Linux Mint Forums

Does anyone know why sometimes my Linux Mint Mate 18.3 runs slow?
I have this PC configuration:

Please generate an overview of your system like this:

- Launch a terminal window (this is how to launch a terminal window);

- make the terminal window full screen, to avoid chopped lines;

- copy/paste this command into the terminal:
(if you type: the letter F is a capital letter)

- Press Enter.

- Copy/paste the output in your next message.

Personally I noticed two kinds of irritating slowness of LM Cinnamon.
First - default file manager Nemo had been entering into a directory very slowly. Even if directory has a few files the file manager had been doing something a couple of seconds before show its contents. The problem was in plugins that are installed by default in Nemo. I switched them off and Nemo became quick again. Until next update which enables this plugins again.
Second - I experienced freezes and choppy playback on all video players though CPU usage was far from limit. This problem also expressed itself (time after time) as slow window rendering when I dragged any windows. Windows were repainted as there were no video acceleration at all. The problem was (in my case) in panel applet - "cpu usage monitor". It did something (using system calls or similar) that slowed down Cinnamon DE. I removed that applet too.

Here is the information required:

I stopped using Cinnamon because it was running slow and changed to Mate. Now this are better but still have some slowness. I turned swapiness to 10 yesterday and still am working to see how this goes.

toolrick wrote:I stopped using Cinnamon because it was running slow and changed to Mate. Now this are better but still have some slowness.

An Intel Celeron N2840 and 2 GBs RAM may still be a challenge for MATE. Did you try Xfce?

Joe

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 10:58 am... I stopped using Cinnamon because it was running slow and changed to Mate.....

Did you do a clean reinstall of MINT Mate or just installl Mate over an existing Cinnamon install? Hopefully the former.

I installed cinnamon first. I still have both of them and try one to the other depending on what I want to do, but if I get 4 to 5 programs open it becomes slower

@Joe, I red that to use Mate it needed a computer with much less specifications than this ones.

riseman wrote: ⤴Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:35 pm Personally I noticed two kinds of irritating slowness of LM Cinnamon.

That's off-topic in a thread about Mate. If you want to talk about this, that's fine: start a new topic.

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:17 am I installed cinnamon first. I still have both of them

Are they both on the same installation or on separate installations?
It's always cleaner to do a separate installation if you want more than one desktop environment. If you combine several of them in the same installation, that can lead to unpredictable problems. Maybe slowness is one of them?

JoeFootball wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:10 am
An Intel Celeron N2840 and 2 GBs RAM may still be a challenge for MATE. Did you try Xfce?

This matches exactly the specs of this machine. I can attest to the smooth running of Xfce.

Moem wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:21 am

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:17 am I installed cinnamon first. I still have both of them

Are they both on the same installation or on separate installations?
It's always cleaner to do a separate installation if you want more than one desktop environment. If you combine several of them in the same installation, that can lead to unpredictable problems. Maybe slowness is one of them?

I made the clean installation of Cinnamon desktop, then I red that Mate was faster and it needed less effort, so I searched and it seemed to just installing a software from Software Manager I could have both environments to try them out. I have tried Mate from the past 2 weeks and it has worked better than Cinnamon, eventhough if I open 5 programs and one of them is spotify or chrome, chromium it turns quite slow, specially the pointer of the mouse moving really slow. Before this I had installed Windows10 in my computer, but the problem is that I only have 32GB of storage and win10 only the install of the entire OS was almost killing my CPU space, that one of the reasons, and second because I was tired of the updates. Besides that it was running smooth and I read that if win 10 runs smooth so should Linux since is much less heavy and had less system requirements.

Here are the requirements for Linux Mint Mate 18.3:

@toolrick: do you wish a solution or not?

If you want a solution, do as advised: a clean installation of either 18.3 Xfce (optimal lightweight) or 18.3 Mate (a bit heavier).

Pjotr wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:07 pm @toolrick: do you wish a solution or not?

If you want a solution, do as advised: a clean installation of either 18.3 Xfce (optimal lightweight) or 18.3 Mate (a bit heavier).

Where can I get the official distro of Xfce? also would there be available same sofware manager than the one we already have in mint?
I would like to install same programs that I already have at the moment. and yes, I would like my computer to run faster.

Thanks,

RD

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:17 am I installed cinnamon first. I still have both of them and try one to the other depending on what I want to do, but if I get 4 to 5 programs open it becomes slower

That's quite possibly a part of the problem if you have both DEs on the same install. Having multiple DEs is one of the best ways to break things. The usual recommended fix is a clean reinstall of the DE version you want.

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:10 pm Where can I get the official distro of Xfce?

https://linuxmint.com/download.php

also would there be available same sofware manager than the one we already have in mint?

Yes.

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:10 pm

Pjotr wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:07 pm @toolrick: do you wish a solution or not?

If you want a solution, do as advised: a clean installation of either 18.3 Xfce (optimal lightweight) or 18.3 Mate (a bit heavier).

Where can I get the official distro of Xfce? also would there be available same sofware manager than the one we already have in mint?
I would like to install same programs that I already have at the moment. and yes, I would like my computer to run faster.

Thanks,

RD

http://mintmirror.math.washington.edu/l ... -64bit.iso

Marziano wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:16 pm

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:10 pm Where can I get the official distro of Xfce?

https://linuxmint.com/download.php

also would there be available same sofware manager than the one we already have in mint?

Yes.

Do you recommend Xfce better than Mint Mate?

toolrick wrote: ⤴Sun Mar 04, 2018 12:39 pm Do you recommend Xfce better than Mint Mate?

It's lighter, it should run faster on your machine.