[opensuse] Extremely slow GUI in SUSE 11.1 on good hardware

Cody Nelson

22 May 2009 22 May '09

16:44

First, I use linux quite a bit as servers at home and work, but has yet to stick as my desktop. Every year I try to use Linux to replace windows, right now using synergy and dual monitors to help facility in transitioning, but right now, I can't even really use the systems because a light load (web surfing) sends the system into a crawl. Doing this at work, and at home. Problem exists on 2 systems Work: P4 3.ghz 1gb ram, used both onboard videocard, and pci nvidia. Slow on both, even with turning off desktop effects and following modifications suggested to fix it. 32bit Suse 11.1 HOme: AMD 64 3200+ (32bit suse) and 1gb RAM, nvidia 6200 AGP. This setup runs games like civ4, farcry, perfectly with winxp, but web surfing and such is to much for it. Web surfing brings the system to a crawl! I see Xorg and firefox (or opera) seam to be eating the cpu time. I can't even scroll up down, but the whole system is suffering under this light load. Webpages visited varies from slashdot/*.google.com/craigslist/ksl/ various comic sites/*.yahoo.com/wikipedia I am a heavy user of tabs, but I have the issue with as little as 3 browser and ~10 tabs total. Suse is setup pretty standard/by the book, with little changes like adding webmin/synergy/nvidia drivers. Thanks, - Cody -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Show replies by date

Heinz Diehl

22 May 22 May

17:23

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Extremely slow GUI in SUSE 11.1 on good hardware

On 22.05.2009, Cody Nelson wrote:

...

Web surfing brings the system to a crawl! I see Xorg and firefox (or opera) seam to be eating the cpu time.

This is often related to Flash. Did you check this out? Do you have Beagle installed?

...

I can't even scroll up down, but the whole system is suffering under this light load.

Could you provide some numbers (vstat, sysstat, top...)? There are a few things which comes to my mind: preempt kernel, filesystem tweaking (noatime, data=writeback, nobarrier etc.), vm tweaking via sysctl.conf, faster harddisks. more memory... In my workingplace, I'm using an old P4 1.8 GHz with 512MB RAM and a 5400rpm harddisk, together with Gnome 2.26 on opensuse 11.0 without any problems. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Cody Nelson

17:46

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Extremely slow GUI in SUSE 11.1 on good hardware

I suspect KDE/xorg to be a culprit with nvidia s drivers and firefox. I saw quite a few people with issues, very little that solved it. Some that I thought helped, but hasn't. I do not have Beagle installed, but after looking at it, may do that for my home server. Like i said, these are basically base installs, one has been up for ~ a week, the other longer, most updates have been done. I know my home system has a notification of an update that I haven't done yet, doing the update now. Other repositories to nvidia (installs itself) and my home PC has videolan. I haven't really done any troubleshooting on my home PC, as I have only been using it for a few days a little. When I say light load, I mean what should be a light load. Computer at home does not have flash, and uses noscript. This is my home system that is not in use, and using blank screen saver. top - 11:28:46 up 13:59, 6 users, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.00 Tasks: 120 total, 2 running, 118 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 2.0%us, 1.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 95.7%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1021568k total, 996764k used, 24804k free, 77632k buffers Swap: 2104472k total, 8k used, 2104464k free, 301540k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 3203 cjne 20 0 534m 283m 32m S 4.7 28.4 47:52.93 firefox 3229 cjne 20 0 155m 5076 3904 S 1.7 0.5 12:25.01 pulseaudio 2259 root 20 0 249m 126m 8244 S 0.3 12.7 2:35.61 Xorg 3137 cjne 20 0 156m 37m 16m S 0.3 3.7 1:10.88 kwin 1 root 20 0 1008 360 308 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.28 init 2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0 4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.22 ksoftirqd/0 5 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.72 events/0 6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper 7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/0 8 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 kblockd/0 9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid 10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify 11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue 12 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kseriod 13 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kondemand/0 The moment I do things with a web browser xorg jumps up(and as expected to some extent so does the browser) Thanks again - Cody On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 11:23 AM, Heinz Diehl wrote:

...

On 22.05.2009, Cody Nelson wrote:

...
Web surfing brings the system to a crawl! I see Xorg and firefox (or opera) seam to be eating the cpu time.

This is often related to Flash. Did you check this out? Do you have Beagle installed?

...
I can't even scroll up down, but the whole system is suffering under this light load.

Could you provide some numbers (vstat, sysstat, top...)?

There are a few things which comes to my mind: preempt kernel, filesystem tweaking (noatime, data=writeback, nobarrier etc.), vm tweaking via sysctl.conf, faster harddisks. more memory...

In my workingplace, I'm using an old P4 1.8 GHz with 512MB RAM and a 5400rpm harddisk, together with Gnome 2.26 on opensuse 11.0 without any problems.

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Clayton

17:29

...

Problem exists on 2 systems Work: P4 3.ghz 1gb ram, used both onboard videocard, and pci nvidia. Slow on both, even with turning off desktop effects and following modifications suggested to fix it. 32bit Suse 11.1 HOme: AMD 64 3200+ (32bit suse) and 1gb RAM, nvidia 6200 AGP. This setup runs games like civ4, farcry, perfectly with winxp, but web surfing and such is to much for it.

Both systems are more than enough to run openSUSE smoothly. The first thing that comes to mind.. Beagle and Nepomuk (if you're running KDE4). These desktop indexers might be the source of the problem. If they are both indexing things, you may see significant performance impact - especially from Nepomuk (Beagle is a LOT better now than it used to be). The impact from indexing (if this is the source of the problem) will be reduced significantly once the initial indexing is complete. Stop the Beagle daemon if it's running, and stop the Nepomuk indexer (if you're using KDE4). Test again and see if you have any performance increase.

...

Web surfing brings the system to a crawl! I see Xorg and firefox (or opera) seam to be eating the cpu time. I can't even scroll up down, but the whole system is suffering under this light load.

Hmmmm... this is on a default 11.1 install? Have you done all updates? Have you added any new repos? Have you installed the community repos and updated from that? C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Charles Philip Chan

18:35

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Extremely slow GUI in SUSE 11.1 on good hardware

Cody Nelson writes:

...

First, I use linux quite a bit as servers at home and work, but has yet to stick as my desktop. Every year I try to use Linux to replace windows, right now using synergy and dual monitors to help facility in transitioning, but right now, I can't even really use the systems because a light load (web surfing) sends the system into a crawl. Doing this at work, and at home.

There is definitely something wrong with your setup. Like others have said, the most likely offender is an indexer such as Beagle or a misbehaving Flash plugin (in the case of Firefox). I am still using a much older 2.4GHz single core Prescott system with 1Gb of RAM which is usually under heavy load (MythTV recording, Mythtranscode transcoding and a compilation going on), yet all my foreground apps are smooth as silk. I can browse the web with Firefox/edit with Emacs while listening to music (mpd) or watch a movie with mplayer with no skipping. Charles -- "Besides, I think [Slackware] sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?" (By Patrick Volkerding)

Cody Nelson

23:27

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Extremely slow GUI in SUSE 11.1 on good hardware

This explains pretty much what I am seeing, and what I have done to at least my work system. And like most others, but did not work.6 http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/402699-firefox-slow-because-xorg.htm... I'm willing to do a complete re-install with someone over IM, if anyone things this will fix it. On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Charles Philip Chan wrote:

...

Cody Nelson writes:

...
First, I use linux quite a bit as servers at home and work, but has yet to stick as my desktop. Every year I try to use Linux to replace windows, right now using synergy and dual monitors to help facility in transitioning, but right now, I can't even really use the systems because a light load (web surfing) sends the system into a crawl. Doing this at work, and at home.

There is definitely something wrong with your setup. Like others have said, the most likely offender is an indexer such as Beagle or a misbehaving Flash plugin (in the case of Firefox). I am still using a much older 2.4GHz single core Prescott system with 1Gb of RAM which is usually under heavy load (MythTV recording, Mythtranscode transcoding and a compilation going on), yet all my foreground apps are smooth as silk. I can browse the web with Firefox/edit with Emacs while listening to music (mpd) or watch a movie with mplayer with no skipping.

Charles

-- "Besides, I think [Slackware] sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?" (By Patrick Volkerding)

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Ed Harrison

23:39

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Extremely slow GUI in SUSE 11.1 on good hardware

Cody Nelson wrote:

...

This explains pretty much what I am seeing, and what I have done to at least my work system. And like most others, but did not work.6

http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/402699-firefox-slow-because-xorg.htm...

I'm willing to do a complete re-install with someone over IM, if anyone things this will fix it.

On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Charles Philip Chan wrote:

...
Cody Nelson writes:

This behavior stopped for only after going to Firefox 3.0.10-1.1-i586 from updates. 11.0 32-bit, 1GB, Nvidia with 256MB. Ed -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Charles Philip Chan

23:48

New subject: [opensuse] Re: Extremely slow GUI in SUSE 11.1 on good hardware

Cody Nelson writes:

...

This explains pretty much what I am seeing, and what I have done to at least my work system. And like most others, but did not work.6

http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/402699-firefox-slow-because-xorg.htm...

Add these: ,---- | Option "UseEvents" "True" | Option "RenderAccel" "True" `---- to the "Screen" section of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and see if things improve for you. Charles -- "It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God." (By Matt Welsh)

Carlos E. R.

20:55

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Friday, 2009-05-22 at 10:44 -0600, Cody Nelson wrote:

...

Problem exists on 2 systems Work: P4 3.ghz 1gb ram, used both onboard videocard, and pci nvidia. Slow on both, even with turning off desktop effects and following modifications suggested to fix it. 32bit Suse 11.1 HOme: AMD 64 3200+ (32bit suse) and 1gb RAM, nvidia 6200 AGP. This setup runs games like civ4, farcry, perfectly with winxp, but web surfing and such is to much for it.

Web surfing brings the system to a crawl! I see Xorg and firefox (or opera) seam to be eating the cpu time. I can't even scroll up down, but the whole system is suffering under this light load.

Webpages visited varies from slashdot/*.google.com/craigslist/ksl/ various comic sites/*.yahoo.com/wikipedia

I have read some reports of firefox slowing systems a lot, after recent updates. It seems related to flash or acrobat plugin. I think I have suffered it viewing some pdf files, so killing acroread solves it, but I'm not clear on it yet. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAkoXEWAACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UyOQCgj3HufnWUSObSukcjbmr+Ftvd PXMAn3Bb+GU6gZiPcWF26+wr6TLqkTyA =FHVF -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

5460

Age (days ago)

5460

Last active (days ago)

List overview

Download

8 comments

6 participants

participants (6)

Carlos E. R.
Charles Philip Chan
Clayton
Cody Nelson
Ed Harrison
Heinz Diehl