I’ve already made my move in Debian Squeeze from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, and a peek in my unread messages from the Debian mailing lists turned up this official announcement:

Debian moves to LibreOffice

Here is some of the text (a short how-to-install for Squeeze is included in the official newsletter):

The Debian project is proud to announce that the transition from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice has now been completed. LibreOffice has already been available for “testing” and “unstable” since March and has now been backported to Debian 6.0 “Squeeze”, too.

Rene Engelhard, Debian’s LibreOffice maintainer and member of LibreOffice’s Engineering Steering Committee, says: “I am sure Debian and its users will benefit greatly from this transition; I expect not only an improved collaboration but also quicker development cycles.”

If you’re going to subscribe to one Debian mailing list, I recommend Debian News.

There are 60-something updates waiting for me in Debian Squeeze at the moment, and such a large number of packages staring at me from Update Manager usually means a “major” Debian Stable update.

In this case it’s the second update of Debian Squeeze, 6.0.2. Check the link for everything changing in Debian in terms of bugfixes and and security updates.

As always, while new installation media is available for download, any Debian 6.x image will still install a system that can be fully updated via the usual tools (apt, Aptitude, Synaptic/Update Manager).

Whether or not this point release is some kind of milestone (it’s not, I think), it’s a good time as any to assess where I’ve been on the Linux and BSD desktop over the past few years. Am I setting a personal longevity record with Debian Squeeze?

If you don’t count Sarge, and I don’t because I’m running it on my Sun Sparcstation 20 now and not in the deep, dark past when Sarge was the current Stable release, Squeeze is third Debian Stable release I’ve run for significant periods of time.

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It’s been a long time since I did a new Debian Squeeze installation, and I was just reminded about one essential step needed to make a functional desktop.

I’ve been running my Squeeze LXDE system today, and all of a sudden the CPU was pegged at 100 percent during a Firefox/Iceweasel session.

I opened up a terminal and took a look. Five Gnash processes were doing all of the damage.

Normally I’d enthusiastically support something like Gnash, a free alternative to Flash, but not when it brings my system to its virtual knees.

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It's not the least eventful package installation I've ever done in Linux and BSD, but tapping into Debian Backports to install the Document Foundation's new LibreOffice suite and replace the formerly Oracle-controlled, now-in-limbo OpenOffice is fairly easy if you follow the steps, refrain from panic and just type in the letter "y" a few times.

I added the Backports repository to my sources, issued the Aptitude command and then watched as the system removed OpenOffice and replaced it with LibreOffice.

I didn't use the Synaptic Package Manager for this installation. Instead I used Aptitude, which I tend to trust more when things get complicated.

Here are my comments on the installation as well as the terminal session. In the short preamble, commands or text I entered in the system as well as their locations are in italic. Once the terminal output starts, my additions/comments are in bold.

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