Arch Linux

tzhuang

Member

Registered: 2017-05-23

Posts: 45

[Solved] Chromium browser slow in virtualbox

I am running arch linux in virtualbox and can't seem to figure out why chromium browser is running very slowly. The pages themselves seem to run fairly smoothly once they are loaded, but application start up time, as well tab closing/opening seem to be taking very unresponsive. Not too sure how to begin to trouble shoot. Some initial googling suggested that it might have been a 3D acceleration issue, but turning it on didn't seem to have an effect on the performance.

How can I figure out what the problem is?

Last edited by tzhuang (2017-12-28 03:31:27)

Ben00it

Member

Registered: 2017-09-21

Posts: 9

Re: [Solved] Chromium browser slow in virtualbox

Hi,
If you're on SSD,  tune your elevator=noop kernel parameter.

Last edited by Ben00it (2017-12-19 23:22:18)

faceyneck

Member

Registered: 2017-12-16

Posts: 44

Re: [Solved] Chromium browser slow in virtualbox

Have you loaded it into a RAM disk? That sure helped me out. ANY web browser I use it lightning fast. Check this out:
Setting up RAM Disk for Web Browsers

What's listed above will work with almost any web browser, including Chrome and its derivatives IIRC. Follow it along to the tempfs and read from there.

Also, have you configured your localhost properly? Even when I used Arch Anywhere installer it didn't configure it properly, and it cause my web browser to perform sluggishly, taking about 20 seconds to startup:

Firefox Takes Very Long to Startup

Hope that helps,

Facey

[EDIT]I also thought I'd mention; I'm running Arch in a virtual machine myself, typing you this message right now in Waterfox. I'm using VMWare as it has way way more features but this shouldn't be applicable for something like a web browser. Hope to see you around. Cheers[/EDIT]

Last edited by faceyneck (2017-12-20 00:00:12)

tzhuang

Member

Registered: 2017-05-23

Posts: 45

Re: [Solved] Chromium browser slow in virtualbox

I tried adding elevator=noop to kernel params as well as move cache/profile to RAM to no effect.

I had htop running and noticed that CPU usage spiked to 100% (on all 4 cores) whenever I experienced unresponsiveness (such as application start up and opening new tabs).

tzhuang

Member

Registered: 2017-05-23

Posts: 45

Re: [Solved] Chromium browser slow in virtualbox

Okay, I believe I have resolved the issue.

Hardware acceleration is broken with virtualbox addtitions 5.2. I had previously upgraded to 5.4 and it didn't fix the issue. The problem was that I didn't enable hardware acceleration in my browser (chromium). Upgraded to 5.4 and enabled hw acceleration following instructions here:
https://www.lifewire.com/hardware-accel … me-4125122

Hope this can help someone else.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,435

Re: [Solved] Chromium browser slow in virtualbox

Please mark as [SOLVED] by editing the title in your first post