[SOLVED] LibriOffice Problem and Touchpad gesture lack of pinch

[AgentKaboom]

Hello everybody, I recently installed Kubuntu on my laptop, and the journey was pretty well. Everything worked good if not better then on Windows after configuration. But surprisingly, I didn't find any customizations for the tachpad gestures and surprising lack of support for pinch to zoom (on anything else but the browser) even though I'm on Wayland KDE Plasma 6.6.6. And also I noticed that LibriOffice Draw would behave a lot more lager compared to my Windows system even with hardware acceleration ON (I literally tried everything from increasing the cache size to running it with

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb libreoffice --draw

).
Please help


My system spack:

ASUS Vivobook S14 M5406UA

Kubuntu 26.04.1 LTS

Kernel: Linux 7.0.0-34-generic

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS (16) @ 4.00 GHz

iGPU: AMD Radeon 780M Graphics

Using preinstalled version of LibreOffice suite on my Kubuntu

[die.boer]

Touchpad gestures

The touchpad and LibreOffice issues are probably two separate things.

KDE Plasma does support touchpad gestures under Wayland, but the available configuration is still fairly limited compared with Windows. Also, pinch-to-zoom cannot be provided globally by Plasma for every application. The application itself has to support the relevant touchpad or gesture input.

That would explain why pinch-to-zoom works in the browser but not in LibreOffice. It does not necessarily mean that there is a problem with the touchpad, Wayland, or the AMD graphics driver.

LibreOffice Draw performance

I would not assume that enabling hardware acceleration should automatically make LibreOffice Draw perform like the Windows version. LibreOffice has its own rendering stack, and Draw can become slow depending on the document contents, fonts, objects, transparency, SVG files, and similar elements.

Trying:
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb libreoffice --draw


is reasonable as a diagnostic test, but I would not treat it as a guaranteed performance fix.

With a Ryzen 9 8945HS and Radeon 780M, the hardware itself should not be the bottleneck for normal Draw usage. The important part is to identify exactly which operation becomes slow:
-zooming or panning the canvas
-moving objects
-scrolling
-selecting objects
-opening or saving the document
-or the entire LibreOffice interface becoming sluggish

I would also test a completely new, blank Draw document. If the blank document works normally but a particular document is slow, then I would suspect the document contents or rendering rather than the AMD graphics driver.

That distinction would be the best place to start before changing more LibreOffice settings.

[AgentKaboom]

Hello, relating to the LibreOffice issue on the blank page, it performs fine however, when I load my heavy documents, for example, my notes which are full of texts, images, and geometric objects the software itself would start, starter and freeze heavily (The application isn't interruptible during the freeze) (Especially when I try to scroll from page to a page, or side to side). And I know this document is more than runnable since, on Windows it is, while on Linux it is borderline unusable, which is a real shame because other than that, my journey was considerably smoother with better performance out of my laptop.

I also did some other tests and the fact that I run it from my Windows partition doesn't seem to be the cause of the issue either.

[Snowhog]

If you have not already done so, install plasma-workspace-x11

sudo apt install plasma-workspace-x11

Then log out and log back in and select Plasma (X11) at the login screen. Try LibreOffice again with the document in question.

[AgentKaboom]

Hey, sorry for not replying to the X11 suggestion. I just wanted to stay on the newer platform.

I managed to fix the entire issue. Turns out all I had to do was completely wipe the perinstalled version, then add LibreOffice Repository and pull a fresh new version which ran already pretty good, but I still had to do some tweaking to get more performance (Which might have been unnecessary).

1. Complete uninstall of the preinstalled LibreOffice

sudo apt purge libreoffice* -y
rm -rf ~/.config/libreoffice
sudo snap remove --purge libreoffice # just in case
sudo apt autoremove --purge -y
sudo apt autoclean
dpkg -l | grep -i libreoffice # confirmed nothing is left

2. Reinstall a newer version from the official LibreOffice PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa -y
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libreoffice -y

3. Performance tweaks

• Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced: unchecked Use a Java runtime environment
• Tools > Options > LibreOffice > View: checked Use hardware acceleration
• Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced > Open Expert Configuration:
  • Type: GraphicMemoryLimit
  • Increased to 800000000
• Restarted LibreOffice.

So basically I went from around 5 FPS while scrolling to something like 25-30 FPS and this version also has pinch to zoom.
Also funnily enough that outdated versions that natively shipped with Kubuntu looks exactly the same too the Windows one, but the newer version ties in really nicely in KDE.

Heroyam Slava
🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦✌️

[die.boer]

Kubuntu follows Ubuntu's release cycle, prioritising stability and security over shipping the latest version of every application. LibreOffice receives security fixes, while major version upgrades generally wait for a new Ubuntu release.

The LibreOffice PPA offers newer versions, but adding it means relying on a separate package source. This can introduce newer dependencies, potential compatibility issues, and additional considerations when upgrading or troubleshooting your system. If the version in the official repositories works well for you, sticking with it is generally the safer option.
Ok the official repo version didn't work well for you , the PPA does.

As long as you understand the main risks of PPA's :
-Trust: You're trusting the PPA maintainer to provide safe, properly built packages.
-Compatibility: Packages may introduce newer dependencies or versions that conflict with your distribution's packages.
-Upgrades: A PPA can sometimes complicate distribution upgrades or leave packages that need attention.
-Maintenance: If the maintainer abandons the PPA, you may stop receiving updates, including security fixes

Not necessarily saying PPA packages is bad , just want to make you aware of the risks ,in case you didn't know.
But hey , if it's working , it's working ,right?