I am currently also running FreeBSD 7 on the Packard Bell EasyNote I was given by a friend. It is very fast and very stable, and the documentation is marvellous.
Using this machine for slide-show projection etc, I needed to get OpenOffice in some form running on it. This proved to be quite challenging, so here are some notes on the process.
The first attempt was a native install - an Open Office compiled on FreeBSD. No dice - finding a binary that would work, spending 12 hours compiling the Java JDK needed .... just too much pain.
But FreeBSD can run Linux binaries - here's how we do it!
First kernel support is needed for the Linux compatibility layer. Is it there? Does "kldstat" generate a line like
2 1 0xc08a3000 196c8 linux.ko
?
Then we're in business. If not then the simplest way is to load the module at boot time by adding
linux_load="YES"
Next step is to obtain your Linux binary from the Open Office site - it will be something like
OOo_2.0.4_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz
so then
mv OOo_2.0.4_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz /usr/compat/linux/usr
cd /usr/compat/linux/usr
tar -xzf OOo_2.0.4_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz
That should create a nice new directory, full of rpms. The current Linux packages for Open Office include the Java stuff needed to run OO.
cd newdirectory
rpm -Uvih —ignoreos —ignorearch —root /usr/compat/linux —nodeps .rpm
I was greeted with an error message first time I tried this.
"failed to open /usr/compat/linux/var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm"*Ok - you want a file? You get a file!
mkdir /usr/compat/linux/var/lib/rpm
touch /usr/compat/linux/var/lib/rpm/packages.rpm
now the rpm command works and installs Open Office!
The almost-final touch:-
cd /usr/compat/linux
ln -s /var/tmp tmp
THE final touch:-
# vim /usr/compat/linux/opt/openoffice.org2.4/program/soffice
export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome
just below the first block of comments (this file is only a shell script :-) This gives a nice gtk interface rather than the nasty MSloth look-a-like effort OO uses by default.