[Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

Jerry3904 · 2015-09-15 17:42:33

this is also exactly the reason why i would never use MX or other backports for stable since you might get a tiny new feature but you also will get bugs too and since every package is dynamical linked you never know how the package will work with the rest of your system.

Not if you have good packagers, which we do--this essentially never happens to us.

sixsixfive · 2015-09-15 17:49:16

Jerry3904 wrote:

Not if you have good packagers, which we do--this essentially never happens to us.

no offense, but I dont think you installed all packages and tested all possible actions of any application - and this has nothing todo with good or bad packagers since the progamm(esp. libs) itself could be bugged that could effect other programs that rely on it.(api change & co)

Last edited by sixsixfive (2015-09-15 18:09:28)

Jerry3904 · 2015-09-15 18:15:31

Of course small things arise with particular setups, but no more frequently than with any other distro IMHO. You should probably take a look at it sometime rather than criticize the abstract concept.

Enuf on this topic...

sixsixfive · 2015-09-15 18:28:11

Jerry3904 wrote:

sometime rather than criticize the abstract concept.

I can't remember of criticizing anything or anyone - it was a direct answer to MDM question - so in the end it is at its you always get pros an cons but its your decision either go stable, unstable or something in between.

>Enuf on this topic...

^^

MountainDewManiac · 2015-09-15 22:00:35

I went through the, "Yeah, that's nice, but what features have they added since this morning?" phase, and it was kind of neat (well... there IS a little boy in me that has to get out and run from time to time - and, oh yeah, he's the psychotic one) in a way.

The last couple of years, though... I like things stable. Not Debian Stable stable, lol, but definitely not towards the "the developers are actively trying to break my system again, ARGH!!!" end of the scale. I'll move on updates that are flagged by my distro's team / update manager as being security updates pretty quickly (after reading the changelogs, and sometimes I'll still give it a few days while watching for whatever the fuss was about with my "old" components). But for something else, say an application update? I ask myself, "Have I been complaining about something missing/broken in it?" before I even read its changelog. If the answer is no, I'll read the changelog and see if my attitude is, "Now, THAT'S useful! Why didn't someone add that last year?" If the answer to that one is no, too, then I'll usually get around to it. Some day.

I'm actually still using an older (but still supported) version of my distro right now, and it has Xfce 4.10. I've got 4.12 on the partition that was the newest version of the distro... but they released another one recently. I honestly cannot decide whether to upgrade this one in-place (too much data to fit on my other partition and I no longer have a working USB drive or optical drive), download the .ISO to this partition, do a little "magic" on grub so I can boot to that (live/install) .ISO, and use it to do a clean install on the other partition (or I guess I could do an in-place on it, but since if I download the .ISO to the same hard drive and do a clean install it finishes faster than I can make & eat a sandwich, why not "go clean," lol?), or just continue bouncing back and forth between the two that I already have. They both work. I added Xfce 4.12 to the other one (it came with 4.10, and I didn't really have any complaints but, yes, I got curious). And... I really don't remember what my point was, sorry.

Oh, yeah, now I remember, lol: Hey, kudos, I'm using (at different times) Mint 17.0 and 17.1. Both Xfce. I haven't seen the issue you've described. Have you tried either of those? They're both still under support - and will be as long as 17.2 will - and it was real easy for me to update Xfce to 4.12 (via PPA). The 17.2 has been updated (by me, not Clem and his team) to Xfce 4.12 and LO looks normal on it. I read that Mint 17.2 Xfce has a compiz "option." Did you at any time switch to that instead of Xfwm? Seems like I might have glanced at a thread at Mint's community web-forum about someone having issues (not related to LO) after he switched his window manager from Xfce's own to compiz. And I think there was a different thread (or two) about exactly how to cleanly switch back after using Compiz. It didn't exactly seem as intuitive as simply changing a single setting, IIRC (I may not be).

Regards,
MDM

kudos · 2015-09-16 10:34:00

sixsixfive wrote:

this is also exactly the reason why i would never use MX or other backports for stable since you might get a tiny new feature but you also will get bugs too and since every package is dynamical linked you never know how the package will work with the rest of your system.

From my experience there is a risk of problems with every package from every rung of the rolling to stable ladder. I have had problems with testing with several KDE apps for example and been thankful that sometimes pulling from sid was an option to fix this. However, I don't really understand the backport process. I thought it was pretty stable and the apps were complied for what you were backporting to. Can you expand on this or maybe point to a reference? I would like to know more. Linux Mint I presume are using a backport system by placing 4.12 XFCE on 1404 Ubuntu? Same as MX14/15 on wheezy/jessie

MountainDewManiac wrote:

I went through the, "Yeah, that's nice, but what features have they added since this morning?" phase, and it was kind of neat (well... there IS a little boy in me that has to get out and run from time to time - and, oh yeah, he's the psychotic one) in a way.

I was thinking about this last night and why I have started running a certain distro and then why I left. I remember one reason I had for being on a rolling release was funny enough productivity. I was heavily editing photos in raw format at the time and the best tool for the job was Darktable. It was in development and the best way of keeping up to date was with a rolling release. Of course this would be no good if the system crashed after an update. It would be nice to come up with a criteria for what purpose is best for rolling or for stable / backports.

MountainDewManiac wrote:

Did you at any time switch to that instead of Xfwm?

be careful, getting dangerously close to being back on topic smile
I did make the switch a while back to compiz and then all went pair shaped so I switched back to XFWM. I didn't notice any obvious problems. You think it maybe something to do with the LO issue?

Last edited by kudos (2015-09-16 10:56:21)

sixsixfive · 2015-09-16 15:55:40

kudos wrote:

However, I don't really understand the backport process. I thought it was pretty stable and the apps were complied for what you were backporting to

thats right , it is alot more stable than mixing stable with another release

eg: if you install gnome3 from testing:

you will also update gtk3 to 3.16, gio, pango, freetype and all the other dependencies(and its dependencies)

the backport tries to use your current system libaries(it will just use the testing source package and will recompile everything to the libs of stable eg: linking gnome to gtk 3.14), buts it is still a testing package(which means in the worst case its ~10 days old - the minimum duration all packages need to stay in unstable before they enter testing) so its not fully tested.

Also some applications might need a newer libary for the new feature and that is where the trouble starts since if you want the new program you have to update that libary, but the same libary could be used by some programs of your stable release that may now refuse to work properly with the newer libary.

kudos · 2015-09-17 07:40:57

sixsixfive wrote:

thats right , it is alot more stable than mixing stable with another release
eg: if you install gnome3 from testing: ...

Thanks, I appreciate the explanation. I seems to me that PPAs work a similar way and would also be vulnerably to problems.

MountainDewManiac · 2015-09-17 10:38:16

I use PPAs, myself, but I'll be the first to admit that it carries more potential weaknesses than installing backported packages from your distro's developer. Anyone can set up a PPA (thus the "Personal" in the name). That means that someone could potentially place malicious software into one. There's also a chance that the person might just have an issue compiling things. Or they might have a version of software for which bugs were found. If they modified it (even for benign reasons) and labeled it with a version number significantly higher than the version available via your distro's normal repositories, it might be some time before your version gets updated (if at all).

PPAs can be useful - but they should be approached with caution.

Just my opinions. As in all things, YMMV.

Regards,
MDM

kudos · 2015-09-21 08:26:57

With regards to the Libreoffice problem I opened up LO this morning and the menus are there. Unfortunately I cannot account for why this is. There have been a few package upgrades in the last week, I looked through these, but nothing jumped out. I did tweek qtconfig for the system fonts, but I cannot understand why this would have any effect on a gtk enabled app. I put it down to one of those things.

As for the rolling / stable decision. I went through the options from Arch and it's derivatives and Debian testing / stable. I nearly went back to Arch, but remembered that there is extra work here and packages need configuring, close attention at upgrade times and more involvement in the running of a system. I think it's great what Arch is, but still consider it somewhere I would be a slave to the system. I then looked at Manjaro and Antergos. Both very good. I have some experience with Arch in the past, so grateful to now be able to bypass the installer, but understand what is going on underneath. As Antergos is pretty much running Arch I ruled this out for the same reasons as not running Arch itself and looked at the Manjaro. The claim to deliver stability and latest is a bold one and I would love to believe this. The same was tried with LMDE and Solydxk and both ended up changing their base to stable due to the amount of work. Maybe Manjaro has a better system for doing this and more hands to help out with it, but I am not convinced it is for me at the moment.

The other choice for rolling was Debian sid or testing. Testing is less work as I have run this before, but still has it's moments. I too a good look at what I want at the moment and all the current software in Jessie is acceptable for me and I think will be for the next while. I don't really need to use many backports and I don't want to tinker so much. If I need later versions or feel the need to tinker more I'll revisit these choices again, but for now I choose the quiet life and go with Jessie, although I'll most likely be lazy and use Solydx to get a nicer out of the box install and I'll be wanted Firefox latest versions anyway. The other choice would be MX15 if it were released.

Big thank you all for comments, opinions and contributions here for the problem solving and the rolling / stable discussion.

EDIT: Just for the record I actually ended up going with Manjaro which was a big turn around from stable to rolling. Touch wood it has been very stable, feels a lot lighter and the package manager is certainly faster than apt. It's been 3 weeks and I'm very happy.

Last edited by kudos (2015-10-12 09:17:18)

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#26 2015-09-15 17:42:33

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#27 2015-09-15 17:49:16

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#28 2015-09-15 18:15:31

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#29 2015-09-15 18:28:11

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#30 2015-09-15 22:00:35

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#31 2015-09-16 10:34:00

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#32 2015-09-16 15:55:40

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#33 2015-09-17 07:40:57

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#34 2015-09-17 10:38:16

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

#35 2015-09-21 08:26:57

Re: [Solved] Libreoffice missing menus in XFCE4

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