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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

I recently installed Arch on some mid 2011 iMac I had that was collecting dust. Things worked well at first but then out of nowhere I noticed many apps take up to 20-30 seconds to launch, this is especially noticeable with thunar, firefox and even trivial things like zenity calendar !

It only really affects the first launch then things go normally, but in worse cases there seems to be some flickering in the GUI, particularly with thunar. While it may not be related, I figured I'd mention it anyway, the browser version of outlook is really laggy. That might be an entirely different issue that can be solved separately.

Many posts I have found on similar subjects hint at xdg-desktop-portal type packages, but none of that is installed in my case.

Other common issue mentioned is a broken .xinitrc, I think mine is correct, for reference :

cat ~/.xinitrc

#!/bin/sh

prefix="/usr"
exec_prefix="${prefix}"
xrdb="xrdb"
xinitdir="/etc/X11/xinit"
xclock="xclock"
xterm="xterm"
twm="twm"
xmodmap="xmodmap"

userresources="$HOME/.Xresources"
usermodmap="$HOME/.Xmodmap"
sysresources="$xinitdir/.Xresources"
sysmodmap="$xinitdir/.Xmodmap"

# merge in defaults and keymaps

if [ -f "$sysresources" ]; then
    if [ -x /usr/bin/cpp ] ; then
        "$xrdb" -merge "$sysresources"
    else
        "$xrdb" -nocpp -merge "$sysresources"
    fi
fi

if [ -f "$sysmodmap" ]; then
    "$xmodmap" "$sysmodmap"
fi

if [ -f "$userresources" ]; then
    if [ -x /usr/bin/cpp ] ; then
        "$xrdb" -merge "$userresources"
    else
        "$xrdb" -nocpp -merge "$userresources"
    fi
fi

if [ -f "$usermodmap" ]; then
    "$xmodmap" "$usermodmap"
fi

# start some nice programs

if [ -d "$xinitdir"/xinitrc.d ] ; then
	for f in "$xinitdir/xinitrc.d"/?*.sh ; do
		[ -x "$f" ] && . "$f"
	done
	unset f
fi



# Make sure this is before the 'exec' command or it won't be sourced.
[ -f /etc/xprofile ] && . /etc/xprofile
[ -f ~/.xprofile ] && . ~/.xprofile



feh --bg-fill stars.jpg
exec i3

Others mention problems with dbus and I fear I don't quite understand how this works, but for reference :

echo $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS

unix:path=/run/user/1000/bus

ps aux | grep dbus

dbus         452  0.0  0.1   9052  4576 ?        Ss   17:53   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-broker-launch --scope system --audit
dbus         453  0.0  0.0   5200  3292 ?        S    17:53   0:00 dbus-broker --log 10 --controller 9 --machine-id 21a01935a7794103bb09159e792c7b4d --max-bytes 536870912 --max-fds 4096 --max-matches 16384 --audit
mike         605  0.0  0.0   8260  3756 ?        Ss   17:53   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-broker-launch --scope user
mike         606  0.0  0.0   4644  2680 ?        S    17:53   0:00 dbus-broker --log 11 --controller 10 --machine-id 21a01935a7794103bb09159e792c7b4d --max-bytes 100000000000000 --max-fds 25000000000000 --max-matches 5000000000
mike         838  0.0  0.0   8260  3648 ?        S    17:53   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-broker-launch --config-file=/usr/share/defaults/at-spi2/accessibility.conf --scope user
mike         839  0.0  0.0   4408  2444 ?        S    17:53   0:00 dbus-broker --log 10 --controller 9 --machine-id 21a01935a7794103bb09159e792c7b4d --max-bytes 100000000000000 --max-fds 6400000 --max-matches 5000000000
mike       30859  0.0  0.1   9396  6460 pts/0    S+   18:27   0:00 grep --color=auto dbus

If any useful, here's output of loginctl session-status :

1 - mike (1000)
  Since: Wed 2025-08-20 17:53:21 EDT; 38min ago
  State: active
 Leader: 537 (login)
   Seat: seat0; vc1
    TTY: tty1
 Remote: no
Service: login
   Type: tty
  Class: user
   Idle: yes since Wed 2025-08-20 17:53:21 EDT (38min ago)
   Unit: session-1.scope
         ├─  537 "login -- mike"
         ├─  555 /bin/sh /usr/bin/startx
         ├─  588 xinit /home/mike/.xinitrc -- /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc :0 vt1 -keeptty -auth /tmp/serverauth.WUmtaZ6UBZ
         ├─  589 /usr/lib/Xorg -nolisten tcp :0 vt1 -keeptty -auth /tmp/serverauth.WUmtaZ6UBZ
         ├─  599 i3
         ├─  607 xcompmgr
         ├─  608 devilspie -a
         ├─  616 i3bar --bar_id=bar-0 --socket=/run/user/1000/i3/ipc-socket.599
         ├─  619 i3blocks -c /home/mike/.config/i3/i3blocks.conf
         ├─ 1032 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
         ├─ 1048 /usr/lib/firefox/crashhelper 1032 9 /tmp/ 10 12
         ├─ 1180 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -ipcHandle 0 -signalPipe 1 -initialChannelId {6cd5bba5-10c8-466c-a15c-29117a16b1a3} -parentPid 1032 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni
.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 1 forkserver
         ├─ 1183 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -prefsHandle 0:39592 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -sandboxReporter 2 -chrootClient 3 -ipcHandle 4 -initialChannelId {5bee40e2-b04c-4400-8675-7ee88
cceeca0} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 5 -crashHelper 6 -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 2 socket"
         ├─ 1260 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:39717 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {d11bfb55-e810-4031-b973-a12b6560f223} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 3 tab"
         ├─ 1279 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -prefsHandle 0:39717 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -sandboxReporter 2 -chrootClient 3 -ipcHandle 4 -initialChannelId {323ac16c-71fb-463d-b7d4-4d225
632539c} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 5 -crashHelper 6 -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 4 rdd"
         ├─ 1379 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:49281 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {4625507a-1c4b-4998-81c5-ab9629372b71} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 5 tab"
         ├─ 1479 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxingKind 0 -prefsHandle 0:50320 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -sandboxReporter 2 -chrootClient 3 -ipcHandle 4 -initialChannelId {8e1d02ac-7c
c7-4c42-b333-3c4592cec9a2} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 5 -crashHelper 6 -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 7 utility"
         ├─ 1733 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:46020 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {937225df-99a5-46a4-ab27-e772866af3ac} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 10 tab"
         ├─14705 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:46127 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {b2377626-271e-4da5-bd68-99c8d4d85a1e} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 23 tab"
         ├─21228 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:46127 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {b0478799-1fab-4616-ba50-5a1f20e70ace} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 29 tab"
         ├─22787 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:46127 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {552ac140-524c-4acc-bafb-219c6ffbfd3e} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 31 tab"
         ├─22841 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:46127 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {5544811f-3828-4f10-98b7-209a7034fa13} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 32 tab"
         ├─23540 xterm
         ├─23542 bash
         ├─24465 "/usr/lib/firefox/firefox -contentproc -isForBrowser -prefsHandle 0:46127 -prefMapHandle 1:273697 -jsInitHandle 2:227036 -parentBuildID 20250819010339 -sandboxReporter 3 -chrootClient 4 -ipcHandle 5 -initialCha
nnelId {3ee058ec-bce9-4ed1-b05c-00ec0b497385} -parentPid 1032 -crashReporter 6 -crashHelper 7 -greomni /usr/lib/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja -appDir /usr/lib/firefox/browser 33 tab"
         ├─34245 loginctl session-status
         └─34246 more

Aug 20 17:53:22 maclinux login[537]: LOGIN ON tty1 BY mike
Aug 20 17:53:22 maclinux systemd[1]: Started Session 1 of User mike.

Output of journalctl -b : here

If anything else is desired, let me know I'll be happy to help
Thank you !

Last edited by fap (2025-08-21 16:33:56)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Please use [code][/code] tags, not "quote" tags. Edit your post in this regard.

There's not much in the journal but you've dhcpcd and systemd-networkd running - chose one, disable the other.
Then I'd replace pulseaudio w/ pipwire-pulse and wireplumber.

If this remains: do you get it when typing "thunar" into an interactive shell?
Does it print any errors?

Broadsword:

strace -tt -f -o /tmp/thunar.strace thunar

---

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Thanks for your response, I edited my first post with code blocks.

As suggested, I disabled systemd-networkd, removed pulseaudio and installed pipewire, pipewire-pulse and wireplumber along with the usual dependencies, then rebooted for good measure.

The slow (first) launch of applications persists, although it feels subjectively faster yet slower than subsequent runs and slower than what I'd expect from my other old laptop experience. Maybe it is what it is, this iMac is not particularly new ...

Executing thunar from terminal is the same behavior, it gives a few warnings :

(thunar:940476): thunar-WARNING **: 12:29:08.343: ThunarThumbnailer: Failed to retrieve supported types: GDBus.Error:org

(thunar:940476): thunar-WARNING **: 12:29:08.903: Thumbnailer Proxy Failed ... starting attempt to re-initialize

(thunar:940476): thunar-WARNING **: 12:29:10.115: ThunarThumbnailer: Failed to retrieve supported types: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name is not activatable

The strace produces a lot of output that I honestly don't know how to audit, here is the output.

Last edited by fap (2025-08-21 17:56:13)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

The strace it only 15s, I'd say after ~10s the GUI should be up.
There no major stalls but everything move at a glacial pace.

slower than subsequent runs

Smells like the disk?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Benchmarking#dd

---

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Oh right the strace got some time information so the "subjectively faster" might turn out to be actually faster.

Once things are in RAM there is another gain for sure.

Benchmarking seemed normal but maybe it is supposed to be better than than.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/home/mike/tempfile bs=1M count=1024 conv=fdatasync,notrunc status=progress

1046478848 bytes (1.0 GB, 998 MiB) copied, 10 s, 105 MB/s1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 10.2953 s, 104 MB/s
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 16.2442 s, 66.1 MB/s

 sudo sh -c "/usr/bin/echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"

 dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024 status=progress

1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB, 1000 MiB) copied, 15 s, 69.9 MB/s
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 15.3509 s, 69.9 MB/s

 dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024 status=progress

149946368 bytes (150 MB, 143 MiB) copied, 2 s, 74.7 MB/s
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 2.58673 s, 415 MB/s

 dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024 status=progress
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 0.107444 s, 10.0 GB/s

 dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024 status=progress
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 0.108462 s, 9.9 GB/s

dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024 status=progress
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB, 1.0 GiB) copied, 0.10838 s, 9.9 GB/s

Last edited by fap (2025-08-22 05:20:34)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Once things are in RAM there is another gain for sure.

Using a stopwatch to rule out subjective feelings: how long does it actually take for a subsequent start of thunar?
Does gtk3-demo start slow?
What about pcmanfm-qt?

---

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Sorry for the late reply, I got busy with work ...

I made some measurements using

 time $command

then closing the GUI as soon as it pops up. There is a bit of error there with reaction time but it should give an order of magnitude. Here is what we get :

time thunar

real    0m5.119s
user    0m0.345s
sys     0m0.062s

time thunar

real    0m1.103s
user    0m0.294s
sys     0m0.032s

time gtk3-demo

real    0m0.996s
user    0m0.308s
sys     0m0.023s

time gtk3-demo

real    0m0.596s
user    0m0.269s
sys     0m0.019s

time pcmanfm-qt

real    0m4.117s
user    0m0.465s
sys     0m0.512s

time pcmanfm-qt

real    0m1.746s
user    0m0.391s
sys     0m0.419s

time firefox

real    0m22.654s
user    0m3.498s
sys     0m0.783s

time firefox

real    0m4.637s
user    0m3.208s
sys     0m0.621s

Unfortunately I do not have such data prior to when I started applying suggested changes, but at least for thunar there seems to be an improvement for the first run. Firefox remains quite slow to launch but this could be a profile/extension thing (I did not bother yet with firefox specifically as I was observing slow launch for other applications). We also notice that the subsequent launch is almost instant. Finally gtk3-demo is always instant, even the first launch.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

If we're taking gtk3-demo as baseline and assume 0.8s go to your reaction thunar goes from 4.9s to 0.3s so down by 95% and none of that is CPU time, so it's some form of IO (disk, network, dbus etc)
If you launch thunar, launch it again (fast) and then drop the FS cache: how does a 3rd start perform?

---

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

From a fresh reboot, I ran thunar 3 times as suggested, dropping cache with (I wasn't sure if I had this one right)

/usr/bin/echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

We then get :

time thunar

real    0m4.862s
user    0m0.356s
sys     0m0.089s

time thunar

real    0m0.715s
user    0m0.279s
sys     0m0.041s

sudo sh -c "/usr/bin/echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches"

time thunar

real    0m6.241s
user    0m0.388s
sys     0m0.098s

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

So it's strictly the disk IO that's causing the slow down, but there're only ~620 openat calls in your strace and only ~430 aren't ENOENT
It kinda looks like the performance breaks down when your $HOME is accessed, encrypted partition?

mount

---

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

I am not sure I understand the all the intricacies of this rather technical subject but it seems entirely plausible that there is something wrong with the disk/partition. However, I don't know how to diagnose and even whether there is something that can be done about it.

Regarding encryption, I do not believe there is any unless it is the default setup from the live install media, and if that is the case the entire thing would be encrypted, not just home. There is a single partition for the linux system that was created with the mac os utility prior to installation that was then formatted to EXT4 (and mounted on /) to carry on with installation, nothing extra beyond that. The EFI partition needs to be mounted during boot loader setup, the other "mac partitions" are never mounted or needed, well not unless I boot mac os ofc ...

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Check https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/SMART
The disk is a spinning HDD?

even trivial things like zenity calendar

Can you run stats and a strace -tt on that?

Also compare pcmanfm-qt and https://github.com/archlinux/aur/tree/qarma-git (Qt zenity clone) behave?
(Me wonders whether this could be gvfs related)

---

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Thanks, I'll have a look at that smart tool when I get some free time (which is lacking these days due to semester being started ;D).

The strace output for zenity --calendar : here

The strace output for qarma --calendar : here

(Both after fresh reboot)

The execution timed in similar fashion as described before (after drop cache) :

time qarma --calendar

real    0m13.097s
user    0m0.201s
sys     0m0.146s

time zenity --calendar

real    0m7.388s
user    0m0.559s
sys     0m0.143s

*EDIT*

Oh I forgot to mention, the disk is indeed spinning hard drive, specs from apple :

2.5 GHz

    500GB (7200 rpm) hard drive

Last edited by fap (2025-08-27 23:21:51)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

It's obviously not related to gtk or gvfs and I assume both behaved much faster w/ the filesystem cached?
So let's see the smartctl data, but it's gonna be a problem w/ the disk. Check your system journal for IO errors.

smartctl -a /dev/sda

will btw. do.

---

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

I took a couple days off for labour's day long weekend, I was back in office today !

So, I ran that command (after installing smartmontools) and at first sight the overall health looks fine, maybe there's something in the fine prints, that's honestly above my pay grade ...

Here is the output

smartctl 7.5 2025-04-30 r5714 [x86_64-linux-6.16.1-arch1-1] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-25, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Caviar Blue (SATA)
Device Model:     WDC WD5000AAKS-402AA0
Serial Number:    WD-WMAWF2245980
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2b16c6165
Firmware Version: 06.01D02
User Capacity:    500,107,862,016 bytes [500 GB]
Sector Size:      512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate:    7200 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database 7.5/5706
ATA Version is:   ATA8-ACS (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 2.6, 3.0 Gb/s
Local Time is:    Tue Sep  2 17:40:40 2025 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82)	Offline data collection activity
					was completed without error.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine completed
					without error or no self-test has ever 
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		( 8400) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					Conveyance Self-test supported.
					Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 ( 100) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0xb037)	SCT Status supported.
					SCT Feature Control supported.
					SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   141   139   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       3950
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   095   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       5771
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   099   099   000    Old_age   Always       -       1092
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   095   095   000    Old_age   Always       -       5765
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       27
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   199   199   000    Old_age   Always       -       5743
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   096   084   000    Old_age   Always       -       47
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x0036   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
 SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

The above only provides legacy SMART information - try 'smartctl -x' for more

*edit 1* yes, whenever things are cached, execution is much faster regardless of program

*edit 2* I figured a new copy of journalctl -b might be desired after some of the changes that were made since (among other things I added a 'rw' parameter in bootloader configuration and created a swapfile), here it is. There are a few "yellow warnings", I am not sure whether there is anything there that needs to be addressed

Last edited by fap (2025-09-02 22:17:15)

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,695

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

Drive is a bit very warm for a spinner (this isn't a notebook, right?) but otherwise looks ok but surprisingly unused (45 days uptime, spun up 5 times per hour on average)
Because of the temperature and the dust collection, have you opened the case and checked it's not literally covered in dust?

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/bonnie++/
https://man.archlinux.org/man/zcav.8

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fap

Member

Registered: 2018-05-16

Posts: 17

Re: Many applications launch slowly (xorg with i3wm)

This is not a laptop, but at the same time, still very close to that as all the hardware is encapsulated within the screen. In that regard, the computer might suffer most of the issues laptop have, including heat and dust accumulation. The computer also have been sitting idle for a good proportion of the time it was powered on so I guess that may also explain low spinning ratios.

In any case, at this stage, it seems the issue is quite likely on the hardware side rather than software and then I guess there is not much more to be said or done. I may try to fiddle with kernel modules/options and see if there is something that improves overall performance (it's all good otherwise except for first launch which is abnormally long). Cleaning accumulated dust would certainly help, but this is the kind of product where this task might be way more tricky than for the usual desktop as there is no obvious lid that can be removed here. I'll see what I can do without breaking even more stuff.

Thank you for your help <3