quit Firefox and then try to reload it, a screen pops up telling me that I'm already running FF and should close that process before starting another. I click OK on the box, then start FF again, and all is well, but it's still annoying.

And the bigger issue is Flash. As I said in my review, Ubuntu has tied the implementation of Firefox plugins to Ubuntu's own package management system. That's a good thing. In both Ubuntu and Debian, I've had more success adding plugins like Flash through the browser itself than by installing them through the systems' respective package management utilities (Synaptic, apt or Aptitude).

First I tried the newish, open-source Gnash, which is an attempt to offer Flash compatibility in a package that is not controlled by Adobe. And while Gnash installed fine, it didn't work on any of the Flash-equipped pages on which I tried it. Even YouTube. And if it doesn't work on YouTube, then what the hell is it good for?

So I removed Gnash with Synaptic and installed Flash through the browser. But after that, the browser ran as if Flash was not installed. When I got to a page with Flash, Firefox would offer to install the plugin, but when I clicked the "install plugin" window, Firefox would say it was already installed. Be that as it may, I still didn't have Flash capability in Firefox.

I removed the Flash plugin in Synaptic (I still can't figure out how to do it through Firefox itself) and reinstalled from the browser a few times. It still didn't work.

But today I decided to reinstall the Flash plugin in the Synaptic Package Manager. The package was already on the system, so I didn't even have to download it from the repositories again. It reinstalled, I started Firefox, and I finally have Flash capability.

I still see a little hinkiness in the graphics in the Firefox 3 beta. My test system doesn't have the best graphics chipset, but still, that's a few too many blurry boxes for my taste.

I'll probably install the Epiphany Web browser -- a key component in the GNOME desktop -- to do a comparison. I've grown quite fond of Epiphany through using it in Debian, and those running Ubuntu should know that they have a Mozilla-like counterpart to Iceweasel/Firefox.

Soon I hear that Epiphany will be built upon something called Webkit instead of Mozilla, and at that point Epiphany will diverge from Firefox in a major way, I predict. It could be better, could be worse. Whatever happens, I'll certainly be following it. Browser diversity, such as it is, is a huge deal for me because I -- and I suspect many of you -- spend most of our time in the Web browser. For that reason alone, it's probably the most important application on the desktop. It is for me, at any rate