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Tio TROM
Asked: 2018-07-10 03:52:59 +0800 CST

LibreOffice Draw is very slow with big projects

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So I am making free educational books into Draw. I need it because it is amazing at providing the tools I need for design. However for large projects like say over 100 slides, the program gets super slow and laggy.

My setup:

Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ CPU @ 2.80GHz × 8 (meaning 8 cores, each of 2.80GHz)

GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2

Samsung SSD

DDR4 RAM Memory 31.3 GiB

Draw Version: 6.0.4.2

I have Ubuntu 18.04 and Nvidia 390.

I would expect this setup to handle big projects easily, yet it struggles with Draw. Maybe I am missing something. For example do I have to use OpenGL and/or OpenCL with Draw? If I activate any of them I do not see any major improvement, and with OpenGL activated Draw UI gets very buggy.

Do I have to install or check anything within my system?

Thanks!

UPDATE: I tried different versions of LibreOffice. The 6 or 5 versions, as flatpaks or appimages or from official Ubuntu repositories. I see some improvements with appimages (but mild), and with the 5 version I could increase RAM memory (but limited by the program to 2GB) and that made no difference. I was able to also properly enable OpenCL and OpenGL for the 5 version and I could not see any improvement over not enabling them in the same version. My conclusion is that either LibreOffice is not optimized for such huge projects, or Ubuntu (my system) is not optimized for LibreOffice. Maybe this has to do with the fact that only about 1-5% of my GPU is used when I deal with LibreOffice (but for that matter it is the same story for pretty much any program I use in Ubuntu almost like my GPU is non important). This is sad and frustrating to the point of wanting to move back to Windows to see if LibreOffice deals better with my projects.

UPDATE 2: This is what I have to deal with in terms of slowness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnWLSgCZszI&feature=youtu.be - however I noticed something. As soon as Draw starts to use over 5-7GB of RAM it becomes manageable and way faster. Weirdly Draw only starts to use over 1.5GB after I open the project, make a change, and save. Only after that it somehow starts to use more RAM. If I don't do that then Draw is stuck at 1.5GB of RAM. So for now, a "solution" is to save big projects after you open them, and hope that Draw is going to use more than 1.5GB of RAM and then it works decently. I need to monitor it to see if it continues to work ok or it will become slow as a snail again. Will update here with my findings.

UPDATE 3: I tested my "trick" with saving a big project right after you open it and it works in Draw 5 and 6 versions (I tested several) - both from repo and appimages. It jumps from around 1-2GB use to around 8-11GB use. And that makes Draw work very well. If I don't do the "trick" then Draw is extremely slow (unusable) and it seems to never go beyond that 1-2 GB threshold. So for now this is a solution but it still doesn't answer the question: why is Draw so slow with big projects?

performance libreoffice opencl

2 Answers

  1. Edit from the LibreOffice README: As a general rule, you are recommended to install LibreOffice via the installation methods recommended by your particular Linux distribution (such as the Ubuntu Software Center, in the case of Ubuntu Linux). This is because it is usually the simplest way to obtain an installation that is optimally integrated into your system. Indeed, LibreOffice may well be already installed by default when you originally install your Linux operating system.

    This answer is based on LibreOffice Version: 5.1.6.2 Which is current for Xenial

    As pointed out by this comment you can increase RAM usage to reduce lag. 1. Launch LibreOffice. (The current version in the Ubuntu repositories is Version: 5.1.6.2 Build ID: 1:5.1.6~rc2-0ubuntu1~xenial3) 2. From the menu bar Select Tools->Options and then memory. 3.Increase the allowed memory for Libre Office and the amount of memory per object allowed. Example below:

    LO-increase-RAM

    Another thing that you can do to help increase speed is to disable LibreOffice use of the Java Runtime Environment if you have it enabled. This is option is available under the advanced settings as shown below. Simply clear the checkbox:

    disable JRE

    Edit: It should be relatively simple to determine why your system is bogging down with the appropriate tools. For example you could utilize System Load Indicator which allows you to keep tabs on useful tidbits of information such as CPU usage, IOwait, RAM, Network throughput, System Load and Disk throughput. It can be installed from the Universe Repository with the command sudo apt install indicator-multiload

    SLI Hovering your pointer over it drops down useful real time info as seen below:

    enter image description here

    I've found it to be quite useful in rapidly ascertaining which subsystem may be struggling to keep up.For instance you might see that Cached RAM jumps after you load and re-save the project (which would explain why your workaround does the trick).

    Other things you might see include higher than expected I/O waits, lower than expected disk throughput, or a higher System Load than expected. Honestly any of these (or combination thereof) could cause a perceptible reduction in performance.

    Edit: Some other useful resources are:

    https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Memory https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Drawing_Options

    Sources: https://www.maketecheasier.com/speed-up-libreoffice/ and testing.

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  2. Try this? LB was very slow for me for all documents, on Ubuntu 18.04. The solution for me was to remove the libroffice-gtk3 and liboffice-gnome libraries, and replace with "libreoffice-gtk2". I used synaptec for this.

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