Ubunty 14.04 freezes when I select a big chunk of text in LibreOffice

Question

When I start selecting text (size of more then a paragraph) in LibreOffice, the entire system freezes.

If I use the mouse and left click or press Ctrl+C, the system freezes so I cannot finish selecting.

If I use LibreOffice's menu command Select all or CTRL+A no freeze happens. As a workaround, I switched to Google Docs until I can use LibreOffice.

These are my laptop details:

Intel® Core™ i5 CPU M 540 @ 2.53GHz × 4
Gallium 0.4 on NVA8 32-bit
ram 488,0 GB
VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GT218M [NVS 3100M] (rev a2)
Subsystem: Lenovo ThinkPad T410
Kernel driver in use: nouveau
Memory: total 3,8G used 3,3G free 556M shared 226M buffers 66M cached 562M -/+ buffer: 2,7G 1,2G Swap: 3,9G 1,1G 2,7G

Ubuntu newly installed, only one OS, I deleted Windows to install Ubuntu.

Try this: In Acrobat Reader -- choose File -- Save As or File -- Save As Other -- Text. In Libreoffice Writer -- choose File -- Open -- File.txt. — kyodake, Sep 07 '15 at 23:04
i think the problem is not with Acrobat. I removed Libre Office and intalled Open office - same issue even if Acrobat is closed. IF copy big chank of text laptop freezes. If I copy slamm parts no freez happened. But this is stil very inconvenient forsing to go back to Windows. — Anton Burkov, Sep 08 '15 at 06:13
There are a few unclear yet important facts missing from your question. I assume you want to copy text through the clipboard. Which application is the source, which is the destination. How do you copy and paste the text – Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, middle click with the mouse, a menu action? At which point exactly does your system freeze? Which parts freeze – just either or both applications, the whole desktop session, the whole system (verify with a switch to a virtual terminal (e. g. with Ctrl+Alt+F1))? Could you please clear those up? — David Foerster, Sep 08 '15 at 16:31
thanks, David, for your questions. I address them one by one — Anton Burkov, Sep 10 '15 at 07:19
the source - LIBREOFFICE, DESTINATION DOES NOT MATTER. WHENEVER I COPY MORE OR LESS LONG TEXT (LONGER THEN ONE PARAGRAPH) FROM LIBREOFFICE FILE LAPTOP IMMEDIATELY FREESES.. I USE MOUSE. At which point exactly does your system freeze? - AS SOON AS I HIGHLIGHT BIG ENOUGH CHANK OF TEXT, SOMETIME IT FREEZES SO THAT I CANNOT FINISH HIGHLIGHTING ENOUGH TEXT WHICH I WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT. Which parts freeze – just either or both applications, the whole desktop session, the whole system - ENTIRE SYSTEM, I CANNOT MOVE ANYTHING BUT MOUSE COURSOR, EVEN THIS MOVES SLOWLY ORCOPLETELY FREEZES TOO. — Anton Burkov, Sep 10 '15 at 07:27
system freeze if I highlight by using mouse, or CTRL+C+down. If I use LibreOffice menu comand Highligh all or CNTR+A - no freeze happens. — Anton Burkov, Sep 10 '15 at 07:46
The best way to add additional information to your question is by editing it, with the *edit* button. It is better visible that way, and comments are mainly for secondary, temporary purposes. Comments are removed under a variety of circumstances. Anything important to your question should be in the question itself. — guntbert, Sep 10 '15 at 08:54
Please [edit] your question and add output of `lspci -k | grep -EA2 'VGA|3D'` terminal command. — Pilot6, Sep 11 '15 at 13:12
Please also add the output of `free --human`. Please [edit] your answer to reflect this info. — Fabby, Sep 11 '15 at 14:48

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 11 '15 at 19:53

2

Install the video driver by running

sudo apt-get install nvidia-304

and reboot.

I am suggesting 304, because I know that it works better that 340 on that card.

answered Sep 11 '15 at 19:53

Pilot6

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Pilot6, it looks like sudo apt-get install nvidia-304 solved the issue with freezing. – Anton Burkov Sep 12 '15 at 11:05
@AntonBurkov Please accept the question to show other people that the solution works. It can be done by clicking the check sign at the left. – Pilot6 Sep 12 '15 at 11:07
Nice, Problem solved. – Ibrahim Disouki Dec 15 '15 at 15:39

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 03 '16 at 21:02

I had the same thing. First using LibreOffice, which i uninstalled. Then after installing Openoffice. Selecting a piece of text in order to copy it everything froze. My problem was solved by turning off "Transparency" which can be found in "Tools-Options-View". Clearly a graphical issue indeed.

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 17 '16 at 22:37

I had the same problem. I first tried deselecting transparency in Libre Office, that worked. I then turned transparency back on and updated the driver per the answer above and that worked also. Some of my details are:

albert@dv4-1412:~$ lspci -k | grep -EA2 'VGA|3D'
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G98M [GeForce G 105M] (rev a1)
    Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30f7
    Kernel driver in use: nouveau


albert@dv4-1412:~$ free --human
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2.0G       746M       1.2G       5.6M        53M       330M
-/+ buffers/cache:       362M       1.6G
Swap:         2.0G         0B       2.0G

Ubunty 14.04 freezes when I select a big chunk of text in LibreOffice

3 Answers3

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