Ubuntu Mate 22.04 slows as hell after launching Google Chrome

Question

I have been using Ubuntu Mate 20.04 LTS on my Lenovo Ideapad L340 17API (Ryzen 7 3700U based, with integrated VEGA Radeon graphics) since I bought it in summer of 2020 (maintaining the system up-to-date, though only about a year ago the laptop has become my the only PC for everyday use, before this I used it about several days a year). I've noticed that sometimes the system runs slow and also 20.04 goes to the end of its lifecycle, so I decided to install Ubuntu Mate 22.04.3 instead. I've saved only /home partition, all others were formatted before installing new version. And in several days I've recognized that the system sometimes become extremely slow (GIMP takes about a minute to start, applications like Double Commander started from click on icon on my desktop starts in a minute or so after click, even simple command in terminal like "sudo su" can require several seconds; after launching many applications work slow or freeze and then unfreeze time after time). Also some operations (like opening a directory containing ~400 .7z files by file browser of DeadBeef player) takes huge time (say, 15-20 seconds).

First of all, I've checked simple things. There was absolutely no system overload when my system freezes as described above (htop shows less than 20% (usually 5-10%) of load for each thread, less than half of available RAM is used, no swap is used). There was no overheat (CPU temperature is less than 60 degrees Centigrade according to Psensor, keyboard over CPU isn't hot, command line tools show normal CPU frequency, i.e. no throttling). I've checked CPU by CPU-Z. All's OK. I've checked RAM by Memtest86Free. All's OK. I've checked S.M.A.R.T. data of both SSD (there are /boot/efi (exfat), /boot (ext3), swap and /mnt/ssd (ext4) filesystems) and HDD (there are / (ext4) and /home (ext4) filesystems) - all's excellent. I've checked dmesg logs - nothing critical. Yeah, Ubuntu 22.04 Mate as well as Ubuntu 20.04 Mate takes about 1 minute to boot, IMHO it's not good, though OK, this is not critical.

I haven't tuned the system after installation except setting dirty bytes value (unsetting doesn't help though). Kernel version is 6.2.0-36-generic, with latest linux-firmware from Ubuntu repository.

Then I noticed that if I just boot my system and use some applications like LibreOffice, Double Commander, music players, GIMP, all's OK. But if I start Google Chrome with about 20 tabs (still more than half of system RAM is available, no mentionable CPU load, no swap is used), all the problems described above appeared after minutes of browsing and after 2 hours my system becomes really slow). Firefox with about 60 tabs also make system slow (but not in such extent!).

I've installed IceWM and tried it. Similar thing (though slowing due to Firefox is not so mentionable, slowing due to Chrome is not of such extent). I've tried to boot from live media (Ubuntu Mate 22.04, Xubuntu 22.04, Slackware 15.0 live), and all was OK (after installing Google Chrome and opening about 20 tabs there was no problems).

Any ideas about the reasons of such slowing down? Of course, there's a simple idea just not to use Google Chrome, but anyway I want to understand why does this happen!

Answer 1

Sir,

You've actually answered your own question and you have identified the reason for the perceived lag in performance.

The symptoms you are describing are indicative of resource starvation. You first state that GIMP is very slow to start and later say that GIMP runs fine. Issues such as you describe are rarely the fault of the operating system. Sometimes they are caused by bloated, power hungry applications and sometimes there really isn't a problem per se. The user is just trying to get too much utility out of the machine they are on. This is especially true with laptops. Those devices typically don't have the fastest RAM, the best graphics cards and so on. I have an ASUS ROG which is a pretty mighty beast but if I were to open FF with 60 open tabs I can assure you that performance would come to it's knees.

Fully disclosure: I run Ubuntu LTS exclusively so I have no experience with the Mate variant.

The obvious solution is to just have the tabs you actually need open. 60 is truly excessive.

Also, be advised that Google does everything they can to keep ad blocking plugins off their platform. So if you even have just a few open tabs and Chrome is minimized, Chrome if constantly snooping on you, serving up ads and doing all sorts of other activities. All of that "activity" is going to consume resources and slow your laptop down. This could very well be the reason some apps are slow to start.

Firefox is somewhat similar in that it has become bloatware over the years, especially if you have a lot of plugins installed. As at test, you could try installing LibreWolf which is a branch of FF that is MUCH lighter but otherwise fully featured.

You've done a good job of monitoring the usual suspects for slow performance. It couldn't hurt to do a basic tuneup, trimming/defragging the drive, updating the various drivers and so on. You might be able to squeeze out a few more cycles doing that. And don't forget checking for BIOS updates.

Very high end desktop builds are more tolerant of excessive active apps running. Laptops, not so much. You don't see many laptops that have 64GB RAM, for example. You said that this laptop has been very lightly used previously so it could well be that it's working it's little heart out and you are just asking too much of it.