Mendeley Desktop: abnormal resolution appearance, and not completely stopped after quitting

I experience an abnormal resolution appearance of Mendeley Desktop 1.19.8 on my fresh installed Manjaro. The button on its toolbar showed bigger, and the PDF canvas cannot cover all the document. (sorry for I cannot attach any images or links). I also attached the error messages when I run it from terminal.

In addition, after hitting exit/quit button, it won’t completely stopped because it is still appear on process list in task manager, though the mendeley’s window is closed.

There is a newer version of Mendeley Desktop indeed called Mendeley Reference Manager. However, it’s not quite user friendly. Also the performance not as good as Mendeley Desktop.

Please help resolve this problem. Thank you

run from terminal:

   ~  mendeleydesktop                                                  ✔ 
/usr/bin/mendeleydesktop:4: DeprecationWarning: The distutils package is deprecated and slated for removal in Python 3.12. Use setuptools or check PEP 632 for potential alternatives
  import distutils.version
which: no gconftool-2 in (/home/fauzan/.local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin/site_perl:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl)
Unable to find gconftool-2.  The mendeley:// link handler may not be installed correctly.
Mendeley Desktop will run normally. Some Web interactions might not work as expected (e.g. CSL Editor Save).
Install the package gconf2 to fix it. E.g. 'sudo apt-get install gconf2' or 'sudo yum install gconf2'.
/opt/mendeleydesktop/bin/..//bin/install-mendeley-link-handler.sh: line 76: : command not found
/opt/mendeleydesktop/bin/..//bin/install-mendeley-link-handler.sh: line 77: : command not found
Could not find QtWebEngineProcess
[18315:18315:0319/100456.784314:FATAL:zygote_host_impl_linux.cc(182)] Check failed: ReceiveFixedMessage(fds[0], kZygoteBootMessage, sizeof(kZygoteBootMessage), &boot_pid). 
#0 0x7fc234dcb0a5 <unknown>
#1 0x7fc234de0eca <unknown>
#2 0x7fc234423fc3 <unknown>
#3 0x7fc234422c3b <unknown>
#4 0x7fc234423219 <unknown>
#5 0x7fc23406693a <unknown>
#6 0x7fc23406be76 <unknown>
#7 0x7fc233b89600 <unknown>
#8 0x7fc233b8ab25 <unknown>
#9 0x7fc233b1ea61 QtWebEngineCore::BrowserContextAdapter::defaultContext()
#10 0x7fc23ae28218 QWebEngineProfile::defaultProfile()
#11 0x000000863037 MainWindow::setupWebEngine()
#12 0x0000008765f5 MainWindow::MainWindow()
#13 0x00000078e1f3 WidgetFactory::newMainWindow()
#14 0x00000078e314 WidgetFactory::createMainWindow()
#15 0x00000078c5f5 StartupManager::createAndShowMainWindow()
#16 0x00000078dc9f StartupManager::restart()
#17 0x00000077b997 main
#18 0x7fc23163c790 <unknown>
#19 0x7fc23163c84a __libc_start_main
#20 0x00000077f429 _start

Received signal 6
#0 0x7fc234dcb0a5 <unknown>
#1 0x7fc233b0c141 <unknown>
#2 0x7fc234dcb43d <unknown>
#3 0x7fc231651f50 <unknown>
#4 0x7fc2316a08ec <unknown>
#5 0x7fc231651ea8 gsignal
#6 0x7fc23163b53d abort
#7 0x7fc234dcadc5 <unknown>
#8 0x7fc234de11ed <unknown>
#9 0x7fc234423fc3 <unknown>
#10 0x7fc234422c3b <unknown>
#11 0x7fc234423219 <unknown>
#12 0x7fc23406693a <unknown>
#13 0x7fc23406be76 <unknown>
#14 0x7fc233b89600 <unknown>
#15 0x7fc233b8ab25 <unknown>
#16 0x7fc233b1ea61 QtWebEngineCore::BrowserContextAdapter::defaultContext()
#17 0x7fc23ae28218 QWebEngineProfile::defaultProfile()
#18 0x000000863037 MainWindow::setupWebEngine()
#19 0x0000008765f5 MainWindow::MainWindow()
#20 0x00000078e1f3 WidgetFactory::newMainWindow()
#21 0x00000078e314 WidgetFactory::createMainWindow()
#22 0x00000078c5f5 StartupManager::createAndShowMainWindow()
#23 0x00000078dc9f StartupManager::restart()
#24 0x00000077b997 main
#25 0x7fc23163c790 <unknown>
#26 0x7fc23163c84a __libc_start_main
#27 0x00000077f429 _start
  r8: 0000000000000000  r9: 0000000000000020 r10: 0000000000000008 r11: 0000000000000246
 r12: 00007ffc31b3a700 r13: 0000000000000006 r14: 00007ffc31b3a930 r15: 00007ffc31b3b0a0
  di: 000000000000478b  si: 000000000000478b  bp: 00007fc23a849840  bx: 000000000000478b
  dx: 0000000000000006  ax: 0000000000000000  cx: 00007fc2316a08ec  sp: 00007ffc31b3a5c0
  ip: 00007fc2316a08ec efl: 0000000000000246 cgf: 002b000000000033 erf: 0000000000000000
 trp: 0000000000000000 msk: 0000000000000000 cr2: 0000000000000000
[end of stack trace]
Calling _exit(1). Core file will not be generated.

Moderator edit: In the future, please use proper formatting: [HowTo] Post command output and file content as formatted text

Hello @bangudur :wink:

Well, the thing is, It outdated and not supported and the developer given it up. It works until it doesn’t with newer versions of python, for example. There must be a lot of work to be done to let it work.

If you really need this, then I could imagine you would need for example: DistroBox

Here you could use docker images with older distros, let’s say Ubuntu 18.04, install Mendeley Desktop with the deb package and integrate it into your system.

Yes there will be an overhead when using docker and yes, you would need space for a minimal Ubuntu Installation, but at least you can still use your favorite application.

well thanks for the advise. I’ll give it a try