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.
   .

Now you can start your Openoffice.org 3.0 from Applications menu.

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Upgrade From Repositories

This is the simplest way, you only need to add OpenOffice.org 3.0 repositories, then upgrade the installed packages. And here’s the step:

1. Open your sources.list file
   $ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
   .
2. Add the OpenOffice.org repositories to your sources.list
   deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ubuntu intrepid main
   .
3. Close the editor, and update your package list.
   $ sudo apt-get update
   .
4. Wait untill it finished, and an upgrade notification icon will appear in the system tray. Click on it, and select OpenOffice.org to upgrade.
   Other way, run this command to upgrade:
   $ sudo apt-get upgrade -y

   Your new OpenOffice.org will be up-to-date from now on
   

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