Re: can't get LibreOffice to run on XP Pro SP3

Paul <[email protected]> wrote:

> James Wobanwu wrote:
>
>> I have an old Toshiba Pentium II with XP Pro SP3 and I am trying to get 
>> LibreOffice to run on it.  ...
> 
> Worth a try, if it's an SSE2 problem.

Can't be an SSEv2 problem.  SSEv1 wasn't available until Pentium 3.  The
OP said he has Pentium 2.

No SSE in Pentium 2 which launched in 1997.
SSEv1 introduced to Pentium 3 which launched in 1999.
SSEv2 introduced to Pentuim 4 which launched in 2000.

The OP has a Pentium 2.  No SSE for Pentium 2.  In trying to find if LO
had/has an SSE requirement, I found:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/LOWN/5#LibreOffice_4.3_is_not_usable_on_.3C_SSE2_CPU
 
and

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82430
  LO 4.3.0 for Windows crashes on CPUs that do not support SSE2: 
  Application Error soffice.bin, version 4.3.0.4, module sal3.dll, 
  version 4.3.0.4, address 0x000268d5.

That spurred me to go to their Bugzilla ticket site, and did a search on
"SSE2", which only gave me the above ticket.  A search on "SSE" (with
and without double quotes) yielded over 500 hits.  Bugzilla's search
sucks.  No word search (i.e., no whitepaced string search, no word
search, no /b for word boundary search, no selection of search range,
like just in Subject and NOT in body).

Once LO started using Microsoft's Visual Studio, SSE became required.
From:

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/BuildingOnWindows#Install_Visual_Studio

Visual Studio was used starting in LO v4.4 which confirms the above
articles.  LO also does not include the C++ runtimes in its installs, so
the OP will have to install Visual C++ 2015 runtime lib.

The OP only considered the system requirements for LO regarding
supported operating systems.  He didn't check the hardware requirements.
His old Pentium 2 laptop won't run a *LOT* of programs because SSEv1
became a requirement by many, and that dictates having a Pentium 3 at a
minimum, and many jumped quickly when SSEv2 showed up a year later, and
that dictates having a Pentium 4 at a minimum.  The OP's old Pentium 2
doesn't have the instruction set required by a lot of software that came
out after 2000.  LibreOffice didn't fork from OpenOffice until 2010, so
it is highly likely that LO always had the SSE hardware requirement on
the Windows platform.