#Ubuntu is surprisingly unresponsive compared to Windows. Launching programs can take 5-10 seconds (with no indication that anything is happening). Resizing a window sometimes resizes the frame and then takes a second to fill in the contents. Even the internet seems slow to respond.
Some of this might be due to the fact that Ubuntu is running off a physical hard drive while Windows was running off an SSD, but that doesn't seem sufficient to explain it.
I would have expected to get *more* performance without Microsoft constantly uploading data. Does this match anyone else's experience? Any ideas?
@peterdrake Something seems way off there; possibly a video driver issue. While running on a rotational drive will certainly be slower than solid state, in my experience a Linux distro on a rotational is about as responsive as Winblows on a solid state.
If you're running an nvidia graphics card, make sure you're running their driver. I've encountered this behaviour with nvidia cards without their driver blob running.
@cdp1337 I just downloaded fresh drivers from NVIDIA.
@peterdrake Failing drive then? `smartctl --all /dev/hda` (or similar drive path), could provide some details.
If the drive is getting old and is starting to fail, that can result in slow head scan times. Smart can provide you with some internal metrics about the drive.
Another issue I've ran into is swapping. If your OS is trying to copy memory over to swap, that will also hinder system performance.
`sudo iotop`, `top`, and the System Monitor GUI application can provide some hints about what's using resources.
@cdp1337 I have no program called smartctl.
The hard drive isn't that old (and hasn't been heavily used), so I doubt that's the problem.
Nothing sticks out from top or iotop.
@peterdrake `smartctl` is provided via the package smartmontools.
It could just be that all the recent work on various packages don't play nicely with rotational drives anymore... I dunno. It's been a good number of years since I ran any OS on rotational drives, (the only use I have of them anymore are archive drives for a NAS).
@peterdrake The difference between hdd and ssd can be huge. In addition Ubuntu uses mainly snaps these days which can be pretty slow.
Do you have lots of data? Then maybe tracker (gnome) or baloo (kde) are indexing which can lead to io-problems while they are indexing. I have pretty bad experiences with baloo.
How proficient are with Linux? If you know a bit more, you could use top or “vmstat 1” to see where the performance problems come from. If it is io-wait you could install
@peterdrake “iotop” to see what is eating up the IO.
Otherwise top or htop (top might already be installed, htop has usually to be installed) will already help to see what is eating up CPU or RAM.
@nielsk My Linux skills are ... extremely rusty. I've probably got some reading to do.
I don't have a lot of files yet, if that's what you mean by "data".
I do know that I'm using gnome.
Nothing jumps out as egregious when I run top or iotop.
@peterdrake Hm…next idea would be for me to follow the snap-theory. That would mean check if a slow starting app is installed as snap and if yes, see if you can install it as a “normal” application via apt-get. Uninstall the snap, install the normal application and see if it is faster. Tbh here I don’t know a lot of Ubuntu because I run usually other distributions.
@nielsk I'll be on the lookout for apps that are consistently slow. If I find a reproducible problem, I'll explore this. Thanks!
@peterdrake Otherwise “dmesg -t” or journalctl might help to see if anything throws errrors.
@peterdrake For a more fair comparison, you should probably use... Literally any other distro. Ubuntu is the only one that insists on using snaps to distribute desktop applications, and one of the major downsides is that they're really slow to launch.
That, and of course HDD vs SSD is going to contribute as well.
As for the true question, if Windows would actually be faster or slower than Linux in an Apples-to-apples comparison, I don't know. Linux would probably win on weaker hardware.
@mekuso I appreciate the advice, but this is exactly what I was hoping to avoid.
Web: Interested in trying Linux? Ubuntu is a good choice for beginners. It's easy to set up and has reasonable defaults.
Experts (in unison): Oh god, anything but that!
30-hour rabbit hole: You should really be using the Svirfneblin distribution. It's still in beta, but if you just recompile the kernel...
I want the least needy OS.
@peterdrake I'm curious who recommended Ubuntu to you. It used to be the most beginner friendly but that was many years ago. That said, it's not exactly a bad distro. It's just that for the very specific matter of how fast desktop applications launch, Ubuntu is not representative of Linux in general, it's lagging behind everyone else significantly.
Most seem to recommend Linux Mint for beginners now, and that's something I can very much get behind. But it's just one of many good options.
@mekuso It's at least on the list here:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-linux-desktops-for-beginners/
It's #1 here:
https://itsfoss.com/best-linux-beginners/
It's also what we use in our Linux CS teaching lab; consistency is worth something.
@peterdrake I don't know, I've had a pretty big difference between a HDD and an SSD as well when it comes to responsiveness.
@peterdrake Slow desktop drawing could be GPU related. What type of machine is it? Specs?
@popey It's a Corsair One. Intel i7 (12 cores), GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
It's lightning-fast under Windows.
@peterdrake I wonder if you have the binary nvidia driver installed or not? There's an application called "Ubuntu drivers" which you can use to install them. Once done, reboot, and then login with an Xorg session (click cog in bottom right of login screen). Suspect it will make a difference
@popey $ sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
All the available drivers are already installed.
(And why on earth wouldn't Ubuntu have installed them when I installed it ten days ago?)
Some variant of "the graphics system is confused" does sound like a reasonable hypothesis. I'll reboot and see if I can find that cog...
@popey I see no such cog, but does this mean I'm already in xorg?
$ ls -l /usr/share/xsessions
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 292 Apr 7 2022 ubuntu.desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 300 Apr 7 2022 ubuntu-xorg.desktop
@peterdrake env | grep SESS
@popey I don't understand what you're saying / asking, but here's the output:
$ env | grep SESS
SESSION_MANAGER=local/CORSAIR-ONE:@/tmp/.ICE-unix/1673,unix/CORSAIR-ONE:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1673
GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=this-is-deprecated
GNOME_SHELL_SESSION_MODE=ubuntu
DESKTOP_SESSION=ubuntu
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=ubuntu
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11
XDG_SESSION_CLASS=user
GDMSESSION=ubuntu
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/1000/bus
@peterdrake session type x11 is xorg as opposed to wayland so it’s not that.
@peterdrake Look in Settings->About at the Display entry. If you see something about "llvmpipe" and not X11 or Wayland, then all the display work is being handled by the CPU, not the GPU. That could account for the laggard screen responses.
(I can't offer a fix, especially for Nvidia.)
@Corb_The_Lesser There is no "Display" entry, but under "Graphics" it says:
NVIDIA Corporation GP102 [GeForce GTX 1080 Ti]
Windowing System says X11.
Within Software & Updates, it thinks I'm using the right driver:
@peterdrake Imo, the difference between SSD and HDD really can be that huge.