lyx 1.5 extremely slow on Gutsy

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh]

Binary package hint: lyx

The latest version of LyX has an impossibly slow interface. Most significantly, there is a latency between typing each key and it appearing in the window.
If I type at a reasonable speed, I would have completed this sentence before LyX GUI had gotten as far as the comma in displaying it.

There is a report of slow scrolling (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lyx/+bug/129813), but this is something else, and seems unlikely to have anything to do with my video card.

[Richard Kleeman (kleeman)]

Such a delay is not present on my system and 1.5 works perfectly on gutsy for me. I have read of similar issues on the lyx-devel mailing list and they are usually very specific graphics problems. I suggest you post your problem there. 1.5 uses qt4 unlike the 1.4 series which used qt3......

[Vincenzo Ciancia (vincenzo-ml)]

This may be due to assertions being enabled in lyx. These are not enabled by default by the developers, and are only meant as a debug feature, but debian maintainers insist on having them turned on, hence this option propagated back to 1.5 in ubuntu after sync with debian. I succeded in having them removed from lyx 1.4 where they harmed normal usage. However, I have not been experiencing such problems with lyx 1.5, hence I didn't report a new bug to remove assertions again. Try getting the source, disabling assertions in debian/rules, and see if the problem is solved that way.

[Vincenzo Ciancia (vincenzo-ml)]

if you have i386 you can try to manually install the two packages listed here:

http://www.di.unipi.it/~ciancia/content/deb/

these are compiled without assertions, and run evidently faster on my machine.

[Ergosys (ergosys)]

I have noticed this bug too, and have noticed that adding the following option to xorg.conf Device section(s) seems to work around it for the most part:

  Option XaaNoOffscreenPixmaps "true"

Unfortunately this doesn't cure the molasses-slow scrolling, so for me Lyx is not yet usable in 7.10.

[Ergosys (ergosys)]

II'll have to recant that last comment, the typing speed problem seemed to go away around the same time when I added that option, but my video driver (nvidia) reports that it ignores it, and taking it out doesn't cause the typing speed to slow down again. Something else I did must have resolved it. Sorry for the noise.

[Alex Zvoleff (azvoleff)]

I still see this slow behavior on my machine (i386 using compiz on an nvidia running the 100.14.19 driver). I will try the packages without assertions.

[Alex Zvoleff (azvoleff)]

I tried to test the above packages posted by Vincenzo Ciancia on 2007-09-11, but when I try to install the lyx 1.5.0-0ubuntu2 package, I get an error:

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of lyx:
 lyx depends on libboost-filesystem1.34.0 (>= 1.34.0~rc2-1); however:
  Package libboost-filesystem1.34.0 is not installed.
 lyx depends on libboost-iostreams1.34.0 (>= 1.34.0~rc2-1); however:
  Package libboost-iostreams1.34.0 is not installed.
 lyx depends on libboost-regex1.34.0 (>= 1.34.0~rc2-1); however:
  Package libboost-regex1.34.0 is not installed.
 lyx depends on libboost-signals1.34.0 (>= 1.34.0~rc2-1); however:
  Package libboost-signals1.34.0 is not installed.

[Ergosys (ergosys)]

I had a look at the development mail archive for lyx, and in late sept they identified the problem but AFAIK, have not yet fixed it.

[Vincenzo Ciancia (vincenzo-ml)]

In my ppa you can find updated packages, even though due to version numbers you will have to install using dpkg from command line. Packages are here:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/vincenzo-ml/ubuntu/pool/universe/l/lyx/

Don't expect them to be much faster, because there is also a bug, however if you paste some text (which seems to be a workaround for this bug) when you open a document you should notice a much better responsiveness when editing and moving cursor than with assertions on, after the same workaround.

[Vincenzo Ciancia (vincenzo-ml)]

I am dumb, and uploaded to ppa the same source as ubuntu. Sorry, perhaps it's easier if you

# apt-get source lyx

 then

# apt-get build-dep lyx

 then

# cd lyx-*,

 edit debian/control, disable assertions and

# debuild

it, ignoring the warnings about signatures.

[davidy (davidyang102)]

I found that lyx was slow when you had something in the clipboard that was from another program (like firefox), but when I copied into the clipboard a segement of lyx's text, the keyboard response immediately increased.

[Vincenzo Ciancia (vincenzo-ml)]

Great find. Should be reported upstream.

[Nicolas Chopin (nicolas-chopin)]

Hi,
using Lyx 1.5.1 (from standard repo) on Kubuntu Gusty Gibbons (upgraded from Feisty).
Lyx is very slow on my system, but also has problems with copy and paste:
most of the time, the selected text get de-selected immediately.

Both problems go away when I clean clipboard history (using Klipper icon).
So this confirms davidy's report.

[Rion Aoki (aoki)]

The same thing happened to me with 1.5.1 on the repo, but it seems not happening with 1.5.2 installed from a checkinstall deb found at

ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/bin/1.5.2/lyx-1.5.2-1_dapper_i386.deb

Could anyone confirm this bug with 1.5.2?

[mseiler (martin-seiler)]

Hi all,

I experienced a similar problem, typing speed improved a lot after installing the qt4-designer package. Character deletion is still quite slow, but it seems as I can at least type all right now.

thought it might be helpful to someone...

ciao,

martin

[Artem Baguinski (femistofel)]

I have this slow-lyx problem too, and I've noticed that scrolling in a terminal (e.g. when using less) is smooth when i use not-antialised font, but annoyingly slow when antialiased. could these two problems be related?

[Artem Baguinski (femistofel)]

i switched from compiz to metacity and slow scrolling in lyx went away.

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh (cpbl)]

Artem:
I have never had compiz on my computer, but the glacial typing is often still apparent!

Riom:
I installed

lyx-1.5.2-1_dapper_i386.deb

but the slow-typing bug is unchanged.

This is a major problem! I use LyX for everything. I would love to be able to downgrade within Gutsy's apt system until it's fixed.

Anyway, we carry on looking for patterns of when the problem is worst...?

[nop (nopnopzero)]

I agree : lyx 1.5.1 on Gutsy is too slow with my current document : I have to wait for 1 second between typing each key :(

To improve Lyx performance, just update your lyx version to 1.5.3

1/ you don't fear to upgrade to Hardy Heron :p

2/ you want to stick on Gusty Gibbon, so install the backport

a/ update your /etc/apt/sources.list to enable backports
see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports#head-64200fc3461be5e8062b5df39c80c115cb067ec9

b/ update your lyx version
apt-get update ; apt-get install lyx

c/ remove or comment the backport repository in your /etc/apt/sources.list
in order to prevent unintentionnal system wreckage :p

Voila !

Nop

[nop (nopnopzero)]

Users should install Gutsy lyx 1.5.3 backport

[Kjell Braden (afflux)]

Marking this bug as fix released as a fix seems to be available since hardy.