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I have just upgraded to 20.04 without any issues, however, Gnome is painfully slow 2second delay with every action, apps take an age to open, terminal takes 2 sec to scroll through the history one item at a time. Anyone else seen this and have any answers?

Lynwode
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    What are your system specs? – Archisman Panigrahi Apr 25 '20 at 08:48
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    3Ghz 8 core AMD, 32GB ram – Lynwode Apr 25 '20 at 21:27
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    20.04 Gnome desktop suddenly became extremely slow on my high-end hardware with scads of RAM, disk, swap, etc. for no obvious reason (e.g. log files clear). With this and the random WiFi disconnects that now occur daily, I think 20.04 was not actually ready for release. – Lexible Jun 02 '20 at 18:33
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    I have a 36 Core Xeon with 512GB of RAM and this is slow for me. WTF?? Seriously what is the point of this stupid window manager if it's so slow? – Eric des Courtis Feb 12 '21 at 17:42

4 Answers4

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;tldr Avoid using the Fractional scaling and solve the scale of your high-dpi screen by reducing its resolution.

I was dealing with a terribly slow GNOME desktop for a few days now (after a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04). I do not use any GNOME extensions and I have turned off animations using Gnome Tweaks. I also installed sudo apt install indicator-cpufreq to set CPUs to performance instead of powersafe. I checked the BIOS settings to aim for the maximum performance when on AC. But nothing helped. All window movements were lagged, sluggish, movements were ~2s delayed. Mouse cursor was jumpy. It always took 1-2s to change a Firefox tab and scrolling was not at all smooth and freezing at random times for a while. YouTube videos were unwatchable, even scrolling through a terminal was slow! It was just unacceptable.

I have a reasonably powerful notebook so it just did not feel right:

  • Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7gen 20QD
  • CPU Intel® Core™ i7-8565U CPU @ 1.80GHz × 8
  • GPU Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 620
  • RAM 16GB
  • OS NAME Ubuntu 20.04.LTS
  • GNOME Version 3.36.3
  • Windowing system X11
  • ThinkPad USB-C Gen2 Docking station
  • 3 monitors (built-in 14" WQHD, external 24" and 22")

I made sure that I have:

  • everything updated
  • the newest kernel (5.4.0-40-generic)
  • newest UEFI BIOS etc.

As it turns out, the problem was in the Fractional scaling the whole time. I know they write May increase power usage, lower speed, or reduce display sharpness, but damn this was not usable at all.

But I can not live without it, since my built-in display is WQHD (2560x1440) and when the Fractional scaling is off, both external monitors are OK, but everything on the built-in display is just tiny and unreadable. I tried switching to Wayland, it seemed promising for a while, until random freezes started occurring so I ditched the idea.

And then I realized I can just lower the resolution on my built-in monitor <facepalm>. The final solution was to turn off the Fractional scaling and reducing the resolution of the built-in monitor to FullHD. I sacrificed some sharpness, but the whole desktop is lightning fast now even with the animations and on powersave. I hope the Fractional scaling will get better at some point.

Paloha
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    I have a similar issue but instead of fractional scaling I've just increased text size with $ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor (this one gets current value, should be 1.0 by default). Use set instead to e.g. 1.4. – Daniel Nov 06 '20 at 16:29
  • I had played with it when I freshly installed it, had clicked the revert settings, but that was one option that hadn't reverted itself, just the scaling. – Tschallacka May 11 '21 at 07:30
  • THANK YOU! You make my life sooooooo smooth! – panc Sep 09 '21 at 06:01
  • Btw I had the same issue but I did not have fractional or any scaling enabled. I just had one screen at 4k and two at 1440p and it causes sluggishness in some cases. Reducing the 4k screen to 1440p resolved the issue for now. – pixartist Sep 29 '21 at 15:19
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    My guess; This is not the solution people want, at first. Then they realize, like me, this is the only solution that properly works. Hope scaling gets better support in ubuntu soon. – Automatico Nov 26 '21 at 08:35
  • I feel stupid, and grateful -- changing the resolution instead of using fractional scaling indeed fixed my problems, namely: sluggishness of all input speed and flickering. Facepalm, indeed. – flinz Sep 21 '22 at 06:58
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I have had same issues last two days. Everything was slow down and wifi connection was disconnecting periodically. if you have wifi problem, I suggest turn off wifi and plug in a lan cable before start.

try sudo apt update And sudo apt upgrade commands, then follow these instructions https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ubuntu-linux-install-nvidia-driver-latest-proprietary-driver/ (Wouter De Coster's comment from Lynwode answer), then https://askubuntu.com/a/961460/934684 disable wifi powersave mode, then restart; now everything good for me.

maybe my answer might not meet the answer qualification. but because of my reputation I couldn't comment. I wanted to write them, maybe it works. because it's very annoying.

hllktlhndd
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Ok Looks like Nvidia driver issue. Re-installed the default and we off and running

Lynwode
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    You can give more details about how you reinstalled the default, as that may help new users. – Archisman Panigrahi Apr 26 '20 at 02:42
  • install nvidia driver will make 20.04 can not login – Liao Zhuodi Apr 27 '20 at 01:26
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    @ArchismanPanigrahi I had the same issue and followed these instructions: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ubuntu-linux-install-nvidia-driver-latest-proprietary-driver/ – Wouter De Coster Apr 29 '20 at 12:51
  • I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 including the proprietary drivers, but could not login as Liao mentions above. After that I re-did the fresh install but without the proprietary drivers and instead using the nouveau driver, and ran into the same problem as OP where everything was very slow. After that I simply installed nvidia-driver-390 using the link Wouter provided and everything worked. – casper May 04 '20 at 02:02
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    Made no difference for me. – Lexible Jun 02 '20 at 21:54
  • To install nvidia driver : sudo apt install nvidia-driver-440, although it did not make any improvement in may ubuntu 20.04 – baponkar Nov 17 '20 at 08:41
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I just ran into this with a HP elitedesk 800 G6.

It turns out in my case the problem comes and goes depending on where I plug the monitor in. If I plug the monitor into the graphics card it's fine. If I plug the monitor into the motherboard it's unstably slow.

So if you are suffering from this issue check where your monitor is plugged in.

Peter Green
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