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Since yesterday I am experiencing high CPU load (caused by compiz). First I thought that this may be related by compiz/unity and switched therefore back to gnome-shell (uninstalled all unity stuff).

But there gnome-shell causes high CPU load as well (~100% of one core). Do you have any guess what could cause this?

My Hardware: Lenovo t420s with disabled nvidia-optimus and nvidia graphics, meaning I am only running the Intel graphics.

guntbert
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user133975
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2 Answers2

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Actually you can open the console and type top This will show up a list of all the running processes. Check under %CPU to identify which process is using the CPU. Also try to disable some of the animation, maybe to see if there is any difference.

CodeArtist
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    Thanks for you reply, as mentioned above the load is caused by "compiz" if unity is started. If not it is caused by "gnome-shell". Even if i am not doing anything there is at least a load caused by these process of 40% – user133975 Feb 20 '13 at 19:21
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You can switch to a lightweight desktop environment, such as lxde or xfce of which this last one is more stable and features the majority of the benefits of Compiz (even the Extra Effects) and this way you'll be away of the memory leak of both compiz and the unity panel.

Somehow, and I say SOMEHOW (which means I don't know how nor why) if you wish to use the Ubuntu Unity Plugin, you'll have all the benefits of the Unity hud and panel in a lightweight desktop environment with no memory leak.

Unity's memory leak is documented right here, explained in the site, as follows:

Binary package hint: unity

Every use of the global menu increases memory used by unity-panel-service by about 1MB per use [...]

It's also been reported and seen here that in the Classic login each use of the global menu does about the same for indicator-applet-appmenu

There are also the cons, in example: Compiz won't exist at the boot. So I suggest you to install the fusion-icon in order to run it at the very startup, manually or automatically, so compiz will become the window manager/decorator. I think it is the hardest thing. Programs setup, file associations and these things are something we can live with (XFCE uses PCManFM instead of Nautilus and certain software for opening pictures and other stuff, which you can override by assigning the proper piece of software to open your files). So, if you consider this, you can live with a lightweight desktop environment but the memory leak is a horrible thing that many people is yet waiting to be fixed. Even if they have released several patches or fixes, the memory leak is a major issue when in Unity.

Good luck!

Geppettvs D'Constanzo
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