OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Ubuntu 8.10 has been released on october, 30th 2008. Too bad, its bundled with Openoffice.org 2.4, not Openoffice.org 3.0!.

Explanation from Ubuntu developer why they exlude OpenOffice.org 3.0 from Ubuntu 8.10 can be found here:
http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3447

You can install Openoffice.org 3.0.0 in 2 ways. Do clean install by installing it from source, or upgrade your current installation by updating your package.

Install Openoffice from source

Here’s step by step to install Openoffice.org 3.0 from source.

1. Download OOO 3.0 source from Openoffice.org
   http://download.openoffice.org/index.html
   .
   for IIX User:
   ftp://kambing.ui.ac.id/openoffice/stable/
   .
2. Extract downloaded files, and go to created directory.
   $ tar zxvf OOo_3.0.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US_deb.tar.gz
   $ cd OOO300_m9_native_packed-1_en-US.9358
   .
3. Make sure you have remove older Openoffice.org installation.
   $ sudo apt-get remove openoffice.org-core
   .
4. Go to “DEBS” directory, and install all files.
   $ cd DEBS
   $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb
   .
5. To make your Openoffice.org 3.0 shown in application menus, go to directory “desktop-integration” (DEBS/desktop-integration/), then install the files.
   $ cd desktop-integration
   $ sudo dpkg -i *.deb
   .
6. In some case, you’ll get error messages, saying that there’s conflict with other Openoffice package when installing openoffice.org3.0-debian-menus_3.0-9354_all.deb
   To resolve this, go to synaptic package manager, and remove all Openoffice.org installation from here. And restart from step 4.
   .