Manjaro sluggish (installed on USB stick)

Hi all,

for testing purposes I installed Manjaro KDE on a Sandisk Cruzer USB stick (64 GB, USB 3, running in a USB 3 Hub without any other devices plugged in) and the whole system behaves quite sluggish. Opening a terminal takes sometimes several seconds, browsing in the the starter menu is also slow and opening Websites as well. This also happens when Firefox is closed.

I already disabled baloo file indexing and it got better, but it is still sluggish and not really usable.
I also switched off compositing without success and reduced swapiness to 1.

A swapfile is also present (only 512 MB ), but that doesnā€™t seem to be the problem. Before switching to Manjaro XFCE or even another distro I want to make sure that itā€™s not just a simple setting which is wrong.

The ISO Image running from a USB 2.0 stick was working fluently, but I can double check this.

System:
  Host: fox Kernel: 5.15.81-1-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.26.4 Distro: Manjaro Linux
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: MSI model: H81M-E34 (MS-7817) v: 3.0
    serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends v: 17.5
    date: 03/30/2015
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Core i5-4460 bits: 64 type: MCP cache:
    L2: 1024 KiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2350 min/max: 800/3400 cores: 1: 1271 2: 1341 3: 3401
    4: 3388
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
    driver: i915 v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.4 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    dri: crocus gpu: i915 resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.2.4 renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW
    GT2)
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  Device-2: BEHRINGER GmbH UMC204HD 192k type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio
  Device-3: AKAI Professional M.I. MPK Mini Mk II type: USB
    driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid
  Sound API: ALSA v: k5.15.81-1-MANJARO running: yes
  Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PipeWire v: 0.3.61 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    driver: r8169
  IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: d8:cb:8a:e8:e9:99
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter type: USB driver: r8152
  IF: enp0s20u10 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full
    mac: 00:e0:4c:00:01:76
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 523.05 GiB used: 25.66 GiB (4.9%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 250GB size: 232.89 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Samsung model: Portable SSD T5
    size: 232.89 GiB
  ID-3: /dev/sdc type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: Ultra size: 57.28 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 55.79 GiB used: 25.66 GiB (46.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdc2
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 299.4 MiB used: 312 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/sdc1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 512 MiB used: 1 MiB (0.2%) file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 31.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 200 Uptime: 54m Memory: 7.21 GiB used: 1.85 GiB (25.7%)
  Shell: Zsh inxi: 3.3.23

Try to have a look at ā€œALMAā€

1 Like

Just to make sure thereā€™s no misunderstanding. I actually installed Manjaro to the USB 3.0 stick, itā€™s not just the image I copied there. Is there any drawback of this method that can explain my issue?

Thanks for helping!

ā€œAlmaā€ is optimized for usage with USB (did you even read it ?)

And:

  • try not to use a USB-hub
  • try other USB-ports
2 Likes

thanks, Iā€™m testing a port. And then Alma.

same issue with plugging it directly to an USB 3 port. :frowning: