I’m very much new to linux and still learning but it seems like alot of the issue with Qubes and LibreOffice is the fact that dom0 still uses Mesa 23.0.3.
Wondering if this is coming or non priority? It really makes a whole suite of software unusable on newer machines.
How would Mesa in dom0 impact LibreOffice running in an appVM?
Unsure but if you read the thread dom0 being able to use to the correct drivers improves performance and the inability of DRI2 to use xe on my machine is the root of the problem and it seems like the reason it can’t is because Mesa 23 doesn’t support xe.
Anyway the point is that I’m just figure how to make this very simple software usable.
I’m very much a novice and learning a lot. But LibreOffice being unusable on “Qubes certified hardware” seems like it shouldn’t be a thing
I’m on an NV56
Intel Core Ultra 7 155H Arc iGPU
The appVM will fully render each frame, and write the rendered content to a memory area shared with dom0, dom0 reads the frame from memory and displays it using the physical hardware.
It’s similar to how VNC works, where the appVM is the server and dom0 in the client, but runs in memory not over a network.
Unless you have a general issue with your graphics, I think it’s highly unlikely that changing the display driver in dom0 is going to improve your LibreOffice performance.
I recommend, you try it.
I think it might help vms since you are offloading the rendering in dom0 to the GPU which should leave more “headroom” for appvms to render with CPU.
CPU rendering is “expensive”, the more you can offload to GPU the more is left for the rest that needs CPU.
Which has nothing to do with LibreOffice performance, as I said, it would only make sense if you have general issues with your graphics, where you are seeing the same issue with all applications.
You can look at the CPU usage, and easily see if the CPU load in dom0 is the bottleneck.
If LibreOffice is the only applications that isn’t performing, the driver in dom0 is not the most likely issue.
Well to continue on this, I’m not only talking about LibreOffice. For me it’s all qubes applications. I assume Nika has similar issues since we run on the same hardware. So I would say ignore LibreOffice and think of this as a more “global” issue.
Tried most things to get better performance, nothing so far. But @OvalZero did have a point in that our setup does not use the GPU for rendering, while @OvalZero has no issues and is using GPU in dom0 (I think, don’t exactly remember). This is one thing that might cause this, but not confirmed.
I would not get to hung up on LibreOffice especially since the person who created the thread mentioned “new to Linux”. They just don’t know how to talk the lingo, all they notice is issues with the apps they mainly use.
Also would recommend reading the full thread here: LibreOffice on Fedora 41 lags and is sometimes unresponsive - #48 by JocularMarrow . It gives some more context, I think I hinted at more of a global issue. Will try to make it clearer next time.
Funny thing is that the only app that runs well is Mullvad browser, not sure how or why but better then nothing. Still really really struggles with js/css, did not expect that good performance but it’s kinda bad ngl. But typing in editor is impossible, takes like 1 sec before my input catches up with what is being displayed. For me a real blocker to do any development work at all. And yes vim/neovim works fine but I like my zed/vscode (vscode on qubes since zed kinda wants a gpu).
CPU usage not high, would say lower side. Also tried giving more/less RAM, ballooning/not ballooning and played around with cores. Even tried with smt=on (don’t try this, opens up attack surface).