One too many crashes in LibreOffice 3.3.3 - Changing to OpenOffice 3.3.0

[johnmd]

Hi Everyone

LibreOffice crashed one too many times yesterday and i decided to try OpenOffice instead. I was using LibreOffice 3.3.3 and i've switched to OpenOffice 3.3.0 - this is in a hard drive install of Knoppix 6.7.0 DVD version - running on an old compaq presario with 512mB ram, an AMD Athlon XP processor 2400+ and a 40gB hard drive.

To my surprise the process was quite painless and so far I have had no crashes with OpenOffice - doing just the same things that were causing crashes/freezes before - opening, writing in and closing .odt files, cutting and pasting text to and from other applications.

1 ** I uninstalled all packages with 'libreoffice' in the title using synaptic with the option 'mark for complete removal'.

2 ** I deleted the two configuration folders in my /home/knoppix directory i.e.
/home/knoppix/.libreoffice and /home/knoppix/.config/.libreoffice

3 ** Then i downloaded the latest version of openoffice from:

http://download.openoffice.org/other.html

[choosing the appropriate language and OS and/or distro] - which in my case was in the LINUX INTEL DEB column:

download:

OOo_3.3.0_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-GB.tar.gz

4 ** so I cd to my downloads folder and unpacked it with:

tar -xvzf OOo_3.3.0_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-GB.tar.gz

to give the folder:

OOO330_m20_native_packed-1_en-GB.9567

[there are also some read me's inside this, good to check them out]

5 ** then cd to the sub-folder 'DEBS' within this folder and run:

dpkg -i *.deb

6 ** lastly cd to the sub-folder within 'DEBS' called 'desktop-integration'

and repeat the command [though there was only one .deb file this time]

dpkg -i *.deb

7 ** then all that is left to do is to put an icon on your desktop or in the panel and configure OpenOffice to your liking using the choices in Tools | Options. Good to support LibreOffice as truly free software but also sometimes you need something that just works.

Best wishes, John

[utu]

Greetings again, John.

I'd be interested to hear more about your LibreOffice problems.

I'm still using LO, but occasionally have a situation which
causes lxpanel to stall. I've been calling this an LXDE problem.

I get around my problem with Ctl-Alt-Backspace and have not lost
any LO work that I am aware-of.

I've never gotten any sympathy from either LXDE or LO to address
my problem, which I identified and reported six months ago.

[johnmd]

Hi utu
Sorry, I don't know if I can help much, though my problem sounds very similar to the one you reported.

What would happen is that often when i had several [3 or 4] .odt documents open at once - in separate windows that is - and I would be cutting and pasting blocks of text and maybe diagrams as well across into these .odt documents from [mostly] iceweasel but sometimes from icedove.

Then the whole screen would freeze up and often even Ctrl-Alt-backspace would not get me out of it and i would have to power-off with the switch to turn the machine off and then restart it. Often Libre Office was unable to recover the documents when i next fired it up so the work was lost altogether.

I think if I remembered to keep only one .odt document open at a time then the freezes happened less often and I don't remember it ever happening when i was only entering text directly from the keyboard -as opposed to interacting whith other programmes via the clipboard.

Even if the whole system didn't freeze, what would often happen is that when i closed each LibreOffice window then its tab would remain in the window-list part of the LXpanel and I would have to reboot to clear them from the panel. But at least on those occasions it seemed that I was able to save and close the files properly and so I didn't lose data - it was only the tabs from each window left behind in the no longer functioning panel that were the problem.

Sorry I don't know enough to start looking for the real cause - like whether they are basically a malfunction of LXpanel or of LibreOffice. I haven't [so far] had any similar problems with Open Office 3.3.0 running with the exact same LXDE set-up. Just to remind you - I am using a hard drive install of Knoppix v 6.7.0 DVD.

I hope one day [soon] someone will find the answer.

Best wishes, John

[utu]

Hi, johnmd

Thanks for your comments.

It sounds like your problem is a bit more dangerous than my own.
I don't seem to be in jeopardy of losing any LO material,
just more of a nuisance doing the Ctl-Alt-Backspace thing.

I can live with this problem, but I'd like to understand it better
and localize it a bit more.
I am spending a little time now with Mint 11 LXDE to see if that distro
behaves any better.

My problem occurs so rarely, it's will be hard to observe any
relative differences if both have the problem.
Conversely, I'll have to work with Mint for some time before I
would hazard saying it doesn't have the same difficulty as Knoppix.

Mint 11 LXDE is a very nice alternative to Knoppix 6.7, so I don't expect
this to be an unpleasant experience.

Best regards, utu

[utu]

kk has upgraded lxpanel to 'cure' this problem.
See my post #14 at:
http://knoppix.net/forum/threads/295...ghlight=freeze

[johnmd]

Hi Utu
Thanks for not giving up on this problem, you've got a lot of patience. Have you acrually tried out this solution with the updated lxpanel package. If so, was this with Knoppix 6.7.0 or with Knoppix 6.7.1 I tried deleting the old lxpanel 0.5.6-1, and replacing it with the new lxpanel 0.5.8-3 package but with my 6.7.0 hard drive install i just headed into the ?bottomless slough of dependencies - lxpanel 0.5.8-3 requires a more recent version of libasound2 - which in turn requires multiarch-support which in turn requires a new version of libc6 and other packages - at which stage I chickened out and reinstalled the original lxpanel - finding much to my relief that Knoppix was still working. So maybe the new lxpanel will solve the problem in some cases but perhaps not in all cases.

I still haven't had a repeat of the panel freezing since i replaced LibreOffice with OpenOffice but kept the old lxpanel 0.5.6-1 - BUT - a second go at replacing LibreOffice in the same way as I describe above (#1) did not go so smoothly - though i did get there in the end,

Best wishes, John

[utu]

Greetings, johnmd.

I've been using only 6.7.1 since it first came out.

I added the debian-knoppix repo to Synaptic, reloaded and used it to replace lxpanel 0.5.6-1 with 0.5.8-3.
No dependency problems. That was in mid-Dec12; NO problems with LibreOffice 3.4.3 since.
My LO use is almost exclusively, but daily, with LO-calc.

I don't know if 6.7.0 would give the same favorable result,
but I'd give it a try if I had a 6.7.0 install that had the LO/freeze problem.

Hope this eventually works for you.

[utu]

That was in mid-Dec12;

That is to say, mid-December 2011.
Sorry about the typo.