LibreOffice Writer unusably slow

[David Chart]

LibreOffice Writer lags by several seconds per keypress when typing in a document of more than a page or so. This does not always start immediately, but normally begins within a couple of lines of text, and also affects text deletion.

The bug does not seem to affect Calc.

Also, when I installed Writer alone through Synaptic, without any gnome integration at all, the problem didn't seem to arise, although it looks hideous, so that is not an ideal solution. Removing user preferences did not fix the problem, however.

Obviously, this bug does not affect everyone, because it would have been reported already. I hope the apport data provides enough information to pin the problem down.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: libreoffice 1:6.4.4-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-40.44-generic 5.4.44
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-40-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Jul 20 14:54:52 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-01-05 (197 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Release amd64 (20191017)
SourcePackage: libreoffice
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-05-08 (73 days ago)

[Heather Ellsworth (hellsworth)]

Can you tell me a little more..
* Does Libreoffice display this lag immediately or does it take some time of the app running before it becomes unusably slow?
* When did this problem start?
* Does this happen on an empty document/spreadsheet or does can you point to an example problematic document?

[David Chart (ubuntu-davidchart)]

* As originally described, it usually starts to lag within one minute of usage, although not usually from the first character typed.

* When I changed to 19.10. This involved a clean install on a new machine and moving my home folder over, rather than an upgrade.

* As originally described, it does not appear to affect spreadsheets, and appears to affect any document with more than a page or so of content. It seems to be particularly bad with italic text. (I've tried changing the font, but that doesn't seem to help.)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[David Chart (ubuntu-davidchart)]

Since this got updated: the bug persisted until 21.04, at which point it disappeared, but seemed to be coming back in the last patches to 21.04 (and affecting Calc, this time). I have only just upgraded to 21.10, so I cannot comment on its current status.