LibreOffice rendering artifacts (horizontal lines/flickering) on Ubuntu with Wayland and AMD Graphics

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Ubuntu Version: 26.04 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable): GNOME (Wayland)

Problem Description: When opening documents (specifically .docx files containing images) in LibreOffice and scrolling through them, the screen exhibits severe rendering artifacts. Horizontal black/gray lines cut through the images, and the text flickers or tears heavily during scrolling.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Open a .docx file containing text and a few images.

  2. Scroll up and down past the images.

  3. Multiple horizontal lines start multiplying and tearing across the document preview.

Relevant System Information:

  • Hardware: HP Pavilion Laptop 15 (AMD Ryzen CPU with Radeon Graphics)

  • Application Version: Native LibreOffice (APT/.deb package)

  • Display Server: Wayland

Screenshot:

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image610×331 41.7 KB

What I’ve Tried:

  1. Checked Expert Configuration → UseSkia option. It was already set to false by default, so Skia rendering was not the culprit.

  2. Tested forcing the GTK3 plugin via terminal (env SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk3 libreoffice), which temporarily stabilized the rendering.

  3. The Permanent Fix: Enablind “Smooth Scrolling” inside LibreOffice settings completely resolved the issue. Turning smooth scrolling ON forces a continuous pixel-by-pixel redraw instead of block jumps, which eliminates the frame-sync tearing with the AMD/Wayland display compositor.

I don’t face this problem using OnlyOffice.

Could you please share what can I do?

Thank you very much!

Best Regards,

Zoran

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Welcome to the Ubuntu Discourse @zoran902

Thank you for providing such a detailed report.

Based on your findings, this does not appear to be related to Skia rendering, since it was already disabled. The fact that the issue occurs specifically while scrolling through DOCX documents containing images, and that it improves when using a different VCL backend, suggests a rendering synchronization problem somewhere between LibreOffice, GTK/Wayland, and the graphics stack.

The most interesting observation is that enabling Smooth Scrolling completely eliminates the artifacts. That strongly indicates the issue is triggered by the way LibreOffice redraws document content during discrete scrolling operations rather than by the document itself.

Since:

  • The problem is reproducible in LibreOffice but not in OnlyOffice,
  • Forcing the GTK3 backend improves stability,
  • Smooth Scrolling resolves the corruption,

This may indicate a rendering synchronization issue during scrolling, possibly related to the LibreOffice VCL backend or its interaction with Wayland.
A few additional things worth testing:

  • Check whether the issue is still present in an X11 session.
  • Test with the latest LibreOffice version available from the upstream packages.
  • Compare GTK3 and GTK4 backends if both are available on your system.
  • Include the output from Help > About LibreOffice (especially the VCL plugin information) if you decide to file a bug report.

For now, keeping Smooth Scrolling enabled seems to be a perfectly reasonable workaround, especially since it completely resolves the visual corruption in your environment.

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Update on the tests:

I tested both suggestions with smooth scrolling disabled to see if changing the backend helps:

  1. Running with GTK4 (SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk4 libreoffice) — Issue persists.

  2. Forcing X11 session via XWayland (GDK_BACKEND=x11 libreoffice) — Issue persists.

Since forcing X11 didn’t change anything, this confirms the bug isn’t strictly a Wayland compositor rendering issue. It seems to be a deeper synchronization problem within the LibreOffice VCL rendering logic itself when handling discrete scrolling events alongside modern AMD Mesa drivers.

For now, keeping Smooth Scrolling ENABLED remains the only viable and 100% effective workaround on Ubuntu 26.04 with AMD graphics.

Help > About LibreOffice

Version: 26.2.4.2 (X86_64)
Build ID: 620(Build:2)
CPU threads: 16; OS: Linux 7.0; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 4:26.2.4.2-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Calc: threaded

Thanks for the guidance! Hopefully, this thread helps the developers pinpoint the VCL regression.

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I’d try the Snap, because it’s supposed to control for the whole environment, so no side effects of some Jave Runtime issues, for instance. Sadly, that also makes the Snap a pretty heavy whopper, but it may be worth a shot to see if the issue persists there too.
I also find it noteworthy that the offical DEB version is newer than the latest/stable Snap (currently 26.2.3.2). Perhaps that warrants a test with the latter as well, in case it’s a regression in 26.2.4.2.
EDIT: A like-for-like comparison is possible with the latest/candidate; I meant to suggest that, but edited and rearranged my post and it fell by the wayside. One doesn’t even need to switch to that channel, if all that is desired is a sneak peek at what’s coming.

sudo snap refresh --hold libreoffice
sudo snap refresh --revision=374 libreoffice

(374 is the the current revision of libreoffice 26.2.4.2 in the latest/candidate channel)

It’s unlikely that they’ll see it here; you should report it:

ubuntu-bug libreoffice
2 Likes
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Hello there,

Thank you very much for the suggestions.

Actually trying the snap is a good approach.

Unfortunately, I have the same issue with the snap version 2.3.2.

1 Like