The version of OpenOffice.org 2 in Etch (and similar Debian derived distros) is broken. There is a fault in the way it talks to libfreetype which results in all the fonts being VERY UGLY. It has been fixed in OO.o 2.1 but that version is not yet in sid or Etch.

See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=378619 and duplicates.

There are a few hacks but tinkering with a standard library is something I try to avoid doing.