Sluggishness in 17.2

General Help
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1

Hey everyone, thanks in advance for getting a look.

I've had issues with performance, they're intermittent which leads me to believe some process may be the root cause.

System Info:
Device - Framework 13" Laptop
Mem - 32G
CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 7840u
HD - 1TB
OS - Zorin OS 17.2 Core 64-bit
DE - Gnome
WM - Wayland

So besides issues with a bluetooth headset that I have to constantly uninstall reboot and reinstall to have it work properly, which is extremely annoying, after repair it will work for a few days then suddenly stop working again.

And online-accounts being a complete crapshoot, KeepassXC and GnuCash having databases/files being stored in google drive and Gnome Online-Accounts works terribly to the point of uselessness for these use cases, and hell even email attachments in Gmail via browser always get messed up. Google Drive Ocamlfuse is functional but I fear it may be a culprit to performance. I've disabled it and booted clean and noticed the issue even when not mounted, so I softly ruled this out as the culprit.

My biggest issue is general system responsiveness. I'll be working and then suddenly experience huge and terrible lag spikes in I/O. Typing or mouse movement. Often as I type a letter will infini-spam likeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee thisssssssssssssssssss but much much worse.

I notice the issues in all applications, not limited to browsers, I've hopped from Chromium and FF and have the issue in both, and in things like gnome-term or GEdit.

I thought maybe the displaylink drivers (which is the reason I went with Zorin in the first place, because Display Link has a native deb package) was causing the issue, but I've uninstalled them and reinstalled them many times and noticed the issue even when they were uninstalled. I use a usb-c dock that uses displaylink and it worked great until I started using Linux for home use (I've worked in headless Linux environments for years).

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks!

This was a clean install of 17.2, not an upgrade from a previous version. As I typed the entirety of this post I had no issues, but I was having issues when trying to sign up for this forum not 3 minutes prior.

2

What's your GPU?

3

Welcome to the forum!

First thing I would try is switching from Wayland to X, you can do at the login screen when you're trying to sign in, there should be a cog in the bottom right of the screen, you can click it to select Zorin on X. That would be the first thing I would try.

I've not used displaylink, but I wouldn't be surprised if it mostly works properly on X over wayland. It could also be the case that desiring a newer kernel may assist in some of these issues as well, as I have an AMD laptop that really doesn't like Zorin's default kernel as well.

2 Likes
4

Integrated - AMD® Ryzen 7 7840u w/ radeon 780m graphics × 16

5

I had to run a gambit of like 4 distros in a week because of the damn displaylink. On nearly all of them (Fedora 40, Tumbleweed), I had to specifically set an older kernel. I thought I did so here.

I ruled out the displaylink being the issue because when I apt remove it, the issues persist. But definitely worth a try generally switching to X instead of Wayland

I'll give that a shot for the next couple of days. Thank you!

6

There are two things that when removed, still can cause issues. Hardware compatibility software and VPN software.
This is because they can bring in configuration files that remain after uninstalling the software - and those remaining configurations continue to influence the system.
Have you run

top

in terminal and let that monitor as you work to see if you can spot the culprit in action showing high I/O or CPU? I prefer htop, but either will work.

You might also check the logs

journalctl -f

looking for USB disconnect/reconnect messages.

Wayland compositor issues can cause I/O issues: Have you tried logging in on Zorin on Xorg and testing performance?

Other: You might test using a different (later, in your case) kernel. These can be installed in a variety of ways (TuxInvader, Liqourix, Cappelikan) and we can give a quick set of tips on each method.

Hardware side, nVME drives can show similar I/O issues due to failing SSD; Have you run a S.M.A.R.T. test on any SSD drives you are using, if so?

1 Like
7

Hey I've used top a fair amount, but because I have access to it here, I've been leaning to the System Monitor GUI.

I've noticed a lot of gnome processes at the top, gnome-terminal, gnome-software and other.

The DisplayLink process is definitely at or near the top of the list basically at all times, which is what drove me to remove it, then re-install it. Firefox is usually up there too. as are Isolated Web Co which I looked into and wrote off.

Since switching to Xorg/X11 (at the suggestion of another poster) for the last 48 hours or so I've not had any of the issues I was having. But even on Wayland the issue would come and go, seemingly days apart.

I've not run any tests on the SSD drives, because it was a brand new PC and I'd had distro hopped for a few weeks, and it wasn't until going to a Debian/Ubuntu derivative that I started noticing the issues. But it also wasn't until Zorin that I was able to finally get the DisplayLink package installed and working.

So all signs do indeed seem to point to that as the culprit, specifically when using Wayland... I'm going to stay on X11 for a while, the look is identical as far as I can tell to Wayland, so no real reason to switch back to Wayland I guess.

Thanks for the insights, I was definitely looking into potential Kernel versions, since on Fedora and Tumbleweed I had to downgrade the Kernel in order to have a fighting chance of getting DisplayLink working, Zorin and Ubuntu generally seem to come with an older Kernel by default so I hadn't considered that.

Thanks again!

2 Likes
8

Quick question, please. When you're in X11, do you see glitches with window animations when you minimize and open application windows (e.g., the file manager)? Try doing this with the Desktop button (if you've got it enabled) in the lower right corner. Or your minimize button and the raising windows mouse click (on the taskbar). I'd like to switch to X11, but can't because of the ridiculous glitches I see all the time when handling application windows and minimizing and opening them, etc. It ruins the UX experience completely. I still don't get how and why the Zorin Group released Zorin OS 17 in this state where X11 is unusable. (Sorry, guys! It had to be said.) Thanks.

9

I am not experiencing that at all.

10

Okay, started having issues again. Looked at top, not surprising, gnome-shell is out of control. Which is kind of a bummer, I spend like 90% of my time in terminal.

The CPU spikes above 40%, which I wouldn't think to be an issue considering it's a 16 core CPU, but the sluggishness is cripplingly bad.

Journalctl returns a bunch of failed status logs with respect to gnome-shell, like hundreds of lines per second are being logged:

> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: clutter_text_get_text: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: clutter_text_set_text: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object .Gjs_zorin-printers_zorinos_com_extension_PrintersManager (0x581f2df2e340), has been already disposed — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object .Gjs_zorin-printers_zorinos_com_extension_PrintersManager (0x581f2df2e340), has been already disposed — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object .Gjs_zorin-printers_zorinos_com_extension_PrintersManager (0x581f2df2e340), has been already disposed — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object St.Label (0x581f2bee9190), has been already disposed — impossible to set any property on it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: clutter_text_get_editable: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: == Stack trace for context 0x581f26487170 ==
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #0   7ffef15f2960 b   /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/zorin-printers@zorinos.com/extension.js:190 (66f59331ce0 @ 3000)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #1   7ffef15f2a00 b   self-hosted:632 (2978f90222e0 @ 15)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: == Stack trace for context 0x581f26487170 ==
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #0   7ffef15f2960 b   /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/zorin-printers@zorinos.com/extension.js:191 (66f59331ce0 @ 3022)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #1   7ffef15f2a00 b   self-hosted:632 (2978f90222e0 @ 15)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: == Stack trace for context 0x581f26487170 ==
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #0   7ffef15f2960 b   /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/zorin-printers@zorinos.com/extension.js:193 (66f59331ce0 @ 3182)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #1   7ffef15f2a00 b   self-hosted:632 (2978f90222e0 @ 15)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: == Stack trace for context 0x581f26487170 ==
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #0   7ffef15f1660 b   resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/panelMenu.js:148 (23c297a4ac40 @ 19)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #1   7ffef15f2960 b   /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/zorin-printers@zorinos.com/extension.js:193 (66f59331ce0 @ 3182)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: #2   7ffef15f2a00 b   self-hosted:632 (2978f90222e0 @ 15)
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: clutter_text_get_text: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: clutter_text_set_text: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object .Gjs_zorin-printers_zorinos_com_extension_PrintersManager (0x581f2d2cafd0), has been already disposed — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object .Gjs_zorin-printers_zorinos_com_extension_PrintersManager (0x581f2d2cafd0), has been already disposed — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object .Gjs_zorin-printers_zorinos_com_extension_PrintersManager (0x581f2d2cafd0), has been already disposed — impossible to access it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: Object St.Label (0x581f2e5a3470), has been already disposed — impossible to set any property on it. This might be caused by the object having been destroyed from C code using something such as destroy(), dispose(), or remove() vfuncs.
> Mar 13 20:06:04 dmondragon-fm13amd gnome-shell[1758]: clutter_text_get_editable: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed

I didn't even have gnome-terminal open when I started getting this.

11

I actually had a complete breakdown in performance yesterday, unable to do just about anything, which is odd, because my computer didn't appear to be struggling.

I was able to get a terminal open, and keyboard commands did eventually register after 10-15 seconds of delay. I just kept checking top and using killall --regex to start going down the line and stopping processes. It wasn't until I killed both gnome-shell and gnome-terminal that I was able to get my system back to normal responsiveness.

Checked the journal afterwards and seeing similar logs to the ones above

12

Thanks for replying. Sorry for the late response, too. Hmm. OK. Not sure why it happened to me and not you. We both use AMD graphics. I'm no longer on Zorin (moved to Linux Mint), so I don't know. Again, thanks.

13

Still having sporadic issues. Given the available resources on this machine I'm pretty concerned at how poorly it starts operating from basic tasks...

Between the issues and lack of support I can't say I'm enjoying my experience with Zorin. An 8core 32gig ram system having this poor of a performance is pretty concerning... Is there any troubleshooting steps that can be done here, I'm unclear how to escalate this issue, but I think a how-to forum is not really the best tool for the job here.

14

Do you have a list of the extensions installed/in use in your system currently? You could install Extension Manager and that would list all your extensions and if they're enabled or disabled. This could be a situation in which either an extension is having a bad time or a random other extension could be causing issues depending on which packages get updated or not updated.