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.
Meanwhile i7:
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.
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.
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.
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?
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"
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.
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?