It appears that my notebook is slowing down a little. Well … not just a little … but quite a bit. I’m not exactly sure what might be the issue, and it’s certainly proving difficult to track down.
I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux since mid-October and, while I’ve been please with it’s operation for the most part, it’s starting to show some very aggrivating traits. The most aggrivating is the lag when Alt-Tabbing between applications. This used to be instantaneous and painless, regardless of the applications I switched between. However, over the last two weeks there has been a noticable half-to-full second lag when switching. No new software has been installed since the start of December, so I’m a little curious to know what might be causing the slow-down.
Ubuntu, like all Linux variations, does not need to have its hard drive regularily defragmented. Also, considering how there have been no updates or software packages installed in a month and a half, one would think the system’s performance would be just the same. I’ve looked at the processor usage as well as memory consumption and compared it to some earlier notes taken when I was comparing the human-friendly OS with WindowsXP hardware usage, and found that neither the CPU or the RAM was being used any differently. Heck, the only real difference between then and now is that I’m not using my PC 4+ hours a day.
It feels really weird to say that. Just six months ago I would be actively using this machine for at least 16 hours a day, except on weekends … where I’d use it for at least 18. My, how quickly things change when you’re married.
Back on track, though, I’m at a loss for this sudden deceleration in performance. Everything still works as it should, and I’m not losing or missing any information from the drive. That said, perhaps I’ve just become accustomed to the responsiveness of the system and I’m not seeing anything to “wow” me, anymore. This seems to happen after I do any big upgrade on a PC as it’s typically more responsive than the previous system. Unfortunately, after the initial wow-factor wears off, I’m left thinking that the system is slowing down due to some mis-configuration or a potential hardware issue.
Oh well, all in all, I’m still happy with Ubuntu and what it can offer my aging notebook. I just wish that it could still impress me with some of the features and benefits over other OSes.
Do you use Ubuntu? Have you noticed any loss in performance over time?
Actually I found this blog when I tried to find out if someone else experiences the slowdowns with Ubuntu
However, I did install additional software lately and my largest problem was slower start of X. So, as an experienced Windows user, I started moving things out of /etc/init.d/. It seems that removing samba and apache2 helped a bit. At least the last restart seemed a bit shorter than usual.
I’ve made my /etc.init.d/ about as slim as it’ll go before I run into problems, and I’ve also looked at potential problems like a slowly dying hard drive. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the root cause of the slowdown.
When I first started using Ubuntu, the system would boot in 38 seconds. The last time I booted, it took 38 seconds. The boot on my machine is just the same, however, the active use of the OS has changed quite a bit. It leads me to believe that this is either all in my head, or I’m just crazy
Unfortunately, my Linux skills are not yet up to the task of getting to the bottom of this. That said, this has proven to be a great opportunity to learn more about the fundamental workings of the operating system
I came across this site as my notebook began slowing towards the end of a 8 hr period of use .A reboot gave the life back to it .Yet I still wonder. Is it that my Swap is too big? I wonder.
Hmm … without more knowledge about your computer, anything I could think of would be nothing more than wild speculation. Hopefully these slowdowns will be resolved in future releases of Ubuntu
I’ve been noticing slow-downs since version 8.04 and according to this story
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_bench_2008&num=1
it’s been going on since 7.10.
All in all, I think us Linux diehards ought to dig into this a little more and root out the real cause. Do you really want to wait SIX MONTHS for a new release that MIGHT fix the problem?
I don’t have any problems, even not whet I use desktop effects when switching. How much RAM do you have? I have 1G.
I also have a gig of RAM. The issue appears to have been related to my network card, so I’ve gone back to Windows temporarily. I’ll be using Ubuntu exclusively on the Acer Aspire One I plan on buying in a few weeks, though
There is definitely some sort of problem. I get the same thing. This morning I had bookmarks running so slowly, perhaps 0.5-1.0 second to access each submenu. Processor usage was at around 90%. Ram use was only 450MB of 1GB with no swap usage so no problem there.. Also network usage was only low kb/sec. This often happens.
I closed Firefox down and reloaded with exactly the same configuration without any reset of m/c. Processor use was then only running around 50%. No speed problems at all then.
Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox 3.0.5
AMD Sempron 2600+
Dual monitors, one copy of Firefox on each, 6 tabs altogether.
Same problem with Ibex, most probably caused by wireless so nothing much than can be done about it. I have noticed that quitting torrent clients sometime seems to fix the issue for me. Good luck
I noticed that when I turned concurrency on for booting, my computer was significantly slower in operation. I thought at first I might be imagining it, but after turning it off, the computer was operating faster even as I used readahead to profile a boot up.
Hmm … sounds good. I’ll be sure to give this one a try on my AspireOne to see if it speeds things up.
Thanks for the tip.
Give flashblock a try. Flash on linux is a lot more CPU-intensive than on windows.
Besides checking the top CPU consuming processes (top, htop) it may be a good idea to check who uses hard drive. I use simple “iotop” command for that.
In the past I had slow downs with pulse (sound server) & flash plugin. Since then I always uninstall pulse.
You’re right that we should also check to see what’s using up all our IO throughput. Interestingly enough, for the problem I was talking about, the hard drives were barely being touched.
Fortuntely, the problem I had seems to have been resolved with 9.04 and 9.10.