Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

Pawbla · 2014-03-05 18:27:21

So I've been reading a few topics but it never actually addresses what I'm talking about (except for one topic but hardware differs so dunno).
When I open a few apps, GNOME 3 starts getting slow and unresponsive. I can't have C::B (or QtCreator), Chromium and Clementine or it starts getting REALLY slow. I like Gnome 3 and I really, really don't want to switch. There's about 20% of my CPU devoted to Gnome, I don't think that's normal.
Any ideas why it should be consuming so much? Where should I look? What can I configure or trim down to reduce consumption?
I have an Intel Core i3-350M processor (2.2GHz), 4 GB RAM, and an Intel HD Graphics card (that might be a problem from what I'm reading). It's a HP dv6-3225dx laptop.

Thanks a lot for any help in advance.

bbarcher · 2014-03-05 18:56:22

Excluding tearing my ancient system (Intel GM45, 2GHz C2D, 8GB RAM) runs Gnome fine so I think you have a problem with some specific components. Not even necessarily Gnome components. IMHO you should start by running powertop. It will show you >precisely< what utilizes your CPU.

Note 1:
In some case scenarios a process may have low usage value but lots of wakes. AFAIK both indicate CPU use.

Note 2:
Mind the units. There are ms/s and us/s (microseconds)

Also, if you've installed your system on a HDD (not SSD), what is your partitioning setup? Which partition number your partition is, what's its size and what's the disk capacity.

Last edited by bbarcher (2014-03-05 18:59:06)

Pawbla · 2014-03-05 19:10:07

PowerTop has given me problems in the past, but I'll give it a shot when I can switch DE and it starts getting slow.

I have... many partitions. First two are Windows, sda3 is /boot, sda5 is swap, sda6 is / and sda7 is /home.
parted -l:

Model: ATA Hitachi HTS54505 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      32.3kB  206MB   206MB   primary   ntfs            boot
 2      206MB   84.2GB  84.0GB  primary   ntfs
 3      84.2GB  84.7GB  510MB   primary   ext2
 4      84.7GB  500GB   415GB   extended
 5      84.7GB  89.7GB  5001MB  logical   linux-swap(v1)
 6      89.7GB  122GB   32.6GB  logical   ext3
 7      122GB   500GB   378GB   logical   ext3

Last edited by Pawbla (2014-03-05 19:18:51)

ooo · 2014-03-05 19:20:56

Pawbla wrote:

When I open a few apps, GNOME 3 starts getting slow and unresponsive. I can't have C::B (or QtCreator), Chromium and Clementine or it starts getting REALLY slow.

Are you sure you aren't just running out of free RAM and your system starts swapping?

GNOME using 20% of cpu when idle isn't normal though. Did you check journalctl for any warnings/errors?

Pawbla · 2014-03-05 19:33:14

ooo wrote:

Pawbla wrote:
When I open a few apps, GNOME 3 starts getting slow and unresponsive. I can't have C::B (or QtCreator), Chromium and Clementine or it starts getting REALLY slow.
Are you sure you aren't just running out of free RAM and your system starts swapping?
GNOME using 20% of cpu when idle isn't normal though. Did you check journalctl for any warnings/errors?

I usually don't run out of free ram. For some reason usually my processor is crying blood and my RAM is moderately free (although, that might mean it's constantly swapping? I don't know much about swapping, sorry, never understood it well :c).

Now that you mention it, this:

Mar 05 16:26:11 arch-laptop org.freedesktop.Tracker1.Extract[21802]: No accelerated IMDCT transform found
Mar 05 16:27:20 arch-laptop org.freedesktop.Tracker1.Extract[21802]: libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile

But it seems rather unrelated.

Last edited by Pawbla (2014-03-05 19:34:09)

ooo · 2014-03-05 19:44:08

Pawbla wrote:

I usually don't run out of free ram. For some reason usually my processor is crying blood and my RAM is moderately free (although, that might mean it's constantly swapping? I don't know much about swapping, sorry, never understood it well :c).

run 'free -m' when your system starts slowing down to see the situation.

those errors in journal aren't critical in any way.

is gnome-shell the actual process using 20% cpu? does this happen right after startup?

also note that if you're using gnome-system-monitor for monitoring cpu usage, that the rendering of the cpu curve is quite cpu intensive by itself and could take up to 20% on some hardware.

Last edited by ooo (2014-03-05 19:46:49)

bbarcher · 2014-03-05 22:42:09

Pawbla wrote:

PowerTop has given me problems in the past, but I'll give it a shot when I can switch DE and it starts getting slow.
I have... many partitions. First two are Windows, sda3 is /boot, sda5 is swap, sda6 is / and sda7 is /home.
parted -l:
.
.
.

You could use top but powertop gives much better insight. With powertop running you'll be halfway there. Without info from powertop I doubt there will be an effective way to help you. As for the gnome monitor. For the sake of clarity IMO it would be best to shut it down for every case you check and every readouts you make drom top/powertop.

You could also do a quick boot into live media GNOME using e.g. Manjaro.

I really don't think your issue is caused by disk bottleneck. Just wanted to check if you haven't squeezed your linux into a 10GB partition at the end of the disk

Last edited by bbarcher (2014-03-06 08:39:11)

Pawbla · 2014-03-06 17:36:04

bbarcher wrote:

Pawbla wrote:
PowerTop has given me problems in the past, but I'll give it a shot when I can switch DE and it starts getting slow.
I have... many partitions. First two are Windows, sda3 is /boot, sda5 is swap, sda6 is / and sda7 is /home.
parted -l:
.
.
.
You could use top but powertop gives much better insight. With powertop running you'll be halfway there. Without info from powertop I doubt there will be an effective way to help you. As for the gnome monitor. For the sake of clarity IMO it would be best to shut it down for every case you check and every readouts you make drom top/powertop.
You could also do a quick boot into live media GNOME using e.g. Manjaro.
I really don't think your issue is caused by disk bottleneck. Just wanted to check if you haven't squeezed your linux into a 10GB partition at the end of the disk

Yeah I normally use top. However the system usually becomes unresponsive during this issue.

After posting I used powertop to check a few things that were taking just a bit more resources than I'd like and I adjusted them to avoid this. I haven't had this issue happen again since (except if you count while running my own coding mistakes), so I'll be blaming it on Deluge I guess. I thought the thing was light! It was hoarding quite a bit of resources. That's why it doesn't happen all the time I guess, I just never thought Deluge would be to blame. I haven't had gnome-shell taking 20% again - if it ever starts happening again I'll post about it. Dunno if that could be caused by deluge too or if it has to be something from gnome-shell.

Sorry for wasting everyone's time!

Last edited by Pawbla (2014-03-06 17:38:12)

Pawbla · 2014-03-09 16:52:31

Here! It happened again! (Ignore the huge Futoshiki monster please, it doesn't happen only when it's running.)
Top
PowerTop

graysky · 2014-03-09 17:02:46

The real experiment is to compare gnome under that workload to another DE under the same workload. I suggest xfce4.

ooo · 2014-03-09 19:04:33

according to the top screenshot, your RAM is almost full. If you start another memory hungry application on top of that your system will start swapping like crazy, which makes it go sluggish and unresponsive just like you described. If you're getting a lot of HDD activity when it happens, this is probably the case.

If you have toyed with vm.swappiness and set it to a low value, increasing it again could help as your system starts filling the swap earlier resulting in more free RAM. If you haven't changed swappiness, ignore this.

enabling zram could also help, if swapping is really causing your issues.

drakkan · 2014-03-10 01:02:54

this could be a CPU throttling issue, look at /proc/cpuinfo when the problem happen

GoingDown · 2014-03-11 07:02:19

The issue may be that you don't have direct rendering enabled. If not, then Gnome-shell uses CPU to render shell graphic effects, which may affect performance

Check with command:
glxinfo | grep "direct render"

you should see:
direct rendering: Yes

If direct rendering is not enabled, try to install lib32-mesa-libgl:
pacman -S lib32-mesa-libgl

Arch Linux

#1 2014-03-05 18:27:21

Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#2 2014-03-05 18:56:22

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#3 2014-03-05 19:10:07

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#4 2014-03-05 19:20:56

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#5 2014-03-05 19:33:14

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#6 2014-03-05 19:44:08

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#7 2014-03-05 22:42:09

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#8 2014-03-06 17:36:04

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#9 2014-03-09 16:52:31

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#10 2014-03-09 17:02:46

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#11 2014-03-09 19:04:33

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#12 2014-03-10 01:02:54

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

#13 2014-03-11 07:02:19

Re: Making Gnome 3 lighter/faster

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