LibreOffice Writer closes upon startup

[Michael]

Steps to reproduce:
1 - install lubuntu 18.04, default settings
2 - in a terminal, type 'sudo apt install libreoffice'
3 - start libreoffice with 'libreoffice --writer'

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: libreoffice 1:6.0.3-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-23.25-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-23-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.2
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jun 18 17:47:38 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-06-13 (5 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release i386 (20180426)
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

==========

WORKAROUND:

Install libreoffice-gtk2 <https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/libreoffice-gtk2>.

Remove libreoffice-gnome and libreoffice-gtk3 <https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/libreoffice-gnome> <https://packages.ubuntu.com/bionic/libreoffice-gtk3>.

[Michael (michael976)]

The cause appears to be related with the packages libreoffice-gtk3 and libreoffice-gnome.
Workaround: install libreoffice-gtk2, and only then, remove libreoffice-gtk3 and libreoffice-gnome.

$ sudo apt install libreoffice-gtk2 && sudo apt remove libreoffice-gtk3 libreoffice-gnome

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

I can reliably reproduce the issue with a 18.04 lubuntu VM, and I can confirm that installing libreoffice-gtk2 AND removing libreoffice-gtk3 and libreoffice-gnome makes the issue go away.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

The gtk3 VS gtk2 thing is a red herring. When run with --backtrace, the logs show that libreoffice crashes while trying to instantiate a JVM (which it probably doesn't do with the gtk2 plugin). This is a known issue, see bug #1699772. So another way of working around the issue would be to uninstall libreoffice-java-common. Or to simply run the following command in a terminal:

    sed -i '/enabled/c\<enabled xsi:nil="false">false<\/enabled>' ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/config/javasettings_Linux_*.xml

Some functions of libreoffice won't work without Java (the most visible probably being libreoffice base), but most of the office suite should work just fine.