OnlyOffice is an open source office suite compatible with both open and proprietary documents formats. The suite includes applications to create and edit text documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The “community” version of OnlyOffice is cost-free and can be installed both as a service, or in the form of classic desktop editors.
In this article we see how to install the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors suite on the major Linux distributions.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to add the OnlyOffice repository to Debian and Fedora based distributions
- How to install OnlyOffice Desktop Editors as a flatpak package
- How to install OnlyOffice Desktop Editors as a snap package
- How to use the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors AppImage
| Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
|---|---|
| System | Distribution independent |
| Software | flatpak/snap |
| Other | Administrative privileges to install software system-wide |
| Conventions | # – requires given linux-commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ – requires given linux-commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Introduction
There are substantially two ways we can install the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors on our workstations: by using self-contained, cross-distributions packages or by adding the OnlyOffice repository to the software sources of our favorite Linux distribution. In this tutorial we explore both options. Let’s start with the latter.
Installing OnlyOffice from official repositories
OnlyOffice repositories are available for both Debian and Fedora based systems. By using them we can install and keep the OnlyOffice suite up to date with our favorite package manager.
Adding the OnlyOffice repository on Debian and Debian-based distributions
In case we run Debian or a Debian-based distribution such as Ubuntu, the first thing we need to do is to download and add the gpg key used to sign the packages in the OnlyOffice repository, and add it to the keyring used by the package manager. We can retrieve the key from a keyserver, but we don’t want to add it to our personal keyring. Instead, we store it to a file, than we move it into the appropriate directory and change its ownership to the “root” user and group:
$ gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring gnupg-ring:/tmp/onlyoffice.gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys CB2DE8E5 $ sudo mv /tmp/onlyoffice.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d $ sudo chown root:root /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/onlyoffice.gpg
At this point we can add the repository to our software sources. What we want to do, is to write the repository information inside a dedicate file we create into the
/etc/apt/sources.list.d directory. We can do it by using the following command:
$ echo 'deb https://download.onlyoffice.com/repo/debian squeeze main' | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/onlyoffice.list
We can now synchronize our package manager with the new repository and install the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors:
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install onlyoffice-desktopeditors
Adding the OnlyOffice repository to Fedora and Fedora-based distributions
To install and configure the OnlyOffice repository on Fedora or one of its derivatives, all we have to do is to install the package which will automatically install the file containing the OnlyOffice repository information and the corresponding gpg key on our system. We run:
$ sudo dnf install https://download.onlyoffice.com/repo/centos/main/noarch/onlyoffice-repo.noarch.rpm
If we are using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or one of its clones (e.g Rocky Linux or CentOS), before we can install the OnlyOffice suite, we also need to enable the EPEL repository (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) which contains some dependencies. If we are using Rocky Linux or CentOS, to use EPEL as a software source, we just need to install the epel-release package, which is included in the repositories of those distributions:
$ sudo dnf install epel-release
If using Red Hat Enterprise Linux itself, instead, we must install the package from the appropriate URL, depending on our system version. Supposing we are working on the latest version of RHEL (9), we would run:
$ sudo dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm
Finally, we can install the OnlyOffice suite:
$ sudo dnf install onlyoffice-desktopeditors
Before the package is actually installed we will prompted to confirm we want to add the repository gpg key to our system. We answer ‘Y’ to proceed with the installation:
Importing GPG key 0xCB2DE8E5: Userid : "Ascensio System Limited (ONLYOFFICE) <support@onlyoffice.com>" Fingerprint: E09C A29F 6E17 8040 EF22 B409 8320 CA65 CB2D E8E5 From : /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-ONLYOFFICE Is this ok [y/N]: y
Installing OnlyOffice Desktop Editors via cross-distributions methods
If we want to use cross-distributions, self-contained methods to install the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors, we can use Flatpak or Snap packages. The OnlyOffice suite is also distributed in the AppImage format. Let’s explore those installation methods, which are used to distribute applications together with their dependencies.
Installing OnlyOffice with flatpak
In order to install OnlyOffice with flatpak, we must ensure the flatpak utility is installed on our distribution. If we are running on Fedora, we can issue the following command:
$ sudo dnf install flatpak
On Debian or Debian derivatives, instead:
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install flatpak
Once “flatpak” is installed, we must add the “flathub” remote and finally install the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors flatpak package. We perform these tasks both graphically or from the command line.
Installing the OnlyOffice flatpak package using GNOME-software
If we are using the GNOME-software graphical application, we can add the flathub remote by downloading and double-clicking on the flathub repository file (on Fedora flathub should be available by default). We will be asked to confirm we want to enable the repository:
We just click on the “install” button and provide our password. Once the flathub remote has been added, we should be able to search for applications hosted on it, directly from GNOME software. If the application doesn’t return any result when we search for “OnlyOffice”, we may need to logout and login again, or terminate the application with:
$ killall gnome-software
The killall utility sends a SIGTERM signal to all the processes running the command passed as argument. The next time we launch GNOME software, we should be able to find and install OnlyOffice Desktop Editors:
Installing the OnlyOffice flatpak from the command line
If we prefer to avoid using graphical interfaces, we can install the OnlyOffice flatpack package directly from our beloved cli. By using this method we have the choice to perform the operations only for our user, without having to escalate privileges. In the following example, we add the “flathub” remote exactly this way:
$ flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
You can see we didn’t use sudo to prefix the command, because by using the --user option, we are adding the remote only for the user we are running the command as. In case we want to perform a system-wide installation we have to prefix the command with sudo and omit --user the option. The same thing is valid for the command used to actually installed the package:
$ flatpak --user install flathub org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors
After launching the command we will be prompted to confirm we want to install the application and the associated runtimes:
org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors permissions:
ipc network pulseaudio wayland x11
devices file access [1] dbus access [2]
[1] /tmp, host, xdg-config/gtk-3.0, xdg-run/gvfs, xdg-run/gvfsd
[2] org.gtk.vfs.*
ID Branch Op Remote Download
1. org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors stable i flathub < 276.9 MB
Proceed with these changes to the user installation? [Y/n]: Y
The installation could take some time, depending on the speed of your connection. After it is completed, we may have to logout and login again in order to see the application launcher in the applications menu. As an alternative, we can launch it by running:
$ flatpak run org.onlyoffice.desktopeditors
Installing OnlyOffice as a snap package
OnlyOffice can also be installed as a snap package. If we are using Ubuntu as a daily driver, we should have the snap package manager already installed on our system. If, for some reason, it’s not the case, we can install it by running:
$ sudo apt install snapd
To install the same package on Fedora, we need to run:
$ sudo dnf install snapd
To install the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors snap package we run:
$ sudo snap install onlyoffice-desktopeditors
Once the installation is complete, you may need to perform a new login to see the application launcher in the menu.
Using the OnlyOffice AppImage
Another possible way to use the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors is by downloading the dedicated AppImage. I say “use” instead of “install” on purpose. AppImages are not actually installed, they are portable, and they are just launched as any other executable file. All we need to do is to download the Only Office AppImage (7.2.1 is the latest one available at the moment of writing):
$ curl -L -O https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/appimage-desktopeditors/releases/download/v7.2.1/DesktopEditors-x86_64.AppImage
Once the image is downloaded, we make it executable, and than we simply launch it:
$ chmod +x ./DesktopEditors-x86_64.AppImage $ ./DesktopEditors-x86_64.AppImage
Conclusions
In this tutorial we learned how to install the OnlyOffice Desktop Editors office suite on the major Linux distributions. We learned to perform the installation using cross-distribution methods and how to add the OnlyOffice repository to the software sources of Debian and Fedora based distributions, in order to perform the installation of native packages.