[Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

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Greenpalmer

[Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by Greenpalmer » 2014-04-02, 16:17

Hi Access2Godzilla,

I have just started experimenting with Linux and have installed OpenSuse 13.1.

I was delighted to see that my favourite browser for Windows - Pale Moon - has a Linux version and so downloaded and installed it as per the instructions in the wiki.

All went well with the install as sure enough there was Pale Moon in the menu, and when I clicked on it the browser opened.

However, as soon as I clicked on a drop-down menu Pale Moon closed, and when I reopened it it had a box in the middle of the screen saying:

"There was a problem with your session.

Pale Moon is having trouble recovering your windows and tabs. This is usually caused by a recently opened web page.

You can try:

Removing one or more tabs that you think may be causing the problem
Starting an entirely new browsing session"

I've tried this a few times now and it happens whichever drop-down I click, File, View, Tools, whatever.

Any idea what the problem is? Thanks in advance for your help.
Last edited by Greenpalmer on 2014-04-03, 09:31, edited 1 time in total.

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Nigaikaze
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Re: PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by Nigaikaze » 2014-04-02, 21:45

Are you using KDE? I encountered a problem like this on my SolydK system. I had to go to System Settings > Application Appearance > GTK and change "Select a GTK2 Theme" to anything other than "oxygen-gtk" as a workaround.
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Re: PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by Night Wing » 2014-04-02, 21:53

I have the XFCE flavor of SolydX and I also use the oxygen theme. It doesn't affect anything in Pale Moon 24.4.2 and certainly not the behavior being described.
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Re: PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by Nigaikaze » 2014-04-02, 23:32

Night Wing wrote:I have the XFCE flavor of SolydX and I also use the oxygen theme. It doesn't affect anything in Pale Moon 24.4.2 and certainly not the behavior being described.
That's good to hear. I use SolydK more than I use SolydX, and the CPUs in the two SolydX boxes I have are too old to run Pale Moon, so I can't test it on SolydX.

But I have been able to replicate this behavior with Pale Moon on every SolydK box I have, even on a fresh new install, and the only workaround that I've found is to avoid using oxygen-gtk as the GTK2 theme. I believe (more knowledgeable Linux gurus can correct me if I'm wrong) that the gtk2-engines-oxygen package is only used on KDE, not XFCE. I've found comments online about a bug in gtk2-engines-oxygen regarding a "serious crash in many applications like Eclipse, LibreOffice and others, when mouse-over toolbars and menus" which is fixed in gtk2-engines-oxygen version 1.4.2 and up. I'm hoping that the April update pack for SolydK will include a newer version of gtk2-engines-oxygen so I can verify that this behavior is due to that bug.

So Greenpalmer, if you're not using KDE, you can disregard this.
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jumba

Re: PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by jumba » 2014-04-03, 06:26

Post the crash log here, run it from terminal (write palemoon + enter). Then access the menu and copy the output from the terminal window after it has crashed. This should give more hints about the problem.

Greenpalmer

Re: PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by Greenpalmer » 2014-04-03, 09:28

Thank you Nigaikaze, you were 100% right.

I am indeed using KDE, my GTK2 theme was indeed oxygen-gtk and as soon as I changed it everything worked fine.

Thanks to everyone for their help.

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Re: PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by Night Wing » 2014-04-03, 10:39

Greenpalmer wrote:I am indeed using KDE, my GTK2 theme was indeed oxygen-gtk and as soon as I changed it everything worked fine.
If you're a registered member on the SolydXK forums site, you need to get on there and tell the two developers (Schoelje, zerozero) on the forums site this "bug" is affecting the KDE version of SolydK since it's not happening with the XFCE version of SolydX.

They should be able to fix this bug in KDE before the next UP update which is scheduled for SolydXK on April 15.
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Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by Nigaikaze » 2014-04-03, 16:21

@Greenpalmer, you're welcome. Glad to hear it's working for you.

@Night Wing, yes I'm a member of that forum but I doubt there's much that Schoelje & zerozero can do. Greenpalmer encountered this using KDE on OpenSuse, not SolydK. This is looking like a KDE bug, not a SolydK bug, so it will probably have to be fixed upstream by the KDE developers.

Incidentally, I finally had time to try a "fixed" version (1.4.4) of gtk2-engines-oxygen last night and I still had this problem, so the final fix won't be as simple as I hoped.
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TheRealShane

Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by TheRealShane » 2014-05-03, 00:04

I had that problem - but I can't remember which distro it was in!

(Yes. I know).

It wasn't in Mint KDE, because that's on the metal and it happened in a VM. But I've got Mint Cinnamon, Xfce and Mate, and Mageia 4. And I had a couple of Fedoras (Xfce and KDE) and Opensuse all of which I uninstalled (and deleted the isos). Oh, and OpenMandriva (and I've also got Fedora 20 Gnome yet to install). Lot of testing!

Anyway, it worked flawless in all the others. Thing is, bizarre as it might sound, I got the problem to go away, by creeping up on it!

I'd just installed PM and was trying to get into Edit - Preferences, and PM kept closing, the instant I clicked on Edit. I tried clicking other menu bar buttons and same thing. And then I moved the cursor slowly towards the menu bar and this time it didn't close. I also forget which button I opened that time; I believe it was Help, and the menu dropped down and still moving slowly I managed to hover over the menu; clicked an option (probably About) which then executed. So then I tried Edit again and this time and thereafter PM kept running.

I expect I'll re-install them again this weekend just to find out which distro it happened in (since it's so quick in VirtualBox).

Oh yes, installed Kubuntu 14.04, too. That's one I've deleted. Seems to me these days Mint is all but flawless, while the distros I used to really like are really, really crappy now (openSuse, Mandriva, Kubuntu). But I'm OCD enough to download and install them again just to redeem myself for forgetting! Though Sod's Law says it won't happen this time.

Shane

Deslock

Re: PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down Menu

Unread post by Deslock » 2014-05-23, 13:42

Nigaikaze wrote:Are you using KDE? I encountered a problem like this on my SolydK system. I had to go to System Settings > Application Appearance > GTK and change "Select a GTK2 Theme" to anything other than "oxygen-gtk" as a workaround.


I'm using Kubuntu 14.04, and I had the same problem with Pale Moon, and changing the GTK 2 theme to anything other that "Oxygen" works.

drbellerive

Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by drbellerive » 2014-06-04, 05:32

Blue Systems makes a Linux distribution, Netrunner, and has made a Firefox-KDE package the integrates Firefox better into KDE. They also work on a project, kde-gtk-config. I wonder if there might be something in their work that might help with this problem. Perhaps the maintainers of PM for Linux might contact Blue Systems and see if they can offer any assistance. http://www.blue-systems.com/

drbellerive

Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by drbellerive » 2014-06-06, 23:54

There is also a workaround that just changes the gtk theme for Pale Moon.

Run palemoon with this command:
GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/QtCurve/gtk-2.0/gtkrc palemoon

You can use whatever theme you prefer in place of QtCurve.

Edit the KDE menu and change the command line for the Pale Moon menu item to this command.

Seems to work well and leaves the other gtk applications using the theme set in System Settings.

Darrell

wayne128

Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by wayne128 » 2014-06-07, 04:21

drbellerive wrote:There is also a workaround that just changes the gtk theme for Pale Moon.

Run palemoon with this command:
GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/QtCurve/gtk-2.0/gtkrc palemoon

You can use whatever theme you prefer in place of QtCurve.

Edit the KDE menu and change the command line for the Pale Moon menu item to this command.

Seems to work well and leaves the other gtk applications using the theme set in System Settings.

Darrell

Hi Darrell

Thank you for your post.

I just tested with netrunner, rolling release, based on Arch and it is KDE.
wayne@netrunner ~]$ uname -a
Linux netrunner 3.10.37-1-MANJARO #1 SMP Mon Apr 14 22:38:53 UTC 2014 i686 GNU/Linux
[wayne@netrunner ~]$
and Palemoon Linux version 24.6.0 installed without a problem,
but it will disappear when i left click on pulling down menu ..or right click somewhere.

Your code on terminal worked.

drbellerive

Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by drbellerive » 2014-06-13, 06:38

wayne128 wrote: I just tested with netrunner, rolling release, based on Arch and it is KDE.
Netrunner rolling is awesome; it is simlpy the finest distro I have ever used and I've been using linux since KDE was at version 1.0. Of course those who aren't fans of KDE won't find to be to their tastes. ;)

You can use that command in the KDE menu for Pale Moon as well. I added a %u at the end to allow other apps to send a url as a parameter. The command is:
GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/themes/QtCurve/gtk-2.0/gtkrc palemoon %u

I have also set the default browser in system settings --> default applications to "palemoon".

Netrunner preloads firefox when it is started. This can be disabled in System Settings --> Autostart by disabling the script:
/usr/share/netrunner-default-settings/preload.sh

There is also another method of starting palemoon with a different gtk theme outlined in this thread:
http://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php ... oxygen+gtk
I haven't tried it yet, but it may be a better way to workaround the bug.

I do hope someone in the know can make palemoon and oxygen-gtk play nice.

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Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by Antonius32 » 2014-07-02, 21:48

Any chance this GTK issue will be fixed in a future version of PM4Linux, so it will run properly with any distro, without the need for a workaround?
(As long as this isn't fixed, it's kind of hard to recommend PM4Linux to others... :( )
Last edited by Antonius32 on 2014-07-03, 19:35, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by Moonchild » 2014-07-02, 22:20

Well, it's something that is a problem with the underlying Firefox code, and which is apparently considered critical, but not track-worthy because of the small user segment it impacts? There hasn't been any research as to cause so far. See bug #985986. Might want to CC and Vote on that bug if you want to poke the developers @Mozilla versed in that part of the code to have a look at it.
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Re: [Solved] PM for Linux Closes When Clicking on Drop Down

Unread post by Antonius32 » 2014-07-02, 23:26

Moonchild wrote:Might want to CC and Vote on that bug if you want to poke the developers @Mozilla versed in that part of the code to have a look at it.
Alright, I will do that, but I doubt whether one more vote will make it a priority to the developers..

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