How To Install The Softmaker Office 2019 Trial On Linux
If you’re sick of Libre Office and in the market for something new, consider checking out SoftMaker Office 2018. It’s a premium office suite for Linux that has some compelling features. Want to know more about it? Check it out on our list of the best Libre Office alternatives for Linux.
Note: SoftMaker Office 2018 isn’t free like most software available on the Linux platform. If you’d like to use it, when it’s installed, activate the 30-day trial. Otherwise, purchase a license to use it permanently.
Ubuntu/Debian Instructions
If you want to try out the latest version of SoftMaker on Ubuntu or Debian, start out by downloading the latest package file. Officially, SoftMaker supports 32-bit and 64-bit.
Once downloaded, open up a terminal and use CD to tell the terminal to change it’s working directory to ~/Downloads. Then, using the DPKG tool install the SoftMaker Office DEB file.
sudo dpkg -i softmaker-office-2018_924-01_i386.deb
or
sudo dpkg -i softmaker-office-2018_924-01_amd64.deb
Installing this package should be enough, but just to be safe, run the correct dependencies command. This will take care of any issues that may have occurred during the installation.
sudo apt install -f
Arch Linux Instructions.
Even though SoftMaker Office doesn’t officially support Arch Linux, that doesn’t mean Arch users don’t have access to it. Thanks to the AUR, there’s a PKGBUILD ready to go. To get it, open up the terminal and use git to clone the latest build instruction file.
Note: interacting with the AUR requires the git package. Install it with:sudo pacman -S git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/softmaker-office-2018-bin.git
After cloning the necessary files from the AUR git repository, use the CD command to move the terminal’s working directory to “softmaker-office-2018-bin”.
cd softmaker-office-2018-bin
Fedora Instructions
The SoftMaker Office suite is can be installed on Fedora (and other Redhat based Linux distributions) via a downloadable RPM package file. Grab the file for either 32-bit or 64-bit systems. Then, when you’ve got the package on your Fedora Linux PC, open up a terminal window and use CD to move it to the ~/Downloads folder. This is important, as the DNF tool needs to see the package to install it.
cd ~/Downloads
Inside the Downloads directory, use the wget tool to grab the SoftMaker official GPG key.
wget https://shop.softmaker.com/repo/linux-repo-public.key
After downloading the key, import it into the system so that DNF knows that the RPM you’re about to install is trustworthy.
sudo rpm --import linux-repo-public.key
With the key installed and active, use the DNF tool to install the package to Fedora:
sudo dnf install softmaker-office-2018-*.i386.rpm -y
or
sudo dnf install softmaker-office-2018-*.x86_64.rpm -y
OpenSUSE Instructions
As OpenSUSE uses RPMs for all of its binary package needs, getting the latest version of SoftMaker Office just requires downloading the latest RPM. Download the latest 32-bit or 64-bit package to your SUSE Linux PC. When done, open the terminal and use CD to move the terminal’s working directory from /home/ to ~/Downloads.
cd ~/Downloads
using wget, grab SoftMaker’s GPG key and import it into SUSE.
wget https://shop.softmaker.com/repo/linux-repo-public.key
sudo rpm --import linux-repo-public.key
With the GPG key imported, SoftMaker Office is safe to install:
sudo zypper install softmaker-office-2018-*.i386.rpm
or
sudo zypper install softmaker-office-2018-*.x86_64.rpm
Generic Linux Instructions
SoftMaker doesn’t create Linux packages for each and every Linux distribution out there. This means if you’re not using Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora/SUSE (or another RPM distro) there won’t be an easy installer package on the website to download. That said, the folks over at SoftMaker have a generic Linux installer, and it should work on most, if not all mainstream Linuxes out there.
Installing it is only a little more involved than the methods shown above, and it starts by downloading the latest SoftMaker Office tar.gz archive. Like the traditional binary installers, there is a 32-bit and 64-bit version available.
Open a terminal window, and use it to unpack the installer tar.gz archive file.
tar -xvzf softmaker-office-2018-924-i386.tgz
or
tar -xvzf softmaker-office-2018-924-amd64.tgz
Note: if the above command(s) doesn’t work for you, extract the files with the file manager instead.
Using CD, enter the extracted archive folder.
cd ~/Downloads/softmaker-office-2018-924-i386
or
cd ~/Downloads/softmaker-office-2018-924-amd64
Even though there are no packages to install, SoftMaker office manages to still make the installation process under Linux pretty painless. To install SoftMaker Office for all users, run the installation script with root privileges.
sudo sh installsmoffice
Otherwise, install it for a single user with:
sh installsmoffice
The script takes a bit of time, but after a while SoftMaker Office 2018 will be installed on your Linux PC. If you’ve decided you don’t like the software after the free trial is up, it is possible to uninstall it at any time by running the uninstall script:
sh /home/username/uninstall_smoffice2018
If you’ve installed SM Office as root, you need to run this script as root instead.
sudo -s sh /home/username/uninstall_smoffice2018
