LXDE mint12 High CPU usage

[Keoh]

ok i tried the new LXDE mint12 very stable but running only firefox with one window open the CPU was running at 43 % and thats way to high and hot for a operating system and thats right out of the box without changes my crunchbang is less than half of that

[yeti]

@ Keoh

I have complained elsewhere on this forum about FireFox using too much cpu.

In my case I often see the cpu go to a max, and the OS freeze for a short time
as I surf around the internet.
I notice this not just with Mint 12, but with other LXDE LiveUSBs, and
with IceWeasel as well as FireFox.

It feels like this problem has been creeping up on us with later
kernels and/or later versions of FireFox, but I have no data to prove this.
I don't remember this problem being in evidence say this time last year.

It is also the case that there seems to be a higher ambient level of cpu activity.
This could be flash I suppose.

[Troken]

I experience the same thing - without any applications running. After startup the CPU runs high all the time, at least at 60%, which makes the laptop fan run after a couple of minutes. Its a fresh install without any additional software installed. Im not sure I want this on a LXDE-system.

Any ideas what might be going on?

Its on an IBM Thinkpad r51.

[nunol]

I experience the same thing - without any applications running. After startup the CPU runs high all the time, at least at 60%, which makes the laptop fan run after a couple of minutes. Its a fresh install without any additional software installed. Im not sure I want this on a LXDE-system.

Any ideas what might be going on?

Use top to see what is eating the CPU, maybe it's something you don't need.

[Troken]

Use top to see what is eating the CPU, maybe it's something you don't need.

This is surprising, but it seems that LXtask won't sink below 50%, it goes between 50-74%. Other applications are normal as far as I can see.

[nunol]

That is probably a problem with LXtask, try to logout and login with Openbox do see if everything is ok. Make sure you have all updates.

[Troken]

I'll try Openbox but can it be due to the fact that the CPU is a 1.5-GHz Pentium M 715?

[nunol]

That CPU should be enough to run LXDE fine, something is wrong with your install.

[Troken]

Did a fresh install, whole HD, no special settings or configuration, just the ordinary basic install. Ah, well, I might try it again. Thank you for your help though!

[Troken]

OK, I have tested with Fedora LXDE live, Mint 12 LXDE live and now Mint 11 LXDE live. There is definitely something wrong with LXTask in Mint 12 LXDE, because the other to distros show normal CPU load on LXTask, while Mint 12 LXDE have high load as described previously. Im just saying, but I will probably go for Mint 11 LXDE now, until this is resolved.

[GreatDanton]

If i were at your place i will install linux xubuntu. Previous operating system on my old laptop (dell inspiron 1100) was windows xp profesional, then linux mint lxde 12 (with mint i had many problems), and now i have linux xubuntu 10.04.

I can proudly say that now everything on my computer is running just fine. Even youtube is working but you have to add a couple scripts.
Hope this help

G.D

[jcgr11]

OK, I have tested with Fedora LXDE live, Mint 12 LXDE live and now Mint 11 LXDE live. There is definitely something wrong with LXTask in Mint 12 LXDE, because the other to distros show normal CPU load on LXTask, while Mint 12 LXDE have high load as described previously. Im just saying, but I will probably go for Mint 11 LXDE now, until this is resolved.

I had the same exact problem on my freshly installed Mint 12 LXDE.
The problem went away after I changed the widget theme in "customize look and feel" with a theme that does not have an animated "loading bar". I'm currently using Carbon.
Now the CPU usage is about ~1% for LXTask.

[gosa]

I had the same exact problem on my freshly installed Mint 12 LXDE.
The problem went away after I changed the widget theme in "customize look and feel" with a theme that does not have an animated "loading bar". I'm currently using Carbon.
Now the CPU usage is about ~1% for LXTask.

I'll be d....

- I'm so glad I passed by this thread a couple of days ago, so I knew where to turn when I realized I had the same problem with my install. Running it on a netbook with a 1,6GHz Atom processor and felt kind of horrible looking at the cpu usage that were going between 70-80% with Firefox running, and at 30-40% at "idle" - with no programs running. (not exactly what I would call "idle", pero bueno...)

Anyway - looked at "top" and found that LXtask was the cause for me too, so I followed your advice and changed the theme.
- The CPU usage went down to around 5% in a couple of seconds...

Thanks for the suggestion!

/gosa

[Troken]

I had the same exact problem on my freshly installed Mint 12 LXDE.
The problem went away after I changed the widget theme in "customize look and feel" with a theme that does not have an animated "loading bar". I'm currently using Carbon.
Now the CPU usage is about ~1% for LXTask.

Thank you, you are absolutely right that is has something to do with the widget, but according to my tests it is not due to an animated "loading bar", but there is something wrong only with the default Mint-Z. All other widgets (including the ones with animated loading bar) make the CPU load much better. Can somebody confirm this?

EDIT: It seems there are different CPU load for different widgets, but so far Mint-Z gives the heaviest CPU load.

[Lanzaman]

I sure am glad I found these postings (which I did only after several attempts to find an answer to the problem of the high cpu usage with Mint 12 LXDE).

On idle my Acer One's absolute minimum cpu usage was 35% causing high temperatures (as stated by others). I had spent some considerable time getting Mint 12 set up as I wanted it but I was very reluctantly right on the verge of changing back to Mint 11 LXDE. This uses 10% CPU and 260MB in idle so I felt I had little choice but to revert but decided to make one last attempt to find something out and bingo, up came these postings! Interestingly memory on Mint 12 LXDE was and still is only 195 MB, rather lower than mint 11 but that might be because I have removed as much unwanted stuff as I feel able to (I'm still a bit of a newbie).

Made the changes exactly as said and instantly the cpu usage on idle dropped to 2%. It seems to me therefore that there is definately something wrong with the default lxtask setting and I think the team need to investigate and get it sorted.

However now it's fixed let's hope it's all's well that ends well and MINT 12 LXDE remains fantasic!

BFN Lanzaman

[nunol]

Your RAM usage is still to high for idle after boot, you are probably counting programs/services RAM usage + cache + buffers. See www.linuxatemyram.com for more info.

If you want to know what else you can remove to save some more RAM take a look at the PDF in this post: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=96465

It's not the first time a Mint theme uses a lot of CPU on some computers and probably not the last:
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=71048
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=69645

[Troken]

It's not the first time a Mint theme uses a lot of CPU on some computers and probably not the last:
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=71048
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=69645

It is good to be clear about it, since many use LXDE due to computers with low specs.

[jcgr11]

I had the same exact problem on my freshly installed Mint 12 LXDE.
The problem went away after I changed the widget theme in "customize look and feel" with a theme that does not have an animated "loading bar". I'm currently using Carbon.
Now the CPU usage is about ~1% for LXTask.

Thank you, you are absolutely right that is has something to do with the widget, but according to my tests it is not due to an animated "loading bar", but there is something wrong only with the default Mint-Z. All other widgets (including the ones with animated loading bar) make the CPU load much better. Can somebody confirm this?

EDIT: It seems there are different CPU load for different widgets, but so far Mint-Z gives the heaviest CPU load.

Thanks!!!
Yeah, it looks like it is the Mint-Z (and the other "Mint" themes).
I automatically associated animations (or any effects) with something that makes my CPU usage high

[Keoh]

It looks like I the original poster for the high CPU made a ligit complaint about the high cpu usage on LXDE MINT! Im so happy to see that alot of people have come foreward with a solution to this problem.As i said before the mint12 LXDE looks beautiful and the only real issue was overheating and if simply changing the background theme from mint-Z to carbon did the trick then this is a benefit to us all.again thank you for discovering this.It has helped many Oh i did the same i loaded it mint12 lxde a fresh copy and ran it straight out of the box unaltered and again High CPU usage but i tried the suggested trick of switching to carbon back ground instead of mint-Z and surprise the temputure droped immediatly again thanks

[Troken]

... Oh i did the same i loaded it mint12 lxde a fresh copy and ran it straight out of the box unaltered and again High CPU usage but i tried the suggested trick of switching to carbon back ground instead of mint-Z and surprise the temputure droped immediatly again thanks

And just to clarify: you don't have to stick with Carbon, most widget themes seems to work well. I use Clearlooks now successfully, the only ones I found really CPU heavy was the Mint ones.