From the title, I was afraid this was going to be another backdoor.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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I started "experiencing input delay / lag in GNOME" since I first used it. It's normal, every thing you click or type requires a 2s animation to show up, usually rendered with CSS themes. lol
You have to upgrade from that 386DX. I have some spare parts I can send your way.
My i7-6800K disagrees with you. :P
It shouldn't be CPU bound at all. I have a i7-6700k in my server and my vfio desktop (4 cores allocated) with an AMD GPU runs fine. The reason is because it is accelerated though the GPU. If I do something CPU heavy it is a bad experience.
If this is true, there is something wrong with your system.
I have an old Sony vaio laptop with an i5-3210M (early 2012) and it doesn't do that at all.
If this is true, there is something wrong with your system.
No there isn't. This is a thing I've noticed in all GNOME systems, mine or not. What is happening is that you, like many other people, like to watch an animation when you click on something and I like desktop environments that just get shit down and don't get in my way.
Obviously that 2s was an exaggeration, but still it isn't as quick as KDE or Xfce when moving around due to its animations. Even Windows is significantly faster at launching things, minimizing and maximizing windows. macOS adds more animations than GNOME in some things, but it usually doesn't get in the way on the essential things.
Yes, there must be. There's not any discernable delay in typing or anything like that, it's certainly no slower than Plasma when clicking or typing anything, and it's a hell of a lot faster than Windows.
If you are being truthful, you are experiencing some kind of issue.
Can you try Xfce and report back?
I've used XFCE plenty. It's a mixed bag in terms of performance. Most of the time it's quick enough. Gnome definitely feels smoother, due to Wayland support.
Maybe when XFCE finally gets proper Wayland support it'll perform as well as Gnome does.
There’s not any discernable delay in typing
Typing is fine, just minimize a window on GNOME and then to the same on Xfce and you'll see the difference. Xfce = window instantly gone, no special effects. GNOME random minimize / fade animation.
Like others have said, that's not normal
Just because a slight delay doesn't bother you it doesn't mean it isn't there. The first times I used GNOME I actually was convinced it was some issue with my computer / setup. After countless installations on different distros and also dealing with it at work and friend's computers I came to the conclusion that is it slower than Xfce and most likely KDE. There's no way around it.
To be fair, as you said in another comment I don't believe this is CPU bound at all, nor GPU. Multiple machines some Intel with iGPUs others with discrete GPUs, others with AMD, all the same behavior. I'm way more inclined to believe this is an I/O issue above all, GNOME needs to read and load a lot more stuff than Xfce to render any window thus it will be slower.
Anyways, I never experienced this much, but if you google around people that are using older machines say that GNOME is always the slowest thing on those machines. Others such as Xfce they report it as performing better, so if on an old machine the slowdown once using GNOME is noticeable by almost everyone it means it does indeed use more resources. You can throw an i9 to at the issue but the fact is that it will always use more resources no matter of the hardware you have.
In my case I tend to be particular sensible to small delays than you or others but it's there and old machines prove it. It's not that I can't use Gnome ever or it provides the worst desktop experience ever, no, it works fine and can be productive but I notice the delays.
Gnome "performs" just as well as anything else. In fact, it is better than Xfce4 in some ways as it is Wayland based.
I'm not sure why you think gnome is somehow this bloated desktop that lags and is slow. I've been using gnome for quite some time and it has never been what you describe. Gnome isn't any heavier than anything else when it comes to IO. You seem to have just arbitrarily decided that gnome is slow without much in the way of evidence.
Xfce4 is probably going to be lighter weight overall than gnome or KDE. However, it isn't this magical desktop and if your computer is bound up by a drawing text and icons on the display then Xfce4 is not going to help you. KDE and Gnome are both a little ram heavy but that's because they are much bigger desktops.
However, it isn’t this magical desktop and if your computer is bound up by a drawing text and icons on the display then Xfce4 is not going to help you. KDE and Gnome are both a little ram heavy but that’s because they are much bigger desktops.
Exactly, they are bigger thus require more resources and will run slow on older hardware as many people complain. I personally don't feel that GNOME is very noticeable slower but, I do believe there's an extra very short delay when windows are to be drawn, on my main desktop because of it's larger size but due to the fact that everything is forcefully animated. The DE kinda gets in my way with those animations instead of just click > apear like Xfce does.
Xfce4 is a good desktop just like Gnome is a good desktop. They are just different.
You said it wasn't fine. Now you're saying it is?
I started "experiencing input delay / lag in GNOME" since I first used it. It's normal, every thing you click or type requires a 2s animation to show up, usually rendered with CSS themes. lol
So am I to understand that your complaint about Gnome has changed from "I have severe performance issues and input lag, even using a desktop i7" to "minimising has a 0.2 second animation, just as practically every other UX has, and rather than just turn it off, I'm going to argue with people about it online and call the entire project shit"
So am I to understand that your complaint about Gnome has changed from “I have severe performance issues and input lag, even using a desktop i7” to “minimising has a 0.2 second animation, just as practically every other UX has, and rather than just turn it off
No it hasn't. My complaints about GNOME have expanded a bit, just that. The UI is definitely slower than let's say Xfce and to make things even worse adds pointless animations.
and rather than just turn it off
That's the issue, you can't turn off ALL Gnome animations, there's a toggle on settings that reduces about 90% of the nonsense but you'll still get some animations.
Yes it has. First you say the performance is bad and typing is delayed, then you say that's not the case.
I like the animations and I no longer use a 14 year old Thinkpad so the slight difference in performance is a non issue. In fact Gnome performs better now for me than it did 3-4 years ago on identical hardware. If you're having lag while typing you either have an issue with your graphics driver or are using a Core 2 Duo.
Check your CPU usage. If it is spiking your GPU isn't setup correctly.
What system are you on?
GNOME is so buggy and a pile of trash ffs uninstalling
Gnome... buggy?
Look I get that a lot of people have this irrational hateboner for Gnome, I know the workflow is very different from the traditional WinUX, and some people don't like that, but buggy?
Gnome is astonishingly and notoriously stable for being a modern, regularly updated DE that leverages modern Linux stuff like PipeWire, Wayland, portals, etc. It's part of why it's used so extensively in enterprise Linux settings, and part of what made so many distros switch to it over the years. It's not a buggy DE at all.
Also, using Gnome and then seeing someone else have a bug, then dismissing the whole project as a buggy pile of trash and saying it needs to be uninstalled from your system? Lmao come off it.
E: accidentally referred to Gnome as a distro 🤦♀️
I, too, have been a longtime fan of Gnome. It's workflow IMO is quite practical and pleasant to use.
It's doubly more surprising that it's as stable as it is given the trashy language it's written in. No I don't mean C, I mean the GObject piles on top of it.
Gnome is astonishingly and notoriously stable for being a modern DE
Yes, and it also uses web technologies to render themes and has zero sense of usability.
Yes, and it also uses web technologies to render themes
As do other DEs to varying extents, including the other "main" DE, KDE Plasma. I don't really see what your point is there.
and has zero sense of usability.
Heavy disagree. The workflow is amazing. To me, using the Windows UX paradigm is clunky and less usable. Gnome is very, very usable.
Perhaps you mean to say that you don't like it, which is fair enough for your own tastes, but you aren't the arbiter of what's usable and what isn't.
Could I just ask what your point is here? I'm refuting the baseless assertion that Gnome is an extremely buggy DE.
If you don't like the workflow then fair enough, it's certainly quite different from the Windows way of doing things that we're all used to, and you're entitled to your opinion that it's not for you, but I don't see how it's relevant to my comment?
Could I just ask what your point is here? I’m refuting the baseless assertion that Gnome is an extremely buggy DE.
C'mon I never said it was buggy, I just said it was slow. Every other DE typically launches applications faster than GNOME. It also forces pointless animations down people's throat, and no that toggle under settings doesn't remove all animations.
If you don’t like the workflow then fair enough,
It's not about the workflow, GNOME has the potential to be the one and only DE that actually makes it so big companies start developing proprietary applications for Linux without the constant fear of the "floor shifting bellow their feet" making it pointless to develop for Linux. Unfortunately GNOME insists on reinventing the wheel about every two years in the quest for their vision... and we get a perpetually half made DE out of that. The desktop is more than tested and everyone already tried all possible iterations of it, just get over it and so something useful with your funding.
What's the point is in having a well funded team when you want to change network settings and you've to go through three different kinds of UIs and applications all of them with their own particular style? Not even Windows is that bad - at least the old-style Control Panel has all the settings (including very advanced ones) that Linux never managed to get into a SINGLE and CONSISTENT UI. The same applies for a lot of other cases.
GNOME design is mostly okay (from a UI standpoint) but very bad from an UX one. It hides things from you (including the decision of removing desktop icons that could've been simply a toggle like in macOS) and proceeds to work against you by blocking your workflow/actions with graphic animations instead of getting to the results.
To be fair there are other things in GNOME that are just pure crap and application icons are one of them. What Android and iOS (mostly this one) do is have a set of guidelines for application icons so things looks more or less uniform. Android allows for more deviation while iOS doesn't really care it will apply a mask over your icon either way. In GOME, in multiple menus, you get icons larger than others, backgrounds on some and others barely visible. GNOME never tires to get anything uniform and leaves that to themes that will also always fail because they won't have icons for all applications in the world.
Gnome is amazing for me. I don't want a busy desktop I want simple and elegant.
You don't have to like it. There are plenty of other options. Also saying it somehow promotes proprietary software is just downright wrong. You know what promotes proprietary software? People installing proprietary software.
People installing proprietary software.
You are aware that you never got Adobe / MS Office / Autodesk for Linux because Linux is very bad when it comes to supporting developers aren't you? Unlike all other platforms out there you've to deal with multiple DE that are ever changing and half baked. You also have to deal with the lack of proper documentation into APIs and frameworks to make developer's lives easier.
C'mon I never said it was buggy
That's what this comment chain is about, though, which is why I was asking what relevance your opinion that the workflow is bad has.
Unfortunately GNOME insists on reinventing the wheel about every two years
Again with getting further off-topic! What does this have to do with the assertion that Gnome is buggy?
Not that it's even true anyway, it's a total lie. There has been no "reinventing the wheel" since Gnome 3 came out something like 13 years ago — that's quite a while! But feel free to tell me how Gnome has "reinvented the wheel" recently. I'm all ears.
What's the point is in having a well funded team when you want to change network settings and you've to go through three different kinds of UIs
Again, how is this on topic? Did you reply to my initial comment by mistake?
Again, it's not even true. There's one UI in the settings (and across the whole system), I don't know why you're making stuff up?
The rest of your rant seems to be Gnome is inconsistent which is... wow. Gnome is easily the most consistent UX in Linux. Period. Including ChromeOS and Android.
But again, what does that have to do with the assertion that it's buggy?
Bluntly it seems to me like you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder. Maybe some Gnome devs spitroasted your girlfriend, maybe there's just some insecurity and the need to shit on something other people like in order to justify your own choices.
I don't care tbh, I just don't see the relevance of your rants to my comment or even the comment I replied to.
For you, it works fine for me. Also it isn't just web technology
No, but we both know it is a big chunk. It works, and it is mostly fine, but it is certainly slower than Xfce and adds more pain with animations.
If the animations are running slow then your hardware is likely the culprit. Make sure you have a GPU made in the last 10-15 years or so.
I don't deny that Xfce4 is going to be lighter weight but saying it is faster is a stretch.
No, the animations aren't running slower on my hardware than in any other hardware... the issue is that there are animations and those take time to complete.
They shouldn't take time as everyone has pointed out.
Do you use KDE or LXQt?
Mostly GNOME and Xfce depending on the circumstance. KDE is decent and fast but the design is very bad, they've zero sense of proportions and spacing around elements.
Haven't had any acute problems with GNOME in Ubuntu LTS for at least 5 years.
Um, there are legitimate reasons not to like gnome but buggy is not one of them