So I jumped ship from Windows to Kubuntu last night, and It’s mostly been pretty good. However my general performance of the computer has been abysmal. Like it takes upwards of 5 seconds to open anything. All of my hardware seems to be running at max speeds, so I have no idea why it would be so sluggish? It’s as if I’m running on 2gb of ram and a cpu at like 1.5ghz. My specs are:
i7-8700k at 4.7ghz max Amd Rx 6750xt 16gb ram at 3200mhz Linux is on an m.2
Any ideas? This is practically unusable for any normal operations, let alone any gaming.
Update: So it seems like my CPU is being throttled to it’s min of 800mhz because the temp is just below 100c. Not sure why it’s so high because I never got that high even in intensive gaming on Windows
I would start by checking for any sort of errors in your system logs, such as
/var/log/syslog
or usingdmesg -w
. In my experience, Linux is almost universally faster than Windows.When I switched from Windows to Linux I found cockpit-project.org to be a true blessing when troubleshooting. Something about having logs and services in a Web GUI that can be really helpful.
f.e.: https://cockpit-project.org/images/screenshot/journal.webp
Yeah, there’s probably something wrong. This is good advice. Maybe some tool can also do a performance benchmark to find the culprit. I’ve seen a lot of Linux computers. And except for some strange hardware, it’s supposed to be (at least) as fast as anything else.
Except for GNOME cause the DE is essentially a browser engine and CSS themes :)
no, you are wrong about it being slower, and also about it being a browser
Yeah sure, keep working in your delusions.
GNOME Shell is tightly integrated with Mutter, a compositing window manager and Wayland compositor. It is based upon Clutter to provide visual effects and hardware acceleration.[20] According to GNOME Shell maintainer[21] Owen Taylor, it is set up as a Mutter plugin largely written in JavaScript[22] and uses GUI widgets provided by GTK+ version 3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Shell
And yes, GNOME is slower than Windows, KDE and Xfce. Always has been, always will be. It might be polished but it is slow.
where is written that gnome is a browser?, they only use javascript, like they could have used anything else, still don’t make it a browser, or like one
and yes it’s lighter than windows, proved by ubuntu being recomended for lightweight OS(even when they use extensions and Snap), and where i said that it’s lighter than KDE and Xfce for you to bring it up lol
By definition something that executes JS and parses CSS is a browser.
and yes it’s lighter than windows, proved by ubuntu being recomended for lightweight OS
Absolutely not. It gets recommended as a lightweight OS because 1) there are delusional people and 2) if you remove and stop everything on Windows 10 that you don’t it will be faster, way faster than anything running GNOME.
The problem isn’t the OS per si, the problem is the UI. GNOME is SLOW as hell and even if the OS behind it is way more efficient than Windows it will lose against a debloated Windows 10 setup because Window’s UI is fully native and way faster.
By definition something that executes JS and parses CSS is a browser.
This is wrong. A browser parse a html document and construct a DOM, executing JavaScript and CSS are optional. GTK apps don’t have DOM, GTK has ability to parse UI styles from css instead of from XML so styling can be separated from UI definitions. Modern UI toolkits like QT (used extensively by KDE) also have CSS supports.
I agree GNOME is resource heavy however that has nothing to do with Javascript being involved. The James Web Telescope uses Javascript for some of its core functionality (specifically managing its science modules), does that make it a web browser? I personally don’t like GNOME either, but most of it is written in C, it has its own GUI library which is written in C. The Javascript code likely just is used to simplify calling the underlying C functions and CSS is used for customizing the actual UI elements.
You know, it’s not that I don’t like it, but if it was faster things would be better. Even on a 10th-gen i7 with all the RAM launching an App on GNOME is always slower than KDE or Xfce. You feel a slight delay, maybe half a second or so.
To be honest their entire ecosystem is very used friendly and you’re kinda forced into GNOME as most GNOME apps will pull a ton of GNOME components with themselves even if you’re on KDE or others.
I guess excel is also “just a browser” since it can run JS too?
Excel is everything, runs on a Browser, can run a Browser and everything in between :D
Which distribution of Windows would you recommend for this debloated experience?
isn’t that basically what the windows ui is, too?
Absolutely not.
Windows 11’s shell is mostly WebView2.
And you say that because…?
…it’s true?
No it isn’t.
Since you mentioned high cpu temps, do you have a water cooler? It’s possible that the pump is running at a reduced speed or not at all. If it was functioning fine on windows that leads me to believe that it’s not hardware related like some are suggesting.
I do have a AIO radiator. The pump itself is plugged into CHA_FAN1 and shows about 1600RPM, but I don’t remember the normal speeds
Check your motherboards manual, there may be a water cooling pump specific header.
AIOs typically pretend to be a fan and you would only need to use that with a custom loop.
I’ve had a few issues with fan control on AMD hardware. In your motherboards BIOS, try taking all fan control off auto, and set it for full load. In your OS, download Radeon-Control (AMD GPU Fan control) and set it for full load. See if your Temps stay high. I think Kubuntu comes with Fan-GUI (I think that’s what it’s called). Disable it.
With temps that high in Linux and Windows, it almost sounds like the AIO water block is falling off the CPU.
or the pump has failed
This sounds like a hardware problem. Keep in mind that thermal paste doesn’t last forever. I’d rebuild it.
Are you using snaps? Snaps are notorious for God awful performance.
Any Ubuntu affiliated distro is required to use snaps, so Kubuntu will use them. Startup times are terrible, but running performance should be the same.
Another simple distro to try would be either Mint or Pop-OS. Both are still Ubuntu based, but without snaps
Mint’s interface (Cinnamon) is similar to Windows, Pop-OS uses a modified GNome
Fedora KDE is also a great option. Bleeding edge but stable.
Do you use some weird cooling solutions? Drivers may be an issue. The other possibilities I can think of are hardware related.
I agree it sounds like your cooler is failing or not installed correctly.
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Driver support or fan profile maybe?
You didn’t mention what kind of cpu cooler (that I see). Have you checked there is fan spin for cpu fan? Possibly in windows you’ve got software controlling fan speed and that link is missing in Linux so it’s trying to just passively cool it? Even more complicated to diagnose if it’s an aio but could be similar with no pump running.
What i would figure out first is why tf your hardware runs on max all the time.(Maybe a bugged out program?) You can do so via top/htop/btop etc.
Generally I would say the exact opposite is the norm. Every Linux flavor I have tried feels a lot faster than any of its peer windows versions
For me, Garuda Linux with Gnome or KDE felt very laggy. But this experience is old.
But a lot of distros do feel much smoother than Windows for me too.
Honestly it sounds like a slight hardware issue that was made worse by Linux not having hardware modules written by the manufacture
if your CPU is at 100%, running “top” will show you what’s taking CPU time
htop is another good option. And for OP if they aren’t familiar, it’s control-c to exit these little terminal apps.
My current favorite is
btop
. Very nice TUI.Wow, that is nice.
I think pressing Q works too to exit htop.
Lubuntu or xubuntu are quicker (especially on lesser machines), but it does sound like you’ve got cooling issues.
I always find Kde heavy-handed with resources to deliver the GUI.
KDE wouldn’t be slow on the kind of hardware he’s using. I’ve used it on far lower end hardware with no noticeable slowdowns.
Yes, KDE requires hardware accelerated graphics and more memory to run smoothly, but anything built in the last 10y should have no issues meeting those requirements.
I’m not sure about how much up to date Kubuntu’s drivers are but maybe, if the software is at fault, changing to a more bleeding edge distro, like Fedora KDE, would solve this issue with temperature.
The thing I experienced on my laptop was: I used on Linux Max Performance while on windows I let it be the default (balanced or smth I think). The result: my Laptop hit way too often 100°C when playing games that my CPU throttled to 800mhz. It was a quick fix by just using balanced instead so it can decide for itself when to cool a tiny bit to not throttle, like windows.
There are multiple tools to set the Intel Power Management Profile to “Balanced” instead of “Performance”