Cinnamon / Gnome 3 performance issues

[Alohacoconut78]

Hi, I've been using Linux Mint for a couple of years now, due to me having less and less time as I grow older, and Linux Mint just works with minimal effort from the end user.

Gnome 3 pretty much ruined my desktop experience, in so many ways. Cinnamon seems like a nice initiative to make Gnome 3 what it should have been from the start, but it seems to mainly address the usability issues with Gnome 3. Apart from the (massive) usability issues, I'm also having severe performance issues in Gnome 3. My computer isn't new, but with a dual core 2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM and a Geforce 7600 GT, don't tell me I need better hardware for a reasonable desktop experience
The Linux Mint menu is one of the mail culprits, performance wise, but Gnome 3 is just generally _ALOT_ slower than Gnome 2/XFCE/LXDE.

Cinnamon made me feel more at home in Gnome 3, and I'm sure further improvements will make it feel even more like Gnome 2, but due to the performance, unless it improves alot, I'll likely switch to LXDE or XFCE permanently. MATE could be an alternative, but I'm sceptic about how long it will be maintained.

So, my main question is if this is something that can be remedied with the cinnamon project, or if it's just the core of Gnome 3 that's, well.. crap, performance wise?

(And thank you for an awesome Linux distro)

[cwwgateway]

Hi, I've been using Linux Mint for a couple of years now, due to me having less and less time as I grow older, and Linux Mint just works with minimal effort from the end user.

Gnome 3 pretty much ruined my desktop experience, in so many ways. Cinnamon seems like a nice initiative to make Gnome 3 what it should have been from the start, but it seems to mainly address the usability issues with Gnome 3. Apart from the (massive) usability issues, I'm also having severe performance issues in Gnome 3. My computer isn't new, but with a dual core 2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM and a Geforce 7600 GT, don't tell me I need better hardware for a reasonable desktop experience
The Linux Mint menu is one of the mail culprits, performance wise, but Gnome 3 is just generally _ALOT_ slower than Gnome 2/XFCE/LXDE.

Cinnamon made me feel more at home in Gnome 3, and I'm sure further improvements will make it feel even more like Gnome 2, but due to the performance, unless it improves alot, I'll likely switch to LXDE or XFCE permanently. MATE could be an alternative, but I'm sceptic about how long it will be maintained.

So, my main question is if this is something that can be remedied with the cinnamon project, or if it's just the core of Gnome 3 that's, well.. crap, performance wise?

(And thank you for an awesome Linux distro)

I have found a performance loss with gnome 3 as well. Although I find that gnome 3 is inherently slower than gnome 2, I also find that (because I use so they don't matter to me) disabling extensions for gnome shell actually increases speed throughout my system. I haven't had any massive performance impact from gnome shell, but I shouldn't have any at all as I have a 2.3 GHz Core 2 Quad, 8 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GT120 (yes, I installed the graphics drivers). The overwhelming majority of computers have worse or a lot worse hardware than mine (no offense meant ), and you can't have a desktop that is slow for the overwhelming majority of computer users. I do find cinnamon faster than gnome shell, however.

[roverxk9]

I just installed mint 12 / gnome 3 on my dell xps m1210 laptop with nvidia 7400go and it feels sluggish.

I actually couldnt even log into gnome 3 right off the bat, it would load this distorted desktop and hang. I had to first load classic then update the nvidia drivers.

While it work, it feels very slow, just clicking the menu button or pushing the windows key it almost takes a full second to respond. To me this is a really terrible user experience. I was going to try the new KDE release, however it doesnt have the windows installer like the gnome one. ;*(

Any help on this would be appreciated!

[bimsebasse]

Gnome 3 is a bit more demanding hardware wise than Gnome 2, and Gnome shell (and to a lesser extent Cinnamon) is not the most responsive of shells at this point even on decent hardware. There is no fix for this if you have all the correct drivers installed, going with a lightweight DE is your best alternative option.

On my machine Cinnamon feels pretty snappy now, at least a leap forward compared to Gnome Shell.

[cwwgateway]

Gnome 3 is a bit more demanding hardware wise than Gnome 2, and Gnome shell (and to a lesser extent Cinnamon) is not the most responsive of shells at this point even on decent hardware. There is no fix for this if you have all the correct drivers installed, going with a lightweight DE is your best alternative option.

On my machine Cinnamon feels pretty snappy now, at least a leap forward compared to Gnome Shell.

I agree with both you and the poster before you. Mint 12 is less snappy, but Cinnamon is more responsive than Gnome Shell. As a side note, I found the Mint 12 RC to be very responsive, but I had installed that from the CD. I think I read somewhere (actually, you might have posted it, bimsebasse) that uninstalling MATE (which wasn't on the CD) makes Mint 12 much faster. While it is starting to age a little, my desktop is still better than the average computer sold - a 2.3 GHz Core 2 Quad, 8 GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce 120 GT, etc - and it does annoy me a little when I press the super key and the menu takes longer to show up than my mouse does to get to where it should be. But I still am really liking Cinnamon so far !

[archiegoodwin]

Just to chime in, I agree with all the other posters. Gnome 3 is very sluggish. Although it works fine, the slowness makes it almost unusable as an everyday desktop. Cinnamon is noticably better, but nowhere near the snappy performance of Gnome 2 on Mint 10 or 11. Hopefully, further Cinnamon development will narrow the gap. I will say to Gnome 3 developers that designing a linux DE that only works correctly on cutting edge hardware is insane.

Archie

[gnudude]

Not sure it is 'cutting edge hardware' but rather 'well supported hardware'. I don't find anything slow or sluggish at all about gnome 3. In fact I cannot discern any lag at all in any aspect of the desktop and this is on my dual core 2.0ghz with 1gb of ram and intel graphics.


root@debian:/home/user# lspci |grep Display
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 0c)

Maybe intel is better than nvidia

[bimsebasse]

Intel graphics are much better on a Linux laptop than Nvidia.

[gnudude]

Intel graphics are much better on a Linux laptop than Nvidia.

seems okay on desktops also

[craig100]

I'm glad I found this thread as I thought it was just me. Thunderbird is taking between 30 seconds and a full minute to start up. I have an intel Core i7 2.8Ghz x 8 and an NVidia GeForce 9600GT and 12GB RAM running the 64 Bit version of Mint 12 Cinnamon on a dual monitor set up. Things are generally slow and window manager throws stuff onto what ever screen it feels like regardless of where you clicked. Open Nautilus in the primary screen, click Documents and it all switches to the other screen, also can't switch the damn overview hotspot off, it just ignores the controls. I know Cinnamon was a reaction to possibly poor mate support and the god awful Gnome 3 generally so in the short time it's been in dev it's great. Really looking forward to it's future to get back to better usability instead of the Gnome Shell (and Unity type) retrograde steps taken recently.

[Lumikki]

Tunderbird starts in 30 second?

Intel i5 750 2.6GHz, 4GB DDR3, Radeon 5770 (Gallium 0.4 on AMD JUNIPER), 80GB intel SSD (191MB/sec)
Tunderbird starts in 2 second in Cinnamon / Gnome 3.

Intel Pentium 4 3GHz, 2GB DDR, Radeon X800XT (Gallium 0.4 on ATI R420), 120GB Pata hard disk (53MB/sec)
Tunderbird start first time 6 second, second try 3 second in Cinnamon / Gnome 3