Comment 29 for bug 80551

I will not belabour the point that the issue is with the ATI video card. The simple fix for me was to edit the last line of the soffice.sh

         /etc/openoffice/soffice.sh

File contents:

# configuration file to set up some environment variables for OOo

# File locking; possible values are:
# - yes: enable file locking unconditionally
# - no: disable file locking
# - auto: enable file locking, when the document is found on a nfs share
# If the environment variable SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING is set,
# the setting if ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING has no effect.

FILE_LOCKING=auto

# OpenGL support; may cause trouble with the restricted nvidia and fglrx
# drivers; possible values are:
# - yes: enable OpenGL support unconditionally
# - no: disable OpenGL support.
# - auto: only enable OpenGL support, if not running with the restricted
# nvidia and fglrx drivers.
# If the environment variable SAL_NOOPENGL is set,
# the setting if OPENGL_SUPPORT has no effect.

OPENGL_SUPPORT=auto

Fixed it for me in OOo. Thanks for all the clues to the real issue here.