Libreoffice-bin looks like something out of windows 95

[seanmk]

Since the last time I updated, libreoffice-bin (24.2.7.2) has looked like something out of Windows 95. I have been trying to debug the problem and I discovered that changing the size of the open dialogue created a file at

Code: Select all

.config/gtk-2.0/gtkfilechooser.ini

which seemed like it might be using gtk2 (which is installed).

I can see the following VCL libraries loaded when I try tracing openat:

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$ strace -e openat libreoffice 2>&1 | grep -i vcl
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/libvclplug_genlo.so", O_RDONLY) = 5
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/libvclplug_gtk3lo.so", O_RDONLY) = 5

To me this looks like it's loading gtk3 libraries, but I am a bit out of my depth here.

Other than looking terrible it seems to work okay, but I would like it to not look terrible if possible. Since it's the binary version there's no use flags setting the gtk version to use, and I don't seem to have any older ebuilds in the gentoo repo that I could revert to, so I am a bit lost on what to do.

I am running X11/i3 with xfce4 utilities. I tried both adding and removing the gnome use flag from libreoffice-bin but it seemed to make no difference. I also tried installing a libreoffice icon theme, which works, but does not change the general Windows 95 vibe.

Libreoffice version info:

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Version: 24.2.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 420(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.6; UI render: default; VCL: x11
Locale: en-US (en_US.utf8); UI: en-US
Gentoo official package
Calc: threaded

Happy to attach any other debugging information, but I haven't been able to find anything else that seems useful for understanding what is going on.

[paraw]

Since the last time I updated, libreoffice-bin (24.2.7.2) has looked like something out of Windows 95. I have been trying to debug the problem and I discovered that changing the size of the open dialogue created a file at

Code: Select all

.config/gtk-2.0/gtkfilechooser.ini

which seemed like it might be using gtk2 (which is installed).

I can see the following VCL libraries loaded when I try tracing openat:

Code: Select all

$ strace -e openat libreoffice 2>&1 | grep -i vcl
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/libvclplug_genlo.so", O_RDONLY) = 5
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/libvclplug_gtk3lo.so", O_RDONLY) = 5

To me this looks like it's loading gtk3 libraries, but I am a bit out of my depth here.

Other than looking terrible it seems to work okay, but I would like it to not look terrible if possible. Since it's the binary version there's no use flags setting the gtk version to use, and I don't seem to have any older ebuilds in the gentoo repo that I could revert to, so I am a bit lost on what to do.

I am running X11/i3 with xfce4 utilities. I tried both adding and removing the gnome use flag from libreoffice-bin but it seemed to make no difference. I also tried installing a libreoffice icon theme, which works, but does not change the general Windows 95 vibe.

Libreoffice version info:

Code: Select all

Version: 24.2.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 420(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.6; UI render: default; VCL: x11
Locale: en-US (en_US.utf8); UI: en-US
Gentoo official package
Calc: threaded

Happy to attach any other debugging information, but I haven't been able to find anything else that seems useful for understanding what is going on.

I think it's related to viewtopic-p-8850236.html and to https://bugs.gentoo.org/947224

Their "fix" was to remove any window decoration or other GUI elements that are not the most basic widgets. Basically, it's their way to show how displeased they are at people reporting problems caused by their previous naive choices. So now, they break things down for spite. Kind of like kindergarten kids throwing toys off the pram.


[EDIT: typos]

[asturm]

Who are "they" in your little phantasy world?

[paraw]

Who are "they" in your little phantasy world?

Upstream, my guess.

[sam_]

I must say I'm very confused there -- the two threads don't really seem related to that claim at all.

Anyway, attempting to get back on track: what precise versions of app-office/libreoffice-bin are broken (24.2.7.2, 24.8.4-r1, 25.2.0-r1)? Can you also show us a screenshot of it broken?

[seb95passionlinux]

Hello, I have the same problem, I switched to classic LibreOffice, but LibreOffice-bin no longer has the KDE flag, so under Plasma it really looks like Office 97... I'll try to take a screenshot for you right away, while I change LibreOffice.

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[ebuild  N     ] app-office/libreoffice-bin-24.8.4-r1::gentoo  USE="-gnome -java -python" 204 650 KiB

Cordialement.



In my case it probably comes from -gnome.

[sam_]

Thank you! This is interesting, as I did all testing of libreoffice-bin within KDE Plasma, and it looked reasonable.

[seb95passionlinux]

I don't want to pollute the subject, especially since the person is in a GTK world it seems to me, so I'm a little (a lot) off topic, here is my emerge --info if it can help you:

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$ emerge --info
Portage 3.0.66.1 (python 3.12.9-final-0, default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/plasma/systemd, gcc-14, glibc-2.40-r8, 6.12.16-gentoo-dist x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-6.12.16-gentoo-dist-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i5-8400_CPU_@_2.80GHz-with-glibc2.40
KiB Mem:     8033772 total,   3737572 free
KiB Swap:   11179512 total,  11141624 free
Timestamp of repository gentoo: Mon, 03 Mar 2025 22:48:33 +0000
Head commit of repository gentoo: 47be6d0f7fc516e2949d1745f21057bee9517810

Timestamp of repository guru: Mon, 03 Mar 2025 19:33:32 +0000
Head commit of repository guru: 1e7f28b5f08e2631650dfbe9a4a11d0f1d16f1c6

sh bash 5.2_p37
ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.43 p3) 2.43.1
app-misc/pax-utils:        1.3.8::gentoo
app-shells/bash:           5.2_p37::gentoo
dev-build/autoconf:        2.72-r1::gentoo
dev-build/automake:        1.17-r1::gentoo
dev-build/cmake:           3.31.5::gentoo
dev-build/libtool:         2.5.4::gentoo
dev-build/make:            4.4.1-r100::gentoo
dev-build/meson:           1.6.1::gentoo
dev-lang/perl:             5.40.0-r1::gentoo
dev-lang/python:           3.12.9::gentoo, 3.13.2::gentoo
dev-lang/rust-bin:         1.84.1-r2::gentoo
llvm-core/llvm:            19.1.7::gentoo
sys-apps/baselayout:       2.17::gentoo
sys-apps/sandbox:          2.39::gentoo
sys-apps/systemd:          256.10::gentoo
sys-devel/binutils:        2.43-r2::gentoo
sys-devel/binutils-config: 5.5.2::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc:             14.2.1_p20241221::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc-config:      2.12.1::gentoo
sys-kernel/linux-headers:  6.12::gentoo (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc:            2.40-r8::gentoo
Repositories:

gentoo
    location: /var/db/repos/gentoo
    sync-type: git
    sync-uri: https://github.com/gentoo-mirror/gentoo.git
    priority: -1000
    volatile: False

guru
    location: /var/db/repos/guru
    sync-type: git
    sync-uri: https://github.com/gentoo-mirror/guru.git
    masters: gentoo
    volatile: False

Binary Repositories:

binhost
    priority: 9999
    sync-uri: https://mirrors.ircam.fr/pub/gentoo-distfiles/releases/amd64/binpackages/23.0/x86-64-v3

gentoobinhost
    priority: 1
    sync-uri: https://distfiles.gentoo.org/releases/amd64/binpackages/23.0/x86-64-v3

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/sofficerc /usr/share/config /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native"
DISTDIR="/var/cache/distfiles"
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--autounmask=y --autounmask-license=y --autounmask-use=y --jobs=4 --keep-going --complete-graph=y --deep --ask --with-bdeps=y --getbinpkg"
ENV_UNSET="CARGO_HOME DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY GDK_PIXBUF_MODULE_FILE GOBIN GOPATH PERL5LIB PERL5OPT PERLPREFIX PERL_CORE PERL_MB_OPT PERL_MM_OPT XAUTHORITY XDG_CACHE_HOME XDG_CONFIG_HOME XDG_DATA_HOME XDG_RUNTIME_DIR XDG_STATE_HOME"
FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-docompress binpkg-dostrip binpkg-logs binpkg-multi-instance buildpkg-live candy config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles getbinpkg ipc-sandbox merge-sync merge-wait multilib-strict network-sandbox news parallel-fetch pid-sandbox pkgdir-index-trusted preserve-libs protect-owned qa-unresolved-soname-deps sandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync xattr"
FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -march=native"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org"
LANG="fr_FR.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs"
LEX="flex"
LINGUAS="fr"
MAKEOPTS="-j6"
PKGDIR="/var/cache/binpkgs"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages --exclude=/.git"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
SHELL="/bin/bash"
USE="X a52 aac acl acpi activities alsa amd64 bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdda cdr cet crypt cups dbus declarative dist-kernel dri dts dvd dvdr encode exif flac gdbm gif gpm gtk gui iconv icu ipv6 jpeg kde kf6compat kwallet lcms libnotify libtirpc mad mng mp3 mp4 mpeg multilib ncurses networkmanager nls nvenc ogg opengl openmp pam pango pcre pdf pipewire plasma png policykit ppds pulseaudio qml qt5 qt6 readline screencast sdl seccomp semantic-desktop sound spell ssl startup-notification svg systemd test-rust tiff truetype udev udisks unicode upower usb vdpau vorbis vulkan wayland widgets wxwidgets x264 xattr xcb xft xml xv xvid zlib" ABI_X86="64" ADA_TARGET="gcc_14" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_anon authn_dbm authn_file authz_dbm authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="karbon sheets words" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" CPU_FLAGS_X86="avx avx2 f16c fma3 mmx mmxext pclmul popcnt rdrand sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock greis isync itrax navcom oceanserver oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf skytraq superstar2 tsip tripmate tnt ublox" GRUB_PLATFORMS="efi-64" GUILE_SINGLE_TARGET="3-0" GUILE_TARGETS="3-0" INPUT_DEVICES="libinput synaptics keyboard mouse joystick" KERNEL="linux" L10N="fr" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb text" LUA_SINGLE_TARGET="lua5-1" LUA_TARGETS="lua5-1" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php8-2" POSTGRES_TARGETS="postgres16" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_12" PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_12" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby32" SANE_BACKENDS="hp" VIDEO_CARDS="fbdev vesa nvidia" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tarpit sysrq proto logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset:  ADDR2LINE, AR, ARFLAGS, AS, ASFLAGS, CC, CCLD, CONFIG_SHELL, CPP, CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, CXX, CXXFILT, ELFEDIT, EXTRA_ECONF, F77FLAGS, FC, GCOV, GPROF, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LD, LFLAGS, LIBTOOL, MAKE, MAKEFLAGS, NM, OBJCOPY, OBJDUMP, PORTAGE_BINHOST, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PYTHONPATH, RANLIB, READELF, RUSTFLAGS, SIZE, STRINGS, STRIP, YACC, YFLAGS

I'm not polluting your topic anymore, sorry for the digression, with the project binaries I use libreoffice directly and not libreoffice-bin. Best regards on this wonderful distribution.

[Quincy]

Obviously I'm in the same boat: Had running app-office/libreoffice-bin-24.2.7.2 since Dec last year under plasma 6 (it looked "normal") and now updated to app-office/libreoffice-bin-24.8.4-r1 which makes it look like the screenshot posted above.

I also uninstalled some stuff that seemed reasonably sane as suggested by emerge --depclean selectively which accumulated on my system, therefore I'm not sure if there is some link to those changes done by me or if the new libreoffice-bin version is to blame.

Furthermore I recognized there is only app-office/libreoffice-l10n-24.2.7.2 installed - no matching version in tree or is this one intended also to work with 24.8.4-r1? Also depclean wants to remove this version and I do not see any link in the new ebuild which was present in the old one.

I tried to mask version 24.8.4-r1 to go back to the known working version, but that would mean recompiling a bunch of icu dependencies (due to forced downgrade from version 76 to 75) which brought me here before I go down that road with compiling for hours (qtwebengine and friends).

[sam_]

This should be fixed in 24.8.4-r2 and 25.2.0-r2 of libreoffice-bin. Thanks!

[Quincy]

Thanks for the fix, I'm back in 2025

[sam_]

Thank you! And I'm sorry about the error to begin with.

[seb95passionlinux]

It's perfect, I just tested it. Thanks!

[ExecutorElassus]

I just ran into this same problem, but now I'm curious (and I'm sorry for polluting the thread; I'm emerging -25.2.1.2-r1 right now, which I hope will fix the terrible UI for me, too): if you emerge libreoffice with use flags for both gtk4 and qt6, how do you select between them? I'm running FVWM, so there's no WM to hint one way or the other, and I don't see anything in the settings. Where might I look?

Cheers,

EE

[musv]

Did an update of my system yesterday. And the grid lines in Calc look pretty weird.

https://ibb.co/mCCcXnp9

How can I "normalize" the gridlines again?

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equery u libreoffice
[ Legend : U - final flag setting for installation]
[        : I - package is installed with flag     ]
[ Colors : set, unset                             ]
 * Found these USE flags for app-office/libreoffice-24.2.7.2-r2:
 U I
 - - accessibility                               : Add support for accessibility (eg 'at-spi' library)
 - - base                                        : Enable full support for LibreOffice Base databases (involves additional bundled libs)
 + + bluetooth                                   : Enable Bluetooth Support
 + + branding                                    : Enable Gentoo specific branding
 - - clang                                       : Use Clang compiler instead of GCC
 + + cups                                        : Add support for CUPS (Common Unix Printing System)
 - - custom-cflags                               : Build with user-specified CFLAGS (unsupported)
 + + dbus                                        : Enable dbus support for anything that needs it (gpsd, gnomemeeting, etc)
 - - debug                                       : Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces
                                                   see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
 - - eds                                         : Enable support for Evolution-Data-Server (EDS)
 - - googledrive                                 : Enable support for remote files on Google Drive
 - - gstreamer                                   : Add support for media-libs/gstreamer (Streaming media)
 + + gtk                                         : Add support for x11-libs/gtk+ (The GIMP Toolkit)
 - - java                                        : Add support for Java
 + + kde                                         : Add support for software made by KDE, a free software community
 - - ldap                                        : Add LDAP support (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
 - - libreoffice_extensions_nlpsolver            : LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS option to build non-linear solver for calc
 - - libreoffice_extensions_scripting-beanshell  : LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS option to build beanshell scripts parser
 - - libreoffice_extensions_scripting-javascript : LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS option to build javascript scripts parser
 - - libreoffice_extensions_wiki-publisher       : LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS option to build mediawiki integration
 + + mariadb                                     : Prefer mariadb connector over mysql connector
 - - odk                                         : Build the Office Development Kit
 + + pdfimport                                   : Enable PDF import via the Poppler library
 - - postgres                                    : Add support for the postgresql database
 - - python_single_target_python3_10             : Build for Python 3.10 only
 - - python_single_target_python3_11             : Build for Python 3.11 only
 + + python_single_target_python3_12             : Build for Python 3.12 only
 - - python_single_target_python3_13             : Build for Python 3.13 only
 + + qt6                                         : Add support for the Qt 6 application and UI framework
 - - test                                        : Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but
                                                   can be toggled independently)
 - - valgrind                                    : Enable annotations for accuracy. May slow down runtime slightly. Safe to use even if not currently
                                                   using dev-debug/valgrind
 + + vulkan                                      : Enable Vulkan usage via the skia library (clang recommended)

[Update]
Forget my post

With the last update there were some changes in the graphics settings of Plasma. And for some reason the scale factor was switched to 110%. Scaling back to 100% the gridlines looked fine again. Also I had to adjust the color and brightness settings. Strange.

[sam_]

I just ran into this same problem, but now I'm curious (and I'm sorry for polluting the thread; I'm emerging -25.2.1.2-r1 right now, which I hope will fix the terrible UI for me, too): if you emerge libreoffice with use flags for both gtk4 and qt6, how do you select between them? I'm running FVWM, so there's no WM to hint one way or the other, and I don't see anything in the settings. Where might I look?

Cheers,

EE

I'm sorry, I'd missed this. You can use SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=XXX where XXX is the backend (gtk4, etc; see https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffic ... g.cxx#n138).

I did consider (and am still considering, kind of, tbh) a libreoffice-ui or something package which installs an env.d which sets SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN.