Cinnamon high CPU usage

[qorrow]

I gave up on Ubuntu/Unity and switched to Mint coz I heared of the Gnome-shell fork Cinnamon.
It looks great and the idea of extensions is promising. Unfortunately both gnome shell and cinnamon didnt display with the proprietary driver.Then I donwloaded the latest ATI driver from their site and installed it. Now Cinnamon works but with 60-70 % of CPU which increases after 10 mins to 90 and 100% !!

I really like cinnamon as it is my last hope for Linux and I ll be so sab if I return to Windows.

So pls any idea on how to solve this ... or there is a bug may be fixed in next version.

My specs: hp Probook 4520s core i5 Intel ATI Mobility Radeon 6300M series 4G RAM.

Thank you and sorry for the long post.

[cc11rocks]

Linux Mint 13 will come out soon. It should contain a new version of Cinnamon (improvements hopefully) and a new kernel (3.2 most likely). The kernel is what will significantly help your processor. The kernel will also contain updated drivers. All of these items will help your computer in some way. Linux Mint 13 should come out in 1-3 months (no set date, can't rush greatness). Ubuntu 12.04 will come out probably a month of two before Linux Mint 13, and will contain the updated kernel (and by extension, the drivers). You may be able to install Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04 if you cannot wait until the release of Linux Mint 13.

Cheers,
cc11rocks

[spandey]

60% cpu usage in core i5 that's too much. Have you installed 32 bit or 64 bit ? Which program is using the max cpu check with top command in a terminal.

[zanlation]

I have the 64-bit Cinnamon version installed (v13) and I have noticed on my AMD X2 4800+ one CPU is maxed at 100% when I use the top command. Is this an issue with the OS, or my older CPU?

This is the first time I have used Mint. I previously used Ubuntu.

[spahar]

I have the same problem as well.

I am using Mint 13 Cinnamon 64bit in a i7-2600k with 8GB Ram, and when only using firefox to surf the cpu fan turns like crazy. Checking in System Monitor (and top command) I see that cinnamon is using 88% of the cpu. Especially when watching some flash video (youtube etc) cinnamon uses 88%-100%, firefox 8% and plugin-container 30-40%. I find these numbers way too high for just trying to watch a video.

I had the same problem with Mint 12 and gnome-shell, and reading about the cinnamon made me switch to Mint 13.

Any ideas why is this happening? Now I am thinking of checking the Mint 13 Mate.

[cwsutherland]

I have the same issue, I have Maya 13 installed on a Lenovo Y560p with ATI Radeon 6570M Graphics. It is kworker and cinnamon consuming all the cpu resource, they take turns changing every few seconds in the 'top' command.

Even if I run the liveCD without the ATI drivers installed, the kworkers are still there sucking the CPU power. From this forum and other sites it seems to be a interrupt problem with ACPI and related to the Radeon graphics. I also have a Dell D630 Latitude with Nvidia graphics, and this runs fine.

I have tried disabling the ACPI in the grub config, disabling the ACPI in the ATI graphics card, updating the kernel, and headers (which causes the Cinnamon start menu to behave strangely), and still I have the same problem.

If anyone else has had some luck reducing or eliminating this, please share. I really like Mint/Cinnamon 13 and hope it gets fixed soon.

Craig
http://road2it.com

[takis123]

The only solution for us that we have an ATI gpu with fglxr (proprietary driver) is to use Mint Maya MATE edition. Cpu is at 4% at every core when is idle. And even when I'm browsing and watching flash videos, I find it very lightweight at my laptop. MATE is the only solution, thanks to mint team that provided us a -stable and working everywhere- gnome 2 choise. Cinnamon is very good but ATI is a problem.

[rewind]

I can confirm about the problem with the very high CPU usage while basic firefox usage and youtube video playing even with the latest fglrx 12.6
Machine specs - Phenom II x2-550@3.9GHz, Radeon HD6950 2GB

[eanfrid]

I have the 64-bit Cinnamon version installed (v13) and I have noticed on my AMD X2 4800+ one CPU is maxed at 100% when I use the top command. Is this an issue with the OS, or my older CPU?

Same config here and I don't have this behavior; the cpu is very quiet. I don't run ATI fglrx drivers though.

[Neffisaurus]

Another 'me too' post! I have i7 CPU, Mobility radeon hd5xxx, running Mint 13 64-bit and ATI/fglrx driver and get crazy high CPU usage with Cinnamon. I had the same issue with Mint 12. I really like Cinnamon, but might try Mint 14 KDE when it comes out.