Issues with LibreOffice on additional monitors

[dmondra2]

Not sure what specific setting is causing this, I've experience this issue with LibreOffice 5.2, 5.3 and 6.0, menus don't populate, and I can't resize the image.

This issues doesn't occur if I use the main display of my laptop screen, only on either of the 2 additional screens connected via the display link (Dell d3100).

Tried swapping usb ports, hdmi/dvi cables/adapters.

The issue doesn't occur if I use hdmi without the DisplayLink, so the DisplayLink seems to be the culprit. Screenshots attached. First is LibreOffice 6 functioning normally in my laptop display, second is the file menu not populating, 3rd is the window not resizing.







I actually can't get LibreOffice responsive at all if I drag it to another screen using the DisplayLink.

[AlbanRampon]

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to report this problem.
Like with many other post you might have read on this forum before posting, this is not possible to make a particular root cause diagnostic without logging information as we only have symptoms described.

1. Does the graphic corruption (lack of menu) show on Print Screen screenshot you paste in an application? Your post attachments seem to suggest it does.

2. Can you post the ZIP of your log files so I can see what is running on what? Last link of my every forum posts indicates how to create that zip file.

From this we can have an idea of where the issue might be.

Kind regards,
Alban

[pjlbyrne]

Hi,

this issue affects me too. I have a recently purchased Dell XPS13 9360 and a Dell 3100 dock.

From here:
https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/quest...pletely-blank/
I see this may be an OpenGL issue.

From here:
https://www.dell.com/community/Lapto...s/td-p/5171483

RE: Latitude E5570, D6000 dock, 3D Hardware/OpenGL issues
It's because the D6000 uses a DisplayLink chip rather than allowing the displays to be driven directly be the GPU. From my post in another thread: DisplayLink means that technically the dock can support extra displays (and at higher resolutions) compared to more traditional options, but DisplayLink achieves this by not having the displays actually driven by the system's GPU. Instead, the system's CPU and GPU compress display data for transmission as standard USB data, and the DisplayLink chip in the dock then decompresses it before sending it to the displays. This allows displays to be attached over regular USB (rather than just USB-C, which actually does have a native GPU output wired to it), but the compression also means that when large portions of the display area change at once, such as when watching full screen video or gaming, the display can appear to bog down and/or show compression artifacts. This can also occur when a lot of USB activity is occurring with another device (such as a file transfer to/from an external hard drive) because there's bandwidth contention on the USB bus, and finally if you're running some other CPU -intensive task, which will create resource contention for the display data compression.

DisplayLink also drains battery life significantly more quickly, which admittedly isn't an issue with a dock setup, but DisplayLink products exist in other form factors.

Bottom line: You should consider using a traditional E-Port dock instead, which will allow your displays to be driven directly by the GPU.

So, is this a bug, or does the dock just not support opengl rendering on the external montitors? Has anyone found a workaround or solution for this?

Regards
Patrick

[AlbanRampon]

Hello Patrick,

The post on the online community is very interesting reading, even if misinformed.

OpenGL is linked with graphics computing. Even when using DisplayLink technology, the computer GPU (Graphics Computing Unit) is used to compute graphics, like with a direct display.
Windows window desktop manager compose the desktop and its content with the graphics card. Then, we get the computed pixels handed over to us which we ship through proper USB after encoding.

OpenGL has nothing to do with what our technology does on that OS.
The dock isn't a GPU, the OS doesn't even tells us about OpenGL calls because we have nothing to do with them, the OS passes them through to the GPU in use.

Intel had a bug in their graphics driver for Windows 10 Anniversary Update onwards and indirect displays (a standard Windows feature introduced at the time which includes DisplayLink but also others).
The reason I know is because Microsoft graphics team analysed the issue, and discussed with Intel to fix that bug.
Until then, the workaround was changing the primary display to the onboard display BEFORE starting the application, you will see that suddenly you get it working over DisplayLink screens.

The fix went into Intel 15.60 branch. I would recommend you go to the Intel website, if Dell hasn't validated that driver, you will have to use the ZIP file and update the GPU driver manually.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/dow...ows-15-60-?v=t

Microsoft, DisplayLink and other users tried the previous driver of that branch and reported success.
Would you please be able to try and let me know the result?

Kind regards,
Alban

[pjlbyrne]

Hi Alban,

thanks very much for your analysis. The reference I posted was indeed speculative, thanks for clearing this up for me, what you say makes good sense.

I will certainly try to install the driver you recommend, and tomorrow when I am back at my dock I will check the issue again.

I assume that this driver update will go 'mainline' - ie into future windows updates, and therefore I won't need to install special drivers for this issue in the future. Can you enlighten me on this,

Thanks again,
Patrick

[pjlbyrne]

Hi again,

unfortunately, the device manager install says I 'already have the most up-to-date driver', and also those instructions don't really match for windows 10. It still let me select the 'Graphics' folder for install, but it didn't let me select the files it specified.

any ideas?

Cheers
Patrick

[pjlbyrne]

Hi,

using the slighltly different instructions fow Windows 10 here:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...s-drivers.html

I was able to install the 15.65 graphics driver (seems to be the latest one) and it fixed the issue - even without a reboot.

Thanks very much!
Patrick

[AlbanRampon]

Hello Patrick,

Glad you got it working.
I am not sure why the initial explanations didn't work.

I am unable to tell you if this new driver will get approved by Dell and when.
If you don't experience any issue, I would keep using them. If there is a critical update pushed to the machine, you might have to do the trick again.

Please note that Windows Update uses the DATE, not the version number... So if the driver is replaced by a newer from the wrong branch, you will need to find an even more recent from the correct branch. I'm putting it on this thread for anyone reading in a month or so when this driver number might not be latest anymore.

Kind regards,
Alban