Editing cells in LibreOffice calc is laggy

[marmarek]

How to file a helpful issue

Qubes OS release

R4.1

Brief summary

Editing spreadsheet cell directly in the cell has noticeable lag between keypress and showing the effect. Edit field above the spreadsheet doesn't have this problem.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open LibreOffice Calc
2. Create new spreadsheet
3. Click any cell
4. Enter some characters

Expected behavior

They appear immediately.

Actual behavior

They appear with noticeable (but small) delay. Editing cell by clicking on it and then clicking on the edit field at the top doesn't have this issue.

The issue happens at least in Fedora 37 (libreoffice-7.4.6.2-2.fc37.x86_64) and Ubuntu 22.04 (libreoffice 1:7.3.7-0ubuntu0.22.04.3) templates. I have not verified how it behave outside of Qubes (might be a good first step in diagnosis).

[1cho1ce]

Seems like the same problem as discussed here: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/100-cpu-with-every-scroll-in-libreoffice/8027 With a fix from Rudd-O:

Here is the real fix. Put this in /etc/profile.d/libreoffice_kf5.sh in your template qube:

export SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=kf5

Then install the following package in your template qube:

dnf install -y libreoffice-kf5

Stop your template qube and your application qube. Start your application qube and open up LibreOffice. It should run almost as fast as it used to.

[marmarek]

Thanks for linking this. It seems to help indeed. But I hate to install 200MB of extra packages just to fix a regression in a single application...

[DemiMarie]

If Qubes defaulted to KDE apps instead of XFCE apps, would the bloat go away @marmarek?

[marmarek]

Maybe? But that would be even more inconsistent than it is now

[Nurmagoz]

Based on Whonix's past experience (and I believe it still holds true), XFCE has consistently exhibited lower resource usage compared to KDE (if that is what matters in this context):

https://forums.whonix.org/t/whonix-xfce-development/6213/9

https://forums.whonix.org/t/user-poll-xfce-vs-kde-kde-deprecation-considered/6235/9

But I have observed this behavior with multiple software applications, not just LibreOffice. At the time, I attributed it to my older PC not being equipped with high-end technology.

[DemiMarie]

I’m pretty sure this is a combination of an upstream LibreOffice bug and a Cairo bug. In the meantime, we could conflict with the libreoffice-gtk3 and libreoffice-gtk4 packages, causing LibreOffice to fall back to the gen plugin (ugly) or the kf5 plugin.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue is being closed because:

• This issue is believed to affect only Qubes OS 4.1 (and possibly earlier).
• Qubes OS 4.1 has reached end-of-life (EOL).

If anyone believes that this issue should be reopened, please leave a comment saying so. (For example, if a bug still affects Qubes OS 4.2, then the comment "Affects 4.2" will suffice.)

[top-cmyk]

Affects 4.2

[top-cmyk]

Discussions elsewhere indicate this may be an upstream bug in LibreOffice

[DemiMarie]

Is this Windows outside of Qubes?

[besendorf]

Using kf5 solved this for me. Until this is fixed I would think it makes sense to include it by default. That would make the experience for new Qubes Users way better.

[DemiMarie]

For me kf6 and gtk3 are not laggy, but gtk4 crashes.