Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

anorax · 2014-06-16 10:47:30

Hi,

I've been searching for infos about this for quite some time now but either nobody else has this problem or nobody cares

When installing GNOME 3 on a freshly installed Arch System it's generally running pretty well (ThinkPad T410, Core i5 2.x GHz, 4 GB RAM, NVidia Graphics 256 GB RAM). I'm using NVIDIA's proprietary driver as it seems to be the only way to get rid of screen tearing in desktop compositing and videos.

Now, I'v been observing a minor but annoying issue: Although GNOME's compositor is running absolutely smooth and with a reasonably high FPS count, everytime I launch a rather "big" application like, say Firefox or more generally put, everytime the system is under load the compositor gets stuck for a small amount of time. It skips some frames and when the load is going back down it's running completely smooth again. Interestingly, this is not the case when using Fedora 20 Live which also uses GNOME with the Nouveau driver. Of course, I tested if it's a driver issue but under Arch it makes no difference whether I'm using Nouveau or the prop. driver.
So there must be something, that Fedora does different somewhere in the configurations that enables to run GNOME/Mutter smoothly all the time or at least much smoother than it's the case on my Arch Installation. Has anyone an idea what factors or settings have an influence on this aspect of the graphical performance?

Btw: If I remember correctly I made similar Observations with Arch+KDE4 compared to Kubuntu some time ago but I don't know if that could be the same issue. Additionally, that was on a completely different machine.

Thanks for reading this far

Greetings,

Anorax

Last edited by anorax (2014-06-23 21:41:07)

ooo · 2014-06-16 11:10:57

By "Fedora 20 Live, do you mean that you're running it from removable media, and not as installed on hard drive?
That could make a big difference, or at least it wouldn't be a fair comparison if you haven't installed the OS on exactly the same hardware.

anorax · 2014-06-16 11:22:19

I had it installed to HDD as well as running from USB and from ISO on the hard drive. The issue stays the same. Besides, even when running from USB Fedora showed much less lag in GNOME shell than the one on Arch which of course is installed to hard drive. If there was a difference I'd expect that lags are more likely to occur in Live-Mode running from USB compared to running from hard drive and not the other way round.

Thanks for a quick reaction btw

clfarron4 · 2014-06-16 11:36:01

Doesn't GNOME3 default require 3D acceleration? I would have thought you would get a better experience with the nvidia proprietary driver.

ooo · 2014-06-16 12:28:31

I've actually noticed the same kind of slowdowns you described (UI lags when launching heavy applications like chromium).
I always thought this was inevitable and I didn't it of being such a big deal. Interesting to hear about better performance on fedora.

One thing I noticed improving the situation though, is using -ck/bfs patched kernel, which I cannot use atm because it causes issues with ath9k.

I'm using intel drivers, so if it is the same issue we're experiencing here, it shouldn't be related to gfx drivers.

RJQ · 2014-06-20 21:18:38

I can confirm this too, I don't know how heavy an application must be for this, but definitely Firefox and chromium reproduce this issue, not with "Web", it opens normally, (then is not a browser related problem), LibreOffice is not affected either, so far just the mentioned browsers reproduce it for me.

nonamefantasy · 2014-06-22 09:08:50

One thing I noticed improving the situation though, is using -ck/bfs patched kernel

Yes it is most likely io related. When a program eating all the disk read/write bandtwidth. If you set the ionice level for xorg and maybe for gnome-shell to realtime it will probably solve the issue. Or set firefox to idle. But that can maybe not so good because of firefox responsiveness may can become worse.

anorax · 2014-06-22 14:05:24

I've tried the -ck/bfs Kernel and BFQ IO Scheduler and it seems to indeed improve the issue a bit. But it's really just visible in direct comparison and still not as smooth as under Fedora. Will try playing with ionice levels a bit. Somehow they must have done it at Fedora

Thanks for the replies so far!

nonamefantasy · 2014-06-22 14:44:42

And you can play with the nice (CPU) levels. I am using verynice from aur.

maxmstrmnn430 · 2014-06-23 06:42:22

I experience some stuttering of Gnome Shell animations in relation to Nvidia blob's performance level 0. While level 0 being active the animation opening the Shell stutters. Levels 1 and 2 don't cause that effect. By now I prefer animationless UI.

Another issue I have with Gnome Shell is Firefox being far less responsive than on other desktop environments. Chromium isn't affected.

jasonwryan · 2014-06-23 07:27:15

Not a Sysadmin issue, moving to Apps and DEs...

nonamefantasy · 2014-06-23 08:11:40

maxmstrmnn430 wrote:

with Gnome Shell is Firefox being far less responsive than on other desktop environments. Chromium isn't affected.

Another experience that making me think it must be disk i/o related.

Last edited by nonamefantasy (2014-06-23 08:12:19)

anorax · 2014-06-23 21:39:36

I don't know how they do it but: I just tried "Ubuntu GNOME" and not only does GNOME seem to run even smoother here but they also managed to get rid of (nearly) all tearing artifacts when playing video while using the nouveau driver.
I also noticed that they seem to use the deadline scheduler as default and the "X" process has a ~~cpu~~ IO nice prio of 4. Don't know if that has anything to do with anything but it's what I saw at first glance. Will continue trying Ubuntu GNOME a little longer.

Last edited by anorax (2014-06-23 22:06:22)

nonamefantasy · 2014-06-23 22:03:33

And would suggest linux-ck with bfq. I think it must be cpu and disk access thingy. Good luck and continue reporting back!

Last edited by nonamefantasy (2014-06-24 16:02:10)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-06-16 10:47:30

Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#2 2014-06-16 11:10:57

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#3 2014-06-16 11:22:19

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#4 2014-06-16 11:36:01

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#5 2014-06-16 12:28:31

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#6 2014-06-20 21:18:38

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#7 2014-06-22 09:08:50

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#8 2014-06-22 14:05:24

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#9 2014-06-22 14:44:42

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#10 2014-06-23 06:42:22

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#11 2014-06-23 07:27:15

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#12 2014-06-23 08:11:40

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#13 2014-06-23 21:39:36

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

#14 2014-06-23 22:03:33

Re: Graphical Performance of GNOME 3 under Arch vs Fedora (& Ubuntu GNOME)

Board footer