Cinnamon and the slow menu from the stoneage

[Redsandro]

TL;DR version:

Why is there a random delay (400-4000 ms) between opening (click/keypress) the Cinnamon menu, and the menu actually opening?

Original post:
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I love Cinnamon. But there is one huge annoyance.

How is it possible, in 2012, on my brand new laptop with SSD and 8GB of memory, 6GB sitting there free and empty...

...that the Cinnamon menu is so SLOW? The first time I press the Win/Super/Mod5-key, it takes about 4 seconds before the menu actually opens. Most other times, it takes between 500ms and 2 seconds. And occasionally, for no apparent reason, it goes instant.

What's going on here? This really annoys me because it is totally unnecessary and I don't get how this is still possible. How team GNOME-Shell and team Cinnamon didn't tackle that before 1.0 even came out. This thing should be cached and instant.

What also pisses me off, why does it occasionally go instant, but most of the time, it does not? For example, after opening the menu once, you'd expect it to be in memory or something, and open directly for at least the next 10 seconds. But if I open it 10 times in a row now, it takes about a second each time! What is the difference between now and that lucky time when it is instant?

Now that hot corner, THAT thing goes instant. It should be the other way around. The hot corner is so instant it zooms out my screen before my mouse even reaches the corner. So I disabled it. But what matters is: It IS possible to make stuff go instant!

Humans really really really dislike the slightest feeling of sluggishness, and would rather prefer a menu that is outdated by 5 seconds, than to have to wait half a second for it to appear.

I blindly press menu and start typing opera [enter]. Then the menu opens and executes appearance because it was too slow for the 21st century.

There is no delay like that in Windows. There is no delay on any of the menu's in OS X. There is no delay in Kupfer.

That's right, I installed the old Kupfer to do what the Cinnamon menu cannot do. Launch immediately. Listen to what I type immediately. Even on my laptop from the stoneage.

Sorry if I sounded a bit irritated. I just kept executing the wrong stuff and felt so stupid for making the same mistake (typing before the menu actually appears) over and over, I realized it's easier for my blood pressure to blame this on the developers.

[eanfrid]

You are experiencing some kind of misconfiguration. Apart from the desktop effects that you can switch off to speed up transitions, Cinnamon is fast.

[Redsandro]

I doubt that. I have experienced this on all 3 laptops I have owned since Cinnamon, and my current Lenovo X1 Carbon lightning made me realize it's not me, it's Cinnamon.

Did a search and I am not the only one.

- slow menu... try it yourself. keep winkey pressed for a while; then release it and you'll notice a delay (at least 300~500ms) between you releasing it and the menu showing up

Although I am GUESSING GNOME_Shell menu has exactly the same problem, since it's a fork and all..

-edit-

Let me rephrase that. I hope you are right. A fix by configuring would be awesome. Fades and other graphics like expo and desktop-chooser go lightning fast. I can play Doom3 just fine. The only thing that is slow in my whole UX is the time between commanding the menu to open, and it actually opening. It's not a lagging fade, because the delay varies between instant and 5 seconds, with an average of 1 second.

Any thoughts on where to look for this misconfiguration? I haven't got any restricted or additional drivers installed. I have an i5-3427U processor with Intel HD 4000 graphics. My previous two laptops with similar issues were Intel Core i3 and Intel Pentium M.

Are you sure your menu is instant? Press win and directly start typing. Is it all captured by the menu inputbox?

[eanfrid]

Are you sure your menu is instant? Press win and directly start typing. Is it all captured by the menu inputbox?

Yes. No lag, no loss, no delay.

[Redsandro]

So what's different? The menu button needs to connect to the Mint servers in order to ask permission to open, and it is quicker for you because you live closer to the server location, so the network traffic is going through less hops?

It takes me 12 hops to reach insertcloud.com (204.174.81.194) 429.869 ms 430.966 ms 433.916 ms

[eanfrid]

What you type here only starts a local search among the apps that are already installed on the disk: no Internet connection required

I have 4 machines running Cinnamon, 2 of them are running Debian Wheezy (respectively 64bit and 32bit), 1 is running LM13 64bit and the last 1 is a Linux KVM LM13 64bit virtual machine (formerly running under VirtualBox). None of them has ever had the problems you describe

[Redsandro]

Okay, we've established the facts:
Me and a few fellow users claim there is a variable delay between opening the menu and the menu being open on our computers.
You claim there is no delay on your computers.

Now where would we start looking for the cause of this?
I know the menu is purely local. The internet thing was more of a sarcastic throw at this totally uncalled for menu behavior. Truth is, I haven't got a clue where to look.

[Mozenrath]

That's pretty much the reason why I haven't been using Cinnamon on my netbook. There's always a ridiculous delay on searches; everything else in Cinnamon seems to work okay but the menu is way too laggy. Cinnamon 2D is actually a little worse, I think. Turning off effects does very little to help this problem. I know that my netbook isn't the latest and greatest device out there, but it has a 1.5Ghz Intel Atom with 2GB ram, and it's able to run other menus much faster, including the one in MATE(although I don't use MATE because it's actually slower than GNOME 3 Classic). Anyway, I see no reason why the Cinnamon menu couldn't run smoothly with my specs, but it doesn't for some reason. Yes, I have also tried the newest version.

Hopefully this will be worked out in the future. I really want the Cinnamon menu.

[eanfrid]

You claim there is no delay on your computers.

Now where would we start looking for the cause of this?

Okay, so luck is with me Unless you use a slow drive as your system disk Idon't have a clue where to look for since I don't have this problem
My menu option are these:

... I don't display neither places nor recent documents in the menu, relying on the panel applets to do so.

[druidbloke]

I'm having the same problem here the only thing marring Cinnamon for me now is that delay and it's the same if I click on the menu icon or press the Super-L key, the dynamic workspace management and everything else works very well so it's a pity for anyone believing this is a problem for a small number of people type it into Google, it's fairly widespread.

[Redsandro]

You claim there is no delay on your computers.
... I don't display neither places nor recent documents in the menu, relying on the panel applets to do so.

Thanks for the hint. I tried disabling them, but there is no difference for me.

I'm having the same problem here the only thing marring Cinnamon for me now is that delay

Yes, it's so from another time to have a delay!

For people who don't believe this because either it works for them or they won't admit to anything bad related to Cinnamon, I have recorded a small movie.
Please note that this is a lucky day and the delay is small, sometimes it's up to 4 seconds. For real. And very very very occasionally, it is instant. And not-a-clue on what is different on those occasions.

I cannot embed a youtube video on this forum, can I?
http://youtu.be/37wDUi8HZks

for anyone believing this is a problem for a small number of people type it into Google, it's fairly widespread.

Have you found any interesting reasons or theories or fixes in other discussions about this?

[esteban1uy]

Have you found any interesting reasons or theories or fixes in other discussions about this?

Well... try this:

Open a terminal and execute:

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /etc/environment

Add the following line to that file, save and restart:

Code: Select all

CINNAMON_SLOWDOWN_FACTOR=0.0001

Any changes?

[Redsandro]

If there's an option for a lag while others say it's instant to begin with, then I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
In other words, I will bet a thousand internets on that setting being irrelevant to the delay I am experiencing. It would be stupid beyond words and I refuse to believe it.

Meanwhile, I have discovered [url=apt:synapse]Synapse[/url] and it is *WHAM* INSTANT.

[esteban1uy]

If there's an option for a lag while others say it's instant to begin with, then I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

I'm sorry I don't get it but... where did you see an option for a lag?

The "normal" behaviour of the Cinnamon main menu is to instantly appear (via mouse click or keyboard super-key) but, like most of the "widgets" in the Cinnamon UI, it comes with a 250ms fade in animation applied.
That means that in the first millisecond after its activation the image of the menu is almost completely transparent, and in the following 249 milliseconds it reaches its full opacity.
Just do this experiment: change the CINNAMON_SLOWDOWN_FACTOR environment variable to 10, 20 or 50 and you will notice the fade in effect a lot better.

So the thing is: if there's something in your system that is causing a certain lag in the menu, then setting CINNAMON_SLOWDOWN_FACTOR to a very low value will cut 250 milliseconds to that lag.

[Redsandro]

All graphics, including the (already fast) fade (as seen here), go awesomely smooth on this powerful laptop.

These are the events in chronological order, bold is the one that is inexplicable:

[menu-open-command]
[inexplicable lag between 0 and 4000 ms, averaging at ~500 ms]
[menu-opening]
[fade, 100 ms (or 250 if you say so)] <- the one you are talking about
[menu open]

(As seen here)

[esteban1uy]

[fade, 100 ms (or 250 if you say so)] <- the one you are talking about

Oops... sorry, you're right. The animation time for the Cinnamon menu (like any other widget of the PopupMenu class) is not 250 ms but 150 ms, as defined in /usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/boxpointer.js:

Code: Select all

// -*- mode: js; js-indent-level: 4; indent-tabs-mode: nil -*-

const Clutter = imports.gi.Clutter;
const Lang = imports.lang;
const St = imports.gi.St;
const Cinnamon = imports.gi.Cinnamon;

const Main = imports.ui.main;
const Tweener = imports.ui.tweener;

const POPUP_ANIMATION_TIME = 0.15;

On the other hand, did you notice any lag with some other popup menu (calendar, cinnamon settings, etc.)?
What about some of the variants of the default Cinnamon menu applet, like Classic Menu, Gnome Menu, Win7 menu emulator,...?

[Kikito]

I get this problem as well, but notice it happening mostly the first time I open the menu after turning on the computer or when opening the menu after a long time of not using it (2-3 hrs). It's been a turn off for me to use Cinnamon, even if I like most everything else about it. Could it be that it's loading it into memory and that's the cause of the delay?

[bwat47]

My laptop has worse specs than yours and it responds instantly for me, even on cold login (i5-3210, 8gb ddr3, 7200rpm hybrid hdd).

On my older laptop with intel i5-460m, 4gb ram, 5400rpm hdd it is a bit slow though, but definitely not as slow as you're seeing. The behavior you are seeing seems abnormal.

[Pointedstick]

Is it possible that you guys who are experiencing lag are using Cinnamon themes that explicitly introduce a delay or fade the menu in slowly or something? I noticed while I was trying different themes that some were much faster than others to open the menu.

[bimsebasse]

Is it possible that you guys who are experiencing lag are using Cinnamon themes that explicitly introduce a delay or fade the menu in slowly or something? I noticed while I was trying different themes that some were much faster than others to open the menu.

Very. For some reason the text-shadow component, if used in the menu, causes considerable lag, and some themes I've tried use it anyway. But I guess people experiencing menu lag have already tried Cinnamon with its default theme and ruled out a theme issue.