LibreOffice 5.2 Released, How to Install it in Ubuntu

The Document Foundation announced the release of LibreOffice 5.2 hours ago, a feature-rich new major release of the open-source office suite.

Berlin, August 3, 2016 – The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 5.2, a feature-rich major release of the best free office suite ever created – targeted to early adopters and power users – with several user interface improvements and enterprise grade features.

At the same time, LibreOffice 5.1.5 has been released, for enterprise class deployments and more conservative office suite users.

LibreOffice 5.2 features:

• a single toolbar mode for Writer and Calc
• most of the context menus can now be customized
• new Calc spreadsheet functions (including forecasting functions)
• support for signature descriptions
• support for OOXML signature import/export
• GTK3 user-interface improvements
• OpenGL rendering improvements
• multi-threaded 3D rendering, faster rendering
• bookmark improvements.
• And more details at release page.

How to install LibreOffice 5.2 in Ubuntu 16.04:

There are a few ways to get LibreOffice 5.2 in Ubuntu:

• Libreoffice in Flatpak format.
• Install LibreOffice Snap
• Download .deb archive (scroll down & find out Linux x64/x86 (deb)) –not recommended.

Choose the way you prefer, but I’d recommend to upgrade the default LibreOffice 5.1.4 to 5.2 using the PPA, which is well integrated with your desktop.

1. Add the PPA

Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

Type in password when it asks and hit Enter. So far supports for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and Ubuntu 16.10

2. Upgrade LibreOffice.

Once the 5.2 release is made into PPA, launch Software Updater and upgrade your system after checking for updates.

Or just run the commands below in terminal to upgrade your whole system:

sudo apt update; sudo apt dist-upgrade

The upgrade process will remove the old libreoffice-gtk package, install the new libreoffice-gtk2 via command:

sudo apt install libreoffice-gtk2 libreoffice-gnome

3. (Optional) Uninstall LibreOffice 5.2

If for some reason you want to downgrade LibreOffice to the stock version available in main Ubuntu repository. Run commands:

sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:libreoffice/ppa