How would the version of libreoffice in 24.04 be rolled back to a previous version

24.04libreoffice

The version of libreoffice included in 24.04 is based on a version at or above 7.5.0.0. As of that version a bug, or regression, LO bug 154975 (https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154975) was introduced. As a result, LO print requests to large format printers, such as my Canon iX6820 cannot be printed with portrait orientation to standard 8.5×11 paper.

Using a tar ball from documentfoundation.org for a release prior to 7.5.0.0, how would the downgrade be accomplished system wide? The tar ball of version 7.4.7.2, the last prior to the bug, consists of 42 .deb files.

Best Answer

The basic theory works like this:

  1. Use apt to list the LibreOffice that you currently have installed
  2. Use the list to diagram the dependencies among the LibreOffice packages. The LibreOffice package is on top. It depends on a layer of other packages. Chart those layers.
  3. Use apt to remove all of the newer LibreOffice packages.
  4. Use dpkg to install the bottom layer of dependencies, then intermediate layers, and finally the top layer. A shortcut is to use dpkg to install ALL packages in a directory (dpkg -i *) and let dpkg figure out the order, but that method has risks.

Reading your output is critical.
You may encounter dependency errors that you must solve.

Related Question