Audacity freezes at startup and its logo remains frozen in the screen

[steve]

When you try to launch Audacity from a terminal window, what is the full terminal output?

[oliverjames]

When you try to launch Audacity from a terminal window, what is the full terminal output?

This is the full output:
$ audacity

(Audacity:4951): Gtk-WARNING **: 20:48:12.638: gtk_disable_setlocale() must be called before gtk_init()

[steve]

Unfortunately that tells us very little. I had hoped that it had got further than that.

Am I right in thinking that the problem first appeared with Mint 19, and is still a problem with the latest 19.3 version?

[oliverjames]

Unfortunately that tells us very little. I had hoped that it had got further than that.

Am I right in thinking that the problem first appeared with Mint 19, and is still a problem with the latest 19.3 version?

Yes, that's correct. Audacity worked perfectly on Mint xfce 18.3.

[steve]

the problem first appeared with Mint 19, and is still a problem with the latest 19.3 version

Do you know which Ubuntu versions they are based on?

[oliverjames]

the problem first appeared with Mint 19, and is still a problem with the latest 19.3 version

Do you know which Ubuntu versions they are based on?

Linux Mint 19 and 19.3 are based on Ubuntu 18.04. Linux Mint 18.3 is based on Ubuntu 16.04.

[steve]

Linux Mint 19 and 19.3 are based on Ubuntu 18.04. Linux Mint 18.3 is based on Ubuntu 16.04.

Interesting, because Audacity does not have this problem in Ubuntu 16.04 or 18.04 (I've used both, extensively, with Xfce, and no reports from other Ubuntu users. I think this needs to be sorted out by Mint. This appears to be their bug tracker, but it looks like a Mint account is required https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint Perhaps, as part of the Mint community, you could look into that.

[steve]

Just a thought: Do you have both packages installed: "audacity" and "audacity-data"?

[jg1]

Hope this is not too far off topic to be of interest, but given previous posts about kernel versions, I've just done an out-of-the box re-install of Xubuntu 18.04 with kernel 4.15.0-88. Audacity 2.2.1 from the repo starts fine first time but if I close it and want to restart it, it hangs in exactly the way described here for Mint 19.2. I have Audacity on an exactly similar Dell XPS17 machine with kernel 4.15.0-20 and Audacity 2.2.1 works just fine. I also have Xubuntu on another m/c running kernel 4.4.0-174 and another running 5.3.0-40 and both work fine with Audacity 2.2.1. So to me it appears to be a kernel version issue rather than Mint-specific.
The machine running 4.15.0-88 is my preferred m/c for audio editing and up to now it's been AOK. It's due for a software upgrade but I was hoping to wait until 20.04LTS comes along, so I too am looking for a sensible work-around.
jg

[oliverjames]

Just a thought: Do you have both packages installed: "audacity" and "audacity-data"?

Apologies for the delayed reply. Yes I have both packages installed. I tried long and hard to get Audacity to work on this machine running Mint xfce 19.3. I discovered that opening /var/tmp/audacity-richard/ and deleting the lock file would enable me to launch the programme. I tried re-locating the temp file in my home directory, no improvement.

I finally gave up and flashed back my Mint XFCE 19.1 image to find that audacity runs perfectly (kernel 4.15.0-88) Given that Audacity also runs perfectly under Mint xfce 19.3 on my old Asus EEEPC (same kernel) I'm at a loss as to the cause.