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    Slowing down to a crawl...

    I've finally decided to get back to work on my shops, so that involves heavy use of the GIMP. However, on my brand-new System76 Kudu Professional laptop, I'm running into a problem my 3-year-old HP dv7 laptop didn't have: SLOWNESS.

    Keep this in mind: I ALWAYS have SeaMonkey running. I almost always have Konsole running. I occasionally have Dolphin running. So, at least, we're talking SM by itself, or SM/Konsole/Dolphin together. Then I open the GIMP. And that's when the painful slowness starts.

    It's beyond slow...beyond exasperating.

    After firing up the GIMP I open 14-16 image files; these are templates I've made; they're all xcf or png files to start with, then the new image is saved as png; the largest is 8400x5600, 200DPI; the remaining files are smaller in terms of their dimensions, but they're 300DPI, not 200. Working with the 8400x5600 image, it's like trying to walk through frozen molasses. If not for the fact that my pointer still moves and/or the clock still works, I'd think the whole system had frozen up.

    Now, if I start fresh, opening the GIMP and nothing else, NO PROBLEM! It's fast and wonderful, as I'm used to. So it's a combination of SM and GIMP, as far as I can tell. But I don't know why. Or what to do about it. Everything's current on this laptop, i.e., all system updates and patches.

    Any ideas? Sure, I've thought about doing it by only having the GIMP running, but that's not how I want to do it, it's not what I'm used to, and it's not what I like!
    Xenix/UNIX user since 1985 | Linux user since 1991 | Was registered Linux user #163544


    #2
    You can use the top command in the terminal to see whats eating up all your resources.

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      #3
      in addition to what @whatthefunk has sead .............dose this happen if you first open GIMP and then open SM ?

      dose it happen if you use a different browser ?

      I'm thinking it's a SM problem .................. do you have a swap partition?

      VINNY
      i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
      16GB RAM
      Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores

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        #4
        You might want to check the "nice"ness of GIMP and speed it up, if the top command doesn't show some indexing or other app eating all your CPU cycles.

        Also, what is really slowing down ... the CPU or the GPU? Turn on KDE's framerate monitor and see what is happening in regards to that.
        "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
        – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

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          #5
          Thanks for the input so far.

          I had already checked top and saw nothing unusual.

          Yes, I have a swap partition.

          I don't think I'm familiar with KDE's framerate monitor, but will be soon.
          Xenix/UNIX user since 1985 | Linux user since 1991 | Was registered Linux user #163544

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            #6
            Okay...this may be resolved. Last night I upgraded SM to its latest version, which was only released two days earlier. And today the problem with the GIMP seems to be over. So I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that's that!
            Xenix/UNIX user since 1985 | Linux user since 1991 | Was registered Linux user #163544

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              #7
              So it turns out I spoke too soon. It was better for a while, but now it's back to slowing down to a crawl. EVERYTHING slows down, to a point where nothing is really usable, unless you're willing to wait ten minutes for a click to register...

              I've looked through Synaptic for "framerate monitor," "framerate," "frame rate monitor," "frame rate," etc., and come up blank. Where is this elusive "framerate monitor" I should run?
              Xenix/UNIX user since 1985 | Linux user since 1991 | Was registered Linux user #163544

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                #8
                On system settings --> Desktop --> ALL effects is an FPS button.

                You could also check the IRQs using itop. It will give you a list of active interrupt requests and you can see which ones are most active.

                EDIT: I couldn't think of the app I wanted to tell you about and did some searching. It is powertop, version 2.5, which is in the repository. There is also a "powertop-1.13", which is not quite as good, IMO.

                It will list the wakeups/sec and other things. One "tab" (it's a console based program) gives you a "Tunables" option. I do not know what turning "bad" settings to "good" will do, but the program allows you to toggle them. The second column gives the events per second.

                Click image for larger version

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                Last edited by GreyGeek; Oct 22, 2014, 12:54 PM.
                "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
                – John F. Kennedy, February 26, 1962.

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                  #9
                  Thanks, GG. I'm giving them all a try right now.
                  Xenix/UNIX user since 1985 | Linux user since 1991 | Was registered Linux user #163544

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