OpenOffice.org 3.0 for PPC Macs
So far, OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac has been limited to Intel machines only. However, plenty of Mac users are still running PPC machines and would like to use the latest OOo on their computers as well.
Fortunately, Nakata Maho has been working on builds for PPC Macs, and with a little help from other developers, has overcome several issues in delivering a PPC version of OpenOffice 3.0.
Current versions available for download are developer builds, so you may encounter lots of bugs. And new versions may be released superseding those linked here. Try this page and look for the latest directory to see if newer builds are available. (As of this writing, the most recent is “Dev_DEV300_m36“).
December 7th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Because of lack of OOo 3.0 PPC English version, I’ve been using Spanish one. There are some other versions too, but Spanish is closest to my language knowledge after English.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:43 am
hi all, I’ve for about 2 months now I’ve using the 3.1.0rc2_20090424 version available for download at http://ooopackages.good-day.net/pub/OpenOffice.org/MacOSX/ as referenced in the original post with my G5 1.8ghz iMac with 1 gig of RAM, 10.5.7, and it hasn’t crapped out on me at all. I use it primarily for document creation and a little bit of amateur graphics editing (I’m a big fan of custom icons and don’t know GIMP or that evil Adobe product so I use the OOo drawing app to combine my elements, screen grab/copy via default Leopard keyboard shortcut to clipboard, tidy up in Preview, and save it as PNG and VIOLA custom icon).
IN FACT, oh gosh this isn’t going to be a very good thing to say but I’m being honest. I have OOo 3.1 installed on my Intel Macbook, 2.0Ghz duo core, 1 gig RAM, 10.5.7 and it runs TERRIBLE in comparison to the PPC version I reference above. Even if its the only app running, it takes about twice as long to launch, the bouncing beach ball always appears, working with graphic images is somewhat problematic as moving them around by dragging them causes tracers to be left behind and movement is delayed so precise placement is difficult. Its as if the computer is out of memory, but its not, or that the processor is maxed, which it’s not (I’ve had activity window watching CPU usage when testing).
Anyway, my point is – if you’re hesitant to work with just a release candidate for fear of buggy-ness, if you’re primarily doing document creating you should have no problems and should give this a try.
Thanks for all your hard work Nakata!