Gedit blinks after installing LibreOffice

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi everyone,

I have been facing an issue in Ubuntu Mate for quite some time that I cannot really understand how to fix. Before I describe it, keep in mind that I have only experienced this issue on PCs using NVIDIA GPUs (both GeForce GTX, GeForce RTX, and relatively modern Quadro), and installing Ubuntu Mate and also Ubuntu Server + Mate. I cannot reproduce the problem on my personal laptop (an XPS13 with integrated Intel GPU).

Here is the problem. I use Gedit almost daily for coding, and for a while I have experience "blinks" that start to appear for some reason and never go away. You can see what I mean in the following video that I recorded moments ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWAtQaI1nE

My solution has always been the same: clean the current installation of Ubuntu Mate and reinstall everything from scratch. But then, after some time, the blinks appear.

I got the error again today and I have come up to the conclusion that the issue appears every time I install LibreOffice. It is probably some of the dependencies, I don't know, but it does. In fact, I have made a clean installation of Ubuntu Mate 18.04 LTS, tried Gedit with the latest NVIDIA driver, and no errors whatsoever. Then, after installing LibreOffice, the blinks appear once again and I cannot get rid of them, even if I do a "remove --purge *libreoffice*". I also have tried to reset the configuration of Gedit with dconf, but nothing.

Has anyone experienced this issue as well?

Thank you very much in advance.

#2

Hello SRG

I've never experienced your problem - because I never use gedit. Does the same problem occur if you use "Kate" or "Atom"?
Kate is the first software package I install on any GNU/Linux computer. I have never "gotten-along-with" gedit.

How did you install LibreOffice - deb, snap or Flatpak?

1 Like
#3

Hi @alpinejohn,

Thank you for the quick reply. I haven't tried to use Kate or Atom when I get this error, as I usually code inside Gedit. Hence, I'm not sure if the issue is also affecting those two, sorry.

But I can confirm that Pluma, the default editor that comes with Ubuntu Mate, does not reproduce the error. I have tried multiple times to use Pluma instead, but the main reason why I use Gedit is because of the plugins.

And about how I install LibreOffice, I usually do the following:

> sudo apt-get install libreoffice

On the other hand, I just did a clean installation of Ubuntu Mate 18.04 LTS and this time I selected the "Normal Installation" option, that contains LibreOffice and other utilities, instead of the "Minimal Installation" option, that I frequently choose. So far, Gedit seems to work fine, which is quite strange.

I even tried the command above and apt-get installed multiple new packages. However, none has caused the error to reproduce again, so I'm confused right now.

In case I suddenly hit the issue again, is there anything I could provide you guys that can be useful? For instance, log files or similar, just to understand what is going on.

Thank you very much once again for the help and my apologies for bothering :slight_smile:.

#4

Have to tried to turn off hardware accelerator and anti-aliasing in LibreOffice -go to Options-LibreOffice-View

1 Like
#5

Hello SRG

It is good to hear that you are "up-and-running" again. :slightly_smiling_face:

If you have any other problems, just post on the forum with whatever information you have regarding the problem. Anyone who comes to help you will know what they need and will ask you for the pertinent details. :penguin:

1 Like
#6

Thank you @LordBoltar and @alpinejohn for your replies, I appreciate it!

Regarding the issue, I haven't been able to reproduce it after I reinstalled Ubuntu Mate with the "Normal Installation" option. If I somehow experience the problem again, I'll immediately get back to the forum and report it, just so that you guys can guide me to try to figure out what is going on (e.g., logs or similar).

Once again, thank you guys for the help!

#7

Hi again everyone,

I hit the bug once again some days ago and I payed attention to whether it affected other parts of the OS and/or applications. I noticed that the typing was clearly slower, with delays on the keyboard or even missing keys. Using top, I also noticed multiple processes consuming 100% of the CPU when typing. I start to wonder whether this could be an actual issue on the Mate desktop or somewhere else, that for some reason is triggered through Gedit or its components.

Would you mind to confirm, please, how could I report and provide more details about this issue in the future (e.g., log files)? To clarify, I was in the middle of writing a paper, so I needed to reinstall Ubuntu Mate from scratch to avoid wasting time. Nonetheless, I still want to learn how to report this problem, just so that next time I could help you guys.

Thank you very much in advance!

Sergio.