I hope Gia and some of the others can chime in here. As I recall, they had some positive comments on the whole process.
My install was rather uneventful, sorry yours went south Wayne. I think the funny part comes when you try to run it. It is not a simple double click. You may have to boot X-11 first and then start OO from a command line. I had it running for a couple months and loved the fact that it did everything that MS Office did and then some (the built in bibliography catalog is fabulous), but couldn't live with the aforementioned pasting problem. I used it off and on till my iBook died, it didn't make it to the new machine... yet. If I had a magic wand, I'd aim it at the aqua port of OO.
But as far as toasting the computer, that must be one of Octane's issues, it won't happen.
Again, I hope some of the OO users will chime in.
PS: on PC with Linux (mandrake at least) it is standard issue and works very well, no pasting problems since everything is running on the same level.