Libreoffice causes Mate main menu to freeze. Openbox slows down too.

greenjeans · 2017-04-17 22:20:43

So maybe this belongs in the how-to section because I have a temp fix for ya.

This has been going on for quite a while, and likely not to be fixed since it's been a couple years now and not everybody has this issue with other DE's.

This is not a Devuan issue as this occurs on multiple distros at least with the Mate desktop, and doesn't seem to be a Mate issue either, this is Libreoffice's deal.

What happens is, when you first boot up and click your menu to open it and begin to scroll across your categories, the menu grinds to a halt as you pass over any category with a Libreoffice entry, and freezes up completely when you scroll across the office section with all it's Libre icons.

Maybe with a more powerful machine it's not so bad, but I use a common laptop with a simple dual core amd APU and 4 gigs of ram.

Libre is apparently scrolling through it's massive SVG icons looking for the right one and holding you up while it's doing it, if you open up the gui menu editor for Mate (Mozo) and click on a Libre entry and select "properties", it will try to say you are already using one of the hicolor 48x48 png's, but that's not true.

It's still using or trying to use the SVG's. And you changing icons to ones of your choice will not help, period. Trust me i've tried every way I can think of.

Only fix is to delete the SVG's out of the icon packs completely. They are in both hicolor and Gnome icon sets in the scalable section under "apps" and "mimetypes". (/usr/share/icons/)

Once you do this the problem disappears completely.

Once you delete them, the Libre menu entries no longer have any icon in front of them in the menu. But when you fire up the menu editor and check properties of the entries, it still tries to tell you that it's using the hicolor 48x48 png's, and reselecting them still leaves you with blank space in front of the icons.

So I switched them one by one to the gnome icon set, 48x48 apps, and now they work fine, and menu loads fast and doesn't freeze up anymore. This ONLY works if you delete the SVG's first.

This is the only solution to this i've found in months of trying and searching for other people's fixes.

If someone else has a better solution or insight into the issue i'd love to hear it. Before somebody mentions it, updating or deleting the icon cache hasn't had any effect so far on any of the process.

Last edited by greenjeans (2017-05-26 18:32:53)

greenjeans · 2017-05-26 18:38:49

Updating this as I have now tried and tested a fair bit in openbox, and can confirm the slowdown there too, though it's not as bad as the complete freeze-ups in mate. Whereas normally my openbox menu opens immediately, there's now a 2-3 second delay.

Deleting the scalable (SVG) icons completely fixes the problem again.

Small SVG's like Devuan uses are not a problem, it's the sometimes 1-2 mb ones in Libre that become a problem.

Handbrake is still the king though, with it's mighty 3.4 mb SVG icon, they get their icon replaced with the monkeyface-icon-of-shame for that.

sgage · 2017-05-26 22:27:56

On my rig (old dual-core Pentium/4 GB RAM) in jessie MATE there was a few seconds delay in rendering the icons in the 'Office' submenu, but no freezing per se. In ascii, there seems to be no delay or problem at all.

Somewhat Reticent · 2017-05-29 01:33:41

One nice thing about using lower-spec systems is the revelation of poor practices.

greenjeans · 2017-05-30 18:32:49

Somewhat Reticent wrote:

One nice thing about using lower-spec systems is the revelation of poor practices.

^This +100

Exactly why I do any development stuff on the lowest spec machine I have, it finds all the hidden flaws. And if you can make something run good on a real entry-level machine, it'll work great on better spec stuff.

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#1 2017-04-17 22:20:43

Libreoffice causes Mate main menu to freeze. Openbox slows down too.

#2 2017-05-26 18:38:49

Re: Libreoffice causes Mate main menu to freeze. Openbox slows down too.

#3 2017-05-26 22:27:56

Re: Libreoffice causes Mate main menu to freeze. Openbox slows down too.

#4 2017-05-29 01:33:41

Re: Libreoffice causes Mate main menu to freeze. Openbox slows down too.

#5 2017-05-30 18:32:49

Re: Libreoffice causes Mate main menu to freeze. Openbox slows down too.

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