Many Linux users have noticed that the latest versions of Xojo running on Linux suffer from serious usability issues after they have been in active use for periods of time exceeding one hour or so (depending on how much editing is performed). This is neither dependent on the Linux distribution nor the version of the distribution. It also doesn’t matter if you are running on a standard spinning disk, SSD, or NvME system drive. The only solution to keeping the IDE responsive is to save your project, quit the IDE, and relaunch the IDE as soon as you recognize the slowdown occurring.
There is a “work around” to this - by backing off on the version of the IDE used, and then debugging or building in the current 2019r1.1, you can have both a responsive edit environment and the latest build features.
After many tests using various versions of the Xojo IDE, I’ve determined that the 2018r1.1 release is the most stable recent version on the 7 primary variants of Linux that I normally test on. These include:
- Mint 18.2
- Mint 19.2
- Ubuntu 18.04
- Ubuntu 19.04
- CentOS 7.1
- CentOS 7.6.1810
- Red Hat EL7
- Oracle Linux 7u6
- Fedora 24
- Fedora 30
- OpenSuSE 12
- OpenSuSE Desktop LEAP
- SuSE Enterprise Desktop 15
- SuSE Enterprise Desktop LEAP
- Debian 9
- Arch 08.01
I install both 2018r1.1 and 2019r1.1 onto the machines (don’t forget your plugins!) and then run both IDEs using different Workspaces (you should have at least 8GB of RAM for this). I then perform all of my design and edit operations in 18r1.1 and the do my debug runs and build in 2019r1.1. As I make changes and save in 18r1.1, I use Xojo’s “Revert to saved” file menu option to load the changes into the 19r1.1 IDE. To enable that menu option, I simply move a control on a window by a few pixels. That is enough to cause the IDE to mark the project as dirty and enable to “Revert to saved” menu option.
This workflow allows me to work for many hours under Linux without the need to constantly relaunch the IDE that I’m actually working in every 30 to 60 minutes.
Hopefully this helps some of you, as well.