Go-oo: A Lighter, Faster OpenOffice, With Extras

by Sam Dean - Nov. 10, 2008Comments (17)

One of the main complaints about the open source OpenOffice.org suite of productivity applications is that the applications are slow compared to the sleeker standalone alternatives, and even slower than the comparable Microsoft Office apps. If you've run into this problem, and if you use OpenOffice but occasionally run into compatibility problems in sharing files with the Microsoft Office applications, try Go-oo.

Go-oo is a fork of OpenOffice version 2.4, for Windows and Linux. It doesn't include some of the features found in OpenOffice 3.0 but it is much faster, and includes some compatibility features that can be handy to have around even if you primarily use the OpenOffice suite. You do have to have OpenOffice uninstalled to install Go-oo, but it's a small quibble, and there are several ways to run both, which makes a lot of sense.

Go-oo has built-in OpenXML filters and is designed to import Microsoft Works files flawlessly. I've imported graphics, spreadsheets and even complex macros from Excel into the Go-oo Calc application without any problems. The Calc spreadsheet in Go-oo is better at running macros written in Excel than OpenOffice's version of Calc is. The standard applications you get in Go-oo are the same as the ones in OpenOffice: Base, Calc, Draw, Impress, Math and Writer.

Users of OpenOffice on Linux may especially appreciate some of the extras in Go-oo, including added multimedia features, and enabled native file-selectors. Users looking for more Excel-like features in the Calc spreadsheet may also appreciate the Solver features (see the screen below, where Solver is doing a spreadsheet optimization), and support for VBA macros. Also, Go-oo does an excellent job of working with graphics created in Microsoft's Visio.

When you get right down to it, though, Go-oo's main attraction comes from its snappier performance. It's lighter in footprint than OpenOffice, and the applications launch much faster than the OpenOffice parallel applications. It's good to have on hand, and the download and installation are doable in under five minutes.Sometimes two heads are better than one. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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17 Comments
 

Your readers need to be aware that the go-oo fork of OpenOffice.org is very much a bleeding edge developers' version, which has not been through the full QA process run by the OpenOffice.org folks. It's also paid for indirectly by Microsoft licence fees, through Microsoft's funding of Novell (the home of go-oo).


BTW, OpenOffice.org 3.0 also has a solver.


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But have they added live word count to Writer? Seriously...that's the only new feature I want in OpenOffice...why is that so hard to get natively?!? (please don't direct me to that floating-window python script...)


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Maybe I'm off-base, but it looks to me like MS-infected OOo. It's coming from Novell (which I refuse to use), and is paid for by MS-license fees.


Sure, I'm paranoid, but I'm not touching this....


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Also, the file dialogs in OpenOffice.org on Linux have offered native platform versions for at least a couple of years now. This is not specific to Go-OO. And version 3 of OpenOffice.org is blindingly fast on my Linux system. So... what is it that is so much better about Go-OO from OpenOffice.org? Built-in Office Open XML filters? Really?


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The current version on the go-oo.org website is 3.0. So I'm not sure how accurate the fork of 2.4 or missing features compared to oo.org quotes are.


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Who would want to use this Microsoft infested crap? I have nothing against Novell but they really pooped in their own backyard when they sided with Microsoft. Dont they realize nobody wants to infest open source with patent covenants and such obvious traps?


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Open Office is plenty fast enough for me and millions of others.


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Guacala!!! Anything Microsoft/Novell is the best vomitive I have come to know. So, why should I bother with a product that's aimed at OpenOffice.org? In fact, over the last two years I have been replacing more than two hundred copies of Mugre$oft Office (most of them pirated ones) from customers', friends' and coleagues' machines, with OpenOffice.org.


Very few of them got back to M$ Office, but the rest are glad to work with a product that they can call their own, and restricts them from nothing, even redistribute it as much as they please.


Do not post this kind of M$ ads if you please.


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"Dont they realize nobody wants to infest open source with patent covenants and such obvious traps?"


You're right. But maybe we are seeing the last threats from the super monopoly, as patents as we know them seem to be in risk of extintion, thanks to the Bilski ruling (see i.e. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20081109185020183 for more info)


Regards.


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it seems many of the anti-Novell commenters above fail to realize that just about every linux distro out there ships the Go-OO version of OpenOffice and not the vanilla version.


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As someone else pointed out above, Go-OO or the ooo-Build version is the version of Open Office included in nearly ever major Linux distro. It's also available in a 3.0 edition.


Go-OO generally has a lot of patches and features that haven't yet made it into the downstream version or regular openoffice.org version but probably will eventually. A lot of the new features like Solver that appear in OpenOffice 3 initially appeared in Go-OO 2.x. And Go-OO isn't a fork.


And Novell isn't some evil outpost of Microsoft but you probably don't want to hear that. Hey, just carry on ignorantly using the cool stuff Novell supported programmers have developed while slagging them off.


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Well, it seem my copy of Etch does not --thankfully-- carry go-oo.


Besides, there's a whole lotta cool stuff not comming from Novell, so why use it?


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Your copy of Etch uses ooo-build aka Go-OO. Get over it. If you use Gentoo, Debian, or Ubuntu or any derivatives you are using ooo-build. And if you are using regular OpenOffice or some other platform you will eventually be lucky enough to use a lot of the code that started off in ooo-build.


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Your copy of Etch uses ooo-build aka Go-OO. Get over it. If you use Gentoo, Debian, or Ubuntu or any derivatives you are using ooo-build. And if you are using regular OpenOffice or some other platform you will eventually be lucky enough to use a lot of the code that started off in ooo-build.


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OO was slower sometime back, however I have seen the improvements over the years. I don't think there is much need to fork-out. I always ask the question from people who are reluctant to use OO, what they really miss from MS office in terms of productivity. So far I have not got a real justification.


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I've used OpenOffice for 3 years now and it's fast enough for me.


The only reason I'll go for Go-OO is if it can give me tabbed features. Opening 5 docs at one time is a nightmare for a 15 inch laptop.


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GoOO is not a fork. It uses the current build of OO.org and using patches -not yet- in the OO.org build, builds from that a current GoOO build.


It Would be a fork if it was split off and never looked back where it derrived from, but would only from ther efollow it's own development path.


The OOXML stuff is a OO plugin, which can also be downloaded and used with the current OO.org.


@The whiners about MS stuff and patents (most probably all the same person posting above here), get a live.. all these patches are also put in the OO.org build. As the GoOO site explains, adoption of patches, if not provided by SUN itselfs, is quite slow. This is why the GoOO build exists, so you can use the lastest an greatest available for OO and exact the reason why most distro's use it! Once the acceptance of patches get more streamlined by SUN, GoOO will end as it's not needed anymore.


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