Internet browsing extremely slow after some KDE Plasmashell release version?

[pemartins]

Weird subject but this happens on my laptop: when I use old versions of Kubuntu, in example containing KDE Plasmashell 5.14.5 or older, my internet browsing is as fast as it should be. All normal in Brave browser (and all other Chromium based browsers) and Firefox.
But at some point when some release of KDE Plasmashell came out, internet browsing in Chromium based browsers and Firefox become a dial-up type of speed. Painfully slow.

The only browsers that have normal fast browsing speed are Seamonkey or Palemoon, which are based in older Firefox versions.

I just tried a new Linux live distro based on Debian Buster out of the box with Plasmashell 5.14.5 and both Brave browser and Firefox work fine and fast. Note that I always try with my profiles and with clean profiles to make sure it ain't some config issue.

Does anyone know something that could be causing this? I know it's vague but that's all I can tell at the moment. Also let me know if I can provide some info or logs or testing or something.

[claydoh]

Plasma itself should have zero effect on internet speeds at all, more likely the newer OS, with different kernels and drivers would be the first place to look for a culprit. None of the Chromium or mozilla based browsers are using anything from Plasma at all.
Are you talking internet connection speed (slow page loads and the like) or problems with the UI in the browsers?
You can do speed tests in the browsers

The only browsers that have normal fast browsing speed are Seamonkey or Palemoon, which are based in older Firefox versions.

This may be a clue

I just tried a new Linux live distro based on Debian Buster out of the box with Plasmashell 5.14.5 and both Brave browser and Firefox work fine and fast.

Also points to a difference in kernels and driver sets on your hardware - Debian is old, relative to Ubuntu, and has a significantly older kernel and driver stack - 4.19 versus 5.8 in 20.10, a couple of years older, or something like that.
Another thing pointing to something hardware specific as opposed to the essentially irrelevant desktop environment.
if it was solely on one type of browser base, I'd suspect that browser being crappy for you, but that does not appears to be the case here.

so....tl;dr , what are you running, hardware-wise?

[dequire]

so...tl;dr , what are you running, hardware-wise?

And this is why you are the man

[pemartins]

Thank you for the help. Here are my specs:

$ inxi -Fz
System:    Kernel: 5.8.0-48-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.19.5 Distro: Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: X55U v: 1.0 serial: <filter> 
         Mobo: ASUSTeK model: X55U v: 1.0 serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: X55U.423 date: 08/06/2013 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 27.2 Wh condition: 28.3/47.5 Wh (60%) 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: AMD E2-1800 APU with Radeon HD Graphics bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 512 KiB 
         Speed: 851 MHz min/max: 850/1700 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 850 2: 851 
Graphics:  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Wrestler [Radeon HD 7340] driver: radeon v: kernel 
         Device-2: Sunplus Innovation Asus Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
         Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: radeon FAILED: ati unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
         resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
         OpenGL: renderer: AMD PALM (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.8.0-48-generic LLVM 11.0.0) v: 3.3 Mesa 20.2.6 
Audio:     Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Wrestler HDMI Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
         Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] FCH Azalia driver: snd_hda_intel 
         Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.8.0-48-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Ralink RT5390 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe driver: rt2800pci 
         IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: <filter> 
         Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet driver: alx 
         IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 159.77 GiB (34.3%) 
         ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST500LM012 HN-M500MBB size: 465.76 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 180.03 GiB used: 159.72 GiB (88.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda8 
Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 3.59 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/sda6 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 56.4 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 58.0 C 
         Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 2800 
Info:      Processes: 177 Uptime: 1h 27m Memory: 3.43 GiB used: 1.43 GiB (41.8%) Shell: Bash inxi: 3.1.07

and here is a report generated by ubuntuforums' wifi script, containing the drivers and stuff:
https://pastebin.com/raw/SR5kkLan

[claydoh]

So, what part of the web browser is slow? the interface, or simply the download speeds?
How much ram do you have?

This part is good, if the stat was taken while using a browser with many tabs open

Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 3.59 GiB [B]used: 0 KiB (0.0%)[/B] dev: /dev/sda6

If the UI is slow when browsing, things like thew mouse, etc and clicking, heavy swap usage might be a cause on this fairly old system, though it is not *that* old, for basic things like web browsing, unless you have many tabs and not a lot of ram. And you would see this outside of the browser.

This may be something, if this is a real issue, and particularly if it is the UI being slow as opposed to the download speeds:

Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: radeon FAILED: ati unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa

But again, this would effect other things besides web browsing.

I have no clue if the wifi script says anything useful or not, might want to post on ubuntuforums in their section for that script.
How about connecting via an ethernet cable, if possible, as a comparison test of the wifi hardware?
Have you done an actual speed test (https://www.speedtest.net/ is one of many )

[pemartins]

Oh sorry I forgot to mention, the web browsing is slow. Page loading and stuff. I open an url and instead of the page just load, it takes like forever for the page to load and finish loading. Something like a flashback to the dial up times

RAM is 4 gb. The swap partition barely gets used at all, for my usage it is enough.

I have no chance to connect to ethernet at this time but I've done it before and the issue remained.

I've had my fair share of issues with network and browsing, been having some real wars like described in this thread.

The speed tests are normal, all as expected.

Do you know if anything changed in recent times (within a year or something) concerning connections and data transfer/loading? It's really weird that this happens, and it started about a year ago or so if I recall correctly.

[jlittle]

I suggest trying a recent Kubuntu iso, to see if the problem occurs. And disabling file search, in case baloo is misbehaving.