Nautilus is very slow

Question

One month ago I updated (no fresh install) to 12.04.

Since then nautilus got extremely slow. When I open a folder that contains many subfolders I sometimes have to wait 4 seconds until everything is displayed. This has never been like that before, in previous versions I could always browse between my files extremely fast.

If I start nautilus with root-rights from a terminal, it does work perfectly.

I looked in "additional drivers" and changed from Nvidia current-version-update to the recommended drivers. This drastically increased the performance and speed of file browsing, unfortunately just for a couple of days. Now I am stuck again with the very slow Nautilus.

I also tried to install the latest nvidia driver like it was suggested here: http://www.techlw.com/2012/03/install-nvidia-drivers-on-ubuntu-1204.html Did not work at all.

Also when using the dash to try to find files it does not respond properly: does not find files or loads for ages until the file is displayed.

I am working on an Acer Notebook with

Intel® Core™ i5 CPU M 430 @ 2.27GHz × 4
6GB RAM
GeForce GT 320M/PCIe/SSE2
64 Bit Ubuntu 12.04

Answer 1

I figured out some ways to speed up nautilus: bookmarks and previews. But it's still not as fast as it should be ... and I have an SSD!

Bookmarks:

To fix it delete all your bookmarks, restart and then add back the ones you can't live without.

Using strace I realised that nautilus was stating lots of files for every view. Even files that were not in directory I was browsing during the trace. I think nautilus is trying to pre-cache these bookmarks.

I had one network drive as a bookmark ... this might have been the reason why nautilus was taking several seconds to load.

Preview settings:

Disable the previews in the preferences as follows:

Answer 2

I do not know if it is any help. But I removed the following plugins: nautilus-sendto, nautilus-sendto-empathy, nautilus-share, nautilus-open-terminal. Now Nautilus seems to be working quite fast.

Answer 3

This is most definitely an issue with Nautilus itself. Here is a bug report on launchpad:

Bug #869793 -Nautilus is very slow when opening folders with many files

Answer 4

This helps to lower the problems:
at preferences / behavior check open each folder on its own window
it lowers the usability, creating loads of windows; but at least you dont have to sit down and wait it finally respond like happens in Window$...

That problem may still happen and freeze all nautilus windows..., so I consider this as a temporary workaround that is not 100% and I still wait for a fix for nautilus.

This basically helps you avoid going back and forth on folders, by keeping them all opened.

EDIT: The slowdowns have stopped! but it is more difficult to use nautilus, but at least wont keep freezing all the time! (still freezes or whole crashes nautilus but takes more time)

Answer 5

Temporary fix at https://wiki.debian.org/Nautilus/FAQ/SlowNautilus

Cause of the issue: Somehow "gvfsd-metadata" store got corrupted, as a result "gvfsd-metadata" get stuck on an infinite loop. Which in turn significantly affect the performance of nautilus. If you're not familiar with "gvfsd-metadata", it's is a process that collects file metadata when you use Nautilus file browser. We are assuming "gvfsd-metadata" is part of or related to "gvfs" package.

Answer 6

It may sound silly, but it works! Just rename the Templates folder in your home directory to something else!

Answer 7

In my case, disabling the "Count number of files in folder" in the Nautilus preferences did the trick (if you don't need this column).

Answer 8

in your post you mention a murrine critical error surely this is the fault of some theme,which would explain why rooted nautilus works ok as root doesn't carry the user theme,try changing to default theme and test.

Answer 9

This worked for me:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall nautilus

Answer 10

After days of web search, there seem to be many factors affecting the speed of Nautilus.

On a whim, I deleted

~/.thumbnails/*

and now Nautilus windows open much faster. shrug

Answer 11

Nautilus is very slow on Ubuntu 14.04 too. I don't know why, maybe problems with plugins? I removed additional Nautilus plugins. It is still very slow and freezes sometimes. I think Canonical should do something, because Ubuntu rocks and should not troubled by a file manager.

I'm using the file manager Nemo as a workaround now for a couple of days. It is incredible fast and has got some really nice features compared to Nautilus. It will be my default file manager if there are no problems the next days.