Hi guys!
I have a problem regarding my laptop.
Upon boot the pc works somewhat fine, but animations and performance in general are a little sluggish, I can’t watch 1080p youtube videos without it lagging and certain programs are just slower than normal. For example, I use GIMP with a graphic tablet for notes when I study and pen input will lag a lot.
The fun thing is, If i suspend the pc and wake it up, even immediatly, all lags and general sluggishness just desappears, youtube videos work fine and so does GIMP and the system feels generally snappier and faster. So I thought that it has something to do with RAM, maybe when I wake up my laptop from sleep a lot of wath it put into RAM remains there, but looking at system monitor before and after suspend doesn’t show more or less ram usage… can’t wrap my head around it!
It’s nothing too serious, it takes like 10 seconds to close and open the laptop lid again, but still it would be even nicer if I didn’t have to do it XD
What do you think about it?
Kernel 5.7 is EOL please upgrade to an LTS or a higher version.
Suspending will swap optional components to the swap file therefore freeing up more RAM of your other applications.
However, this is just pure speculation as you did not provide a free --human before and after suspension or an inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host before and after (as that one provides more detailed information than a simple Fazy)
If you would provide one of the two (free is best) also provide the output of:
for szFile in /proc/*/status ; do
awk '/VmSwap|Name/{printf $2 "\t" $3}END{ print "" }' $szFile
done | sort --key 2 --numeric --reverse | head --lines=25
Oh didn’t notice the Kernel was EOL… should I switch to 5.8.11-1 or 5.4.67-1 (the last LTS in manjaro settings manager)?
Anyway, here’s the output before and after suspend:
Before suspend (it was immediatly after boot, the only thing I opened was the teriminal so I could provide cleaner information)
free --human
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7.7Gi 484Mi 6.4Gi 147Mi 811Mi 6.8Gi
Swap: 3.9Gi 0B 3.9Gi
After suspend
free --human
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7.7Gi 490Mi 6.1Gi 153Mi 1.0Gi 6.8Gi
Swap: 3.9Gi 0B 3.9Gi
I need that when it’s getting slow and laggy! the same with the for szFile in /proc/*/status stuff…
Do that first!
P.S. In the future, when providing code/output, please copy-paste that output in-between 3 backticks ``` at the beginning and end of the code/text so that the output looks like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
instead of like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
(as that makes our life much easier so you get helped more quickly and efficiently)
Well, I installed the kernel 5.4.67-1 LTS (5.8 gave me problems with keyboard and trackpad that I don’t have time to fix today) and it seems like it mitigates the problem.
Essentially: now, right after boot, the system is just a little bit slower than after suspend but it’s a lot better than before, pen input in GIMP doen’t lag so it doesn’t require me to suspend the laptop for it to be usable. Youtube on Chrome still lags a bit untill I suspend, expecially on battery power (but I have TLP installed, so on battery power CPU performance are limited to increase battery life and it sometimes causes youtube videos to be laggy). I’ll still post the outputs though
I need that when it’s getting slow and laggy! the same with the for szFile in /proc/*/status stuff…
The fact is that it lags just after I boot, there is not a particular moment when it becomes laggy… anyway I’ll post the output after using some of the programs that are affected the most by this problem so it can be!
Before suspend
free --human
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7.7Gi 1.3Gi 4.8Gi 388Mi 1.5Gi 5.8Gi
Swap: 3.9Gi 0B 3.9Gi
These outputs are taken after opening chrome, gimp and libreoffice, the programs I use the most and that are somewhat affected by general lag untill I suspen.
As I said before, after the Kernel update GIMP stopped lagging and the system fells better, even if it’s not quite as fast as after I wake it up from sleep!
ps: sorry for the formatting mistakes from the previous post, I used the </> button but didn’t check before posting…
Chrome is a bad choice on yourany hardware: it’s a memory hog! Use Firefox instead…
So no huge memory problems: kernel 5.4 LTS seems to have fixed it.
Meh… No worries.
Looking at all the above, I’ve marked the below answer as the solution to your question as it is by far the best answer you’ll get.
However, if you disagree with my choice, please feel free to take any other answer as the solution to your question or even remove the solution altogether: You are in control! (I just want to avoid even more subjective opinions being posted and confusing you even more)
P.S. In the future, please mark a solution like this:
so that the next person that has the exact same problem you just had will benefit from your post as well as your question will now be in the “solved” status.
Yeah I really should make the switch to Firefox… unfortunatly my University obliges me to use Chrome for anything related to online exams, so I had to use it during the last couple of months…
No problem with the marked solution, it was in fact the solution!
Really thank you for helping out a noob, have a great day!!
I didn’t, mainly because my university, rightfully imo, enforced very strict rules for any exam that we attend from home, so they can be sure that no one cheats. Anyway after what Fabby said I tried using Firefox for a couple of days and noticed a good improvement in performance regarding web related activities, so I made the switch! I’ll still have to use Chrome when attending to exams but I can use whatever browser I want for my daily use and Firefox fits my needs better overall.
And I finally solved all problems regarding Youtube video performance: in chrome, after a lot of messing around, I was able to get ok performance most of the time with occasional video and audio stuttering. In Firefox the simple adding of h264ify returned smooth video and no more audio stuttering… I should have switched a long time ago. Still, I took it as a learning experience!