System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

JonathanArcher · 2010-04-23 21:00:12

So this is actually a pretty stupid topic, that's why I've put it in the newbie corner, as I have no idea with what information I could supply you with and my question is fairly general, but maybe someone has an idea what's going on...

Anyway, since a few weeks back my system somehow feels less responsive, especially on the console level. I recently switched from KDE over Xmonad to I3 WM, and some weeks ago I have finally uninstalled the last remaining parts of KDE and Xmonad as I only use I3 now. What I mean with less responsive is simply when I run some console application, say alsamixer as example, I can actually see every line of the interface being build up. It is not like that it needs 30 seconds or more to build up, but the delay is really notable. Especially since just a few weeks back it was definetly not like that, anything that I started in the console was just instantly build up, no delay at all.
As this is a laptop, I did not change anything on the hardware and the only major change in my system was the uninstall of KDE and Xmonad. Also maybe completely unrelated I have experienced problems watching some newer flash videos fullscreen which was also fine some weeks ago. But that might also be some new flash version of the videos not running smoothly, maybe?
Top does not show any unusual hungry processes, btw.

Anyways, it is not super slow, but slower and since I know it was different before, I'd like to know what could be the cause.
Any ideas?

thisoldman · 2010-04-23 22:17:48

The kernel was updated around April 8 or 9, the xorg-server package was updated on April 9 or 10. Perhaps your Xorg.0.log holds a clue.

JonathanArcher · 2010-04-27 20:05:04

Hm, I was looking through the Xorg.0.log, but the only errors popping up are with some missing font directories (probably because I copied that part of xorg.conf from somewhere else) and some errors where it cannot autoadd a device as I have deactivated it (reason is that without it my Wacom Graphire tablet is not recognizes properly). Not sure if it's worth to post the whole log here, unless there is something else besides warnings and errors that could help me?

Peanut · 2010-04-27 20:40:28

You could perhaps post Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf to pastebin, and link them here - just in case . One thing worth checking in the log, is what video driver is loaded. If the best video driver available is malfunctioning for some reason, Xorg might have reverted to the vesa driver - which is noticeably slower.

Anyway, since a few weeks back my system somehow feels less responsive, especially on the console level.

Does "console" here refer to a terminal emulator inside of X, or the console entirely outside of X (Ctrl+Alt+F1)?

JonathanArcher · 2010-04-27 21:19:14

Ok, here is the Xorg.0.log:
http://pastebin.org/186083

And the xorg.conf:
http://pastebin.org/186084

Looks like the video driver is loading correctly, right? Oh, and good question, what I meant was actually a terminal emulator inside of X, not outside of X. Performance there is fast as usual. As a terminal emulator I use urxvt, if that matters.

JonathanArcher · 2010-05-01 11:46:29

I'll push this thread one last time.

thisoldman · 2010-05-01 12:08:49

It sounds like you might have a driver problem. I haven't used an ATI card in several years so I'm no help there. You could try the wiki:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI .

Do you have any similar symptoms when you aren't running X? Slow terminal performance, without X, was discussed in this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=96022.

JonathanArcher · 2010-05-02 15:03:07

No, I don't have any problems outside of X. Thats actually how I reassured myself that my computer is not all that slow, all of the fullscreen console applications where I encounter slow buildup in X are showing up instantly when started outside X. Just for reference, I used alsamixer, ncmpcpp and ranger to see that.

Thanks for the hint with the drivers, but I tried all of the options that the wiki mentioned (they were only commented out, had them activated in an earlier time, I guess before auto-detection) and had no increase of speed in the terminals. Also, I can only use the radeon driver and not the radeonhd and I would not like to use the catalyst driver. After all, everything used to be fast just a few weeks ago, so I wouldn't like switching to the proprietary driver just because of that.

correnos · 2010-05-02 22:32:06

Have you noticed anything slow outside of your terminal emulater? If not, it may be a bad 'update' by urxvt crew. Try out xterm/aterm/konsole and see of any of them are also lagging. If they're not, then you'd be better off just using one of them.

JonathanArcher · 2010-05-03 20:40:00

You are right correnos, I tried xterm and it is a lot faster. Still not as fast as it was before I had these problems (although that might be just my subjective impression of it), but much faster.

I found a few old threads here about that issue, I already tried some stuff that didn't work but I am not through all of them, so I will get back to this thread if I can't fix it with the help of the old threads.

correnos · 2010-05-03 20:46:02

But the big thing is have you noticed anything outside of urxvt being slow? If so, it could very well just be something up with urxvt but if not, you have a different problem that should be looked into. I do know that ATI is famously bad at supporting linux in their drivers, and the opensource drivers leave something to be desired (speaking from a few months ago when I was still stuck with one).

JonathanArcher · 2010-05-04 18:51:05

Outside of urxvt and still inside X, not really. Only flash as I said before, but I would rather blame it on flash itself there, because that coincides with every video on youtube that shows the new control interface/buttons in the video. Any other video that still shows the old buttons is fine in fullscreen, only these "new" ones lag then.
Besides urxvt, neither firefox, claws-mail, gimp, inkscape, open-office... seem to be slower, at least I did not notice anything there.

correnos · 2010-05-04 21:35:16

Didn't know the new youtube theme ships with some performance drawbacks... ah well. Guess you just need to find a new terminal emulator. You can set the thread status to solved.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-04-23 21:00:12

System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#2 2010-04-23 22:17:48

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#3 2010-04-27 20:05:04

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#4 2010-04-27 20:40:28

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#5 2010-04-27 21:19:14

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#6 2010-05-01 11:46:29

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#7 2010-05-01 12:08:49

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#8 2010-05-02 15:03:07

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#9 2010-05-02 22:32:06

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#10 2010-05-03 20:40:00

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#11 2010-05-03 20:46:02

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#12 2010-05-04 18:51:05

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

#13 2010-05-04 21:35:16

Re: System less responsive/slower since a few weeks

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