Severe Lag in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I have a brand new laptop with dual boot. The Windows partition is really fast, but Ubuntu is lagging extremely hard in some applications. The worst is Spyder, where I can barely work at all. This also has been getting worse lately.

I think I have a pretty strong system(16 GB RAM, SSD, i5) and I get the lags even though I do not have high load:

$ vmstat 10 4
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
 1  0      0 7884892 260872 4138888    0    0    42    35  452  305  3  1 95  0  0
 0  0      0 7887948 260888 4138848    0    0     0    14 4341  934  1  1 97  0  0
 1  0      0 7888704 260900 4138848    0    0     0    23 4299  831  1  1 97  0  0
 0  0      0 7879632 260908 4139096    0    0     0     7 4758 1432  4  2 94  0  0

I checked some other questions here and tried things like updating my NVIDIA driver, using Unity instead of GNOME, or using powertop, but nothing helped. I checked my system logs and my CPU gets throttled from time to time, but, as I am not actually running anything demanding, I think this is more a symptom of the underlying problem than the real cause for the lags.

Is it possible that the cause for this is that I have multiple large file systems mounted via sshfs?

I am hoping someone here can point me towards some log file which will allow tackling of my specific problem.

Answer 1

Although this might not be entirely an answer, it might help you narrow down your problem, this is what recently happened to me.

My story

I have an i5 Laptop which I had dual boot on (i5 SSD, 8GB RAM). I loaded an Ubuntu 18.04 alongside a Windows 10. The first 2 weeks everything was wonderful. I then started picking up weird issues, and by weird I mean packages going missing, sections of my settings menu disappearing (exactly...weird). Part of my problem was also excruciating lag at times. I started perusing forums and tried all sorts of fixes and it basically came down to my installation had somehow become corrupted. Some of the core packages were missing and irrespective of what I did, I could not get it fixed.

What I did

I created a virtual machine within my Ubuntu (which surprisingly worked) and I played around with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 VM as well as some other distros and I was unable to recreate any of the issues. I eventually backup-up all my data and dedicated a Saturday and 3 or 4 cups of coffee and started over using a spare HDD I had lying around with a fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04 ONLY (i.e. no dual boot).

What I discovered

When I loaded a fresh install on a new HDD (without the dual boot) I found my boot times dropping drastically. My installation also seemed to install perfectly and my performance in the OS was MUCH better. This was indeed weird and I couldn't explain it but then a colleague of mine who had the same setup as I experienced the same problem with Ubuntu 18.04 and dual boot. I suggested to him to try the same and he wiped his SSD. He installed Ubuntu 18.04 without the dual boot and he too did not experience any of the afore-mentioned issues. He then wiped his SSD again and went back to a dual boot setup and within a week his troubles started again.

What I ended up doing

During my VM escapades I tried XUbuntu and I came to like it far more than stock Ubuntu (I prefer a less flashy GUI). Consequently, I then wiped my laptop SSD, created a fresh XUbuntu 19 installation. Since then I have never had any issues, I don't experience lag any-more, my packages do not go missing and my settings menu does not disappear. Its been almost 6 months now and I have never had any issues. I recently needed to do work on Windows so I created a Virtual-Box VM within my XUbuntu and created a Win-10 VM. I have only been doing this for a out 2 weeks now but so far everything seems fine. My Windows performance is alright and my XUbuntu never gives any issues.

As I said at the start, this might not be an answer but perhaps my experience could assist you.

P.S.

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