Slow switching tab in firefox/opera when the desktop effects are enabled in Gutsy Gibbon

[Yueyu Lin]

The hardware looks like below:
Lenovo Thinkpad T61p, T7500 2.2Ghz, 2GB Ram,160G Sata,1 GB Turbo memory,Nvidia FX570 256M,SUXGA+ 1900x1200
I have to install Gutsy Gibbon to make full use of my laptop.
The Nvidia driver is manually installed 100.14.19 from nvidia's website.
When I enable the desktop effects, everything works fine except the firefox.
It will be OK if only one tab window is opened. When I want to open a new tab, it will lag and stuck there for seconds. When I switch from one tab to another, the same thing happens.
But when I disable the desktop effects, everything works well.
The system is updated to the most up-to-date from the main repository source. It seems a new problem because I didn't find the problem before the update one or two days ago.
Another information is that I am a Chinese user. I'm using Chinese local fonts and strings.

[Robert Hrovat (robi-hipnos)]

I can confirm that but I use 2 graphic heads. VGA port for LCD monitor and HDMI interface connected to LCD TV. Even menu items opens with delay of 2 seconds. Using only one head makes whole interface perform at normal speed.

[Rob Gonzalez (rob-gonzalez)]

I'm seeing this on my Lenovo T60 using the fglrx driver in X, as my graphics card is ATI, not NVIDA. Opera and Firefox both act much slower with regards to tab switching than they did before upgrading from Feisty.

-Rob

[Bram van Vliet (itsbram)]

I have the exact same problem on my laptop with fresh installed Ubuntu 7.10 ( Firefox 2.0.0.6), all updates installed.

Hardware config:
Dell inspiron 1720,
Intel® Core™2 Duo T7100 Processor (1,80 GHz, 800 MHz, 2 MB L2-cache),
17,0-inch WXGA+ (1.440 x 900),
nVidia® GeForce Go 8600M GT 256 MB DDR2,
2.048 MB 667 MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2 x 1.024],
Intel® Pro Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g

[Yueyu Lin (popeyelin)]

A new update is when I re-install Gutsy Gibbon using the amd64 version, the
condition is much better.
It's still kind of slow in switch but it's much better than when I was using
i386 version.
I can't judge if it's because of the version switch.

On 10/22/07, Bram van Vliet <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> I have the exact same problem on my laptop with fresh installed Ubuntu
> 7.10 ( Firefox 2.0.0.6), all updates installed.
>
> Hardware config:
> Dell inspiron 1720,
> Intel(R) Core™2 Duo T7100 Processor (1,80 GHz, 800 MHz, 2 MB L2-cache),
> 17,0-inch WXGA+ (1.440 x 900),
> nVidia(R) GeForce Go 8600M GT 256 MB DDR2,
> 2.048 MB 667 MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2 x 1.024],
> Intel(R) Pro Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g
>
> --
> Slow switching tab in firefox/opera when the desktop effects are enabled
> in Gutsy Gibbon
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/144216
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
--
Yueyu Lin

[Rob Gonzalez (rob-gonzalez)]

My T60 is 32-bit, so the amd64 trick won't work with me.

[rlar (larky82)]

I have the same problem with my Dell Inspiron 1520.

[Brian Tubb (blackbird71bgt)]

Confirmed for my Dell Vostro 1400 (same mobo as larky I believe). I also downloaded the version off of Mozilla's main site and it has the same problem. My assumption was that the problem was the 8400 M GS I have. I'm using the 100.14.19 repo driver on my stock Ubuntu 7.10 install. Anyone tried the latest beta nvidia driver? I have a feeling this bug is coupled with Bug #174791 and the poor Nvidia * series support.

Have not tested to see if compiz fusion is the problem yet.

[airblade (petterah)]

Confirmed for Dell XPS M1330. I'm using compiz-fusion & gnome; using the latest drivers from nvidia.com
BTW: If i turn compiz off, there is no problem at all.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

not a firefox bug.

[Nephilm (federicocalzada)]

I'm experiencing this on a Vostro 1500 (basically an Inspiron 1520) with the following specs:

Core 2 Duo 7300 2GHz
2GB RAM
Geforce 8600 GT 256MB
Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 x86

CPU usage spikes up when switching tabs/opening windows in firefox, which translates into a slowdown (and sometimes, music hiccups). I've found I can stop the problem by disabling the compiz window decorations and then re-starting the X server, which has led me to believe it's a compiz issue. Enabling note that re-enabling the decorations resumes the problem. I'm not done testing the other plugins, but none of the others so far appear to cause the slowdown.

[Nephilm (federicocalzada)]

I'm running the Nvidia 169.07, I should add.

[Nephilm (federicocalzada)]

I've ran through all the options and it appears window decorations is definitely the one where it shows.

[Bryan Youse (bryouse)]

I can confirm this with another Dell Inspiron **20:

Dell Inspiron 1720
Geforce 8600M GT

I can also confirm Nephilm's comment about the window decorations. Using any emerald theme except the "pixmaps" theme leads to the slow tab workings. However, when I opted to use kde-window-decorator instead of emerald, tab switching is as reliably fast as anything else. I also read somewhere else that metacity for gnome users had the same effect. Looks like this is a compiz/emerald bug.

[Namain (namain)]

I confirm this bug on an Asus G1S-B2

Geforce 8600M GT

I turned off emerald and it fixed the problem. So this is most likely a problem with Emerald and mot of the emerald engines.

[J.A. Sully (justin-sully)]

Confirm this bug on Thinkpad T61 (T7300 2.0Ghz, 3GB Ram,160G Sata,1 GB Turbo memory,Nvidia 140m 128M), running Ubuntu 7.10.
Seems to effect both Firefox (2.0.0.11) and Opera (9.25) for me. No problem with emerald turned off.
It's terrible annoying!

[Jairo Serrano (jairo-serrano)]

confirm this bug, Dell 1520 with 171.05 too

[jasonq (jason-quinn)]

I see the problem and have almost the exact same hardware as Bram van Vliet reported accept I have a 2.2 GHz processor

Hardware config:
Dell inspiron 1720,
Intel® Core™2 Duo
17,0-inch WXGA+ (1.440 x 900),
nVidia® GeForce Go 8600M GT 256 MB DDR2,
2.048 MB 667 MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2 x 1.024],
Intel® Pro Wireless 3945 802.11a/b/g

I am using Kubuntu with all updates and Firefox 2.0.0.12.

[jasonq (jason-quinn)]

I forgot to mention, I am using Compiz and it does seem to be an Emerald problem because after switching to the kde-window-decorator, the problem is gone.

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

confirm this bug. My system is a brand new dell xps 1530, core 2 duo 2Ghz, nvidia 8600m gt, latest from hardy repo.

I can compare with a gutsy system on my three years old desktop, AMD64 with nvidia 6600GT. On this system loading, say, 6-8 tab at startup is slow, on the new dell is really fast but switching tab already loaded in memory is much more faster on the old system. On the Dell XPS takes more than a second to switch and ff is also slow in opening a new empty tab.
On the desktop with gutsy I am using FF3b3 (manual download) while on laptop with hardy is FF3b3 from repo.

on both system, compiz with emerald. Compiz 0.62 backported on gutsy, 0.7 on hardy.

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

I do not see a real performance improvement if I disable effects from appareance panel.
I can see some improvements if I reduce the width of firefox window: in this case the cpu usage during tab switching drops from 70-80% (really high) to a more affordable 40%.

It seems that firefox has to reload the rendered page from system memory to the video card memory. Strange given that the card has 256Mb of ram, I expect it to be cached on the card memory.

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

last note: on windows vista running on the same system, dell xps, the tab switch is almost instantaneous.

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

additional info :)

I removed nvidia drivers (from restricted manager) and rebooted. now desktop does not have any compiz or such.
well, the tab switching is almost as fast as it is under windows vista.
I guess this is a nvidia driver fault more than a compiz problem.

The same performance degradation is suffered from Eclipse tab switching: slow with nvidia + compiz, fast as it should be without them.

[Yueyu Lin (popeyelin)]

I have to say this should be a driver issue.
Now I'm using ArchLinux and before I upgrade the Nvidia driver to 169.12,
the problem exists in the same way.
But when I upgraded the driver two days ago, I find everything is working
well now.
Cause I don't have another Ubuntu box with nvidia card, can you try to
verify this in Ubuntu+Nvidia driver 169.12.

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 4:09 PM, della <email address hidden> wrote:

> additional info :)
>
> I removed nvidia drivers (from restricted manager) and rebooted. now
> desktop does not have any compiz or such.
> well, the tab switching is almost as fast as it is under windows vista.
> I guess this is a nvidia driver fault more than a compiz problem.
>
> The same performance degradation is suffered from Eclipse tab switching:
> slow with nvidia + compiz, fast as it should be without them.
>
> --
> Slow switching tab in firefox/opera when the desktop effects are enabled
> in Gutsy Gibbon
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/144216
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
--
Yueyu Lin

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

well, I expect the new driver to be included in hardy repo soon. at least, I hope so...

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Hardy has had the 169.12 driver for some time now, does this fix the problem for you?

[Bryan Youse (bryouse)]

I've been checking this thread every once in a while for updates for this problem, since I really want to be able to use Emerald over k.w.d. or metacity. The 169.12 driver update sounded promising based on the last couple posts, so I just installed it.

Unfortunately, I can report that this does not fix this problem for my setup: Kubuntu Gutsy, Dell Inspiron 1720, GeForce 8600 GT. Any non-pixmap emerald theme is still very slow on tab switching in firefox/eclipse and in minimization animations.

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

Ok, my system is up to date with nvidia 169.12 and latest compiz (0.7.2 updated today) and i am using both ff3.0b3 from repo as 3.0b4 downloaded from mozilla ftp.

It seems that the problem is still here. FF switch seems to be as fast as without compiz active but the resource monitor speaks clearly: during the switch the CPU is used at 100% if compiz is enabled, while usage is significantly lower without compiz (around 30%).

This does not seem to be a ff problem, also eclipse (3.3 and 3.4m5) tab switch suffers the same problem.

Also, FF windows resize animation is really slow.

[Daniele Dellafiore (ildella)]

I removed emerald and everything behave as expected. For me too this is a emerald problem.

[niask (eugene-dementiev)]

I also have this bug. Kubuntu 7.10 + all updates, FF 2.0.0.12, NVIDIA drivers 169.09. The hardware config is:
Epox EP-9NPA+ Ultra, Athlon 64 X2 @ 2,5 GHz, 2GB Ram, 500G Sata2, NVIDIA GF 8600GT 256M, 1680x1050
Without emerald everything works fine.

[enbuyukfener (taner208)]

I'm on hardy / 2.6.24-12 with nvidia 169.12 drivers. Resizing, moving, opening and closing of tabs and windows are sluggish while the default window decorations used by Compiz are on. Once window decorations are turned off or GTK/Metacity is used, everything is fine.

[DavidG (dgurak)]

This is an emerald bug. Removing emerald (and keeping compiz effects on) resolves this issue. Reinstalling emerald brings back the slow firefox behavior. When using emerald, the theme engine plays a role. Themes using the pixmap engine make firefox very responsive, almost as if there's no issue. The line engine is also decent. However, using the vrunner and other engines makes firefox tab switching slow. It's not just tab switching either.. for example, navigating items in Google Reader is slow depending on emerald/engine as well.

On Ubuntu 7.10 + all updates (also present when using the 8.04 Hardy kernel/nvidia drivers)

System:
HP Pavilion dv6700 Notebook
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9300 @ 2.50GHz
3GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS (256MB)

[164747 (jacquet-david)]

I have the same experience, using the default theme. Most graphics is slow (not just tabbing firefox, but clicking menues ...). Changin to an emerald theme running pixmap engine resolves everything! It makes my computer light as a feader. No latency, high performance, =).

System:
Znote 6224W
Ubuntu 7.10
Compiz + Emerald
2GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz

[Nicolas Piguet (npiguet)]

I can confirm that this problem also occurs on Hardy Heron. That might be nice to fix before release :-)

[jrepp (jacobrepp)]

I'm running patched up 7.10 on a dell inspiron 1720 (nvidia 8600 gtm). I'm using the non-free nvidia drivers installed via the restricted driver manager. Also, I am running compiz + emerald.

Running just firefox 2.0.0.13 I profiled switching between three tabs two times and have included my results below. You can see that most of the time is spent in the nvidia driver. I'm not sure which calls are being made but I will try and do some more investigation.

CPU: Core 2, speed 2001 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (Clock cycles when not halted) with a unit mask of 0x00 (Unhalted core cycles) count 100000
CPU_CLK_UNHALT...|
  samples| %|
------------------
   136188 69.1668 nvidia_drv.so
    29547 15.0062 no-vmlinux
     6921 3.5150 libnvidia-wfb.so.100.14.19
     6717 3.4114 libGLcore.so.100.14.19
     3222 1.6364 libcairo.so.2.11.5
     2417 1.2275 libc-2.6.1.so
     1551 0.7877 libgklayout.so
     1452 0.7374 Xorg
     1012 0.5140 libglib-2.0.so.0.1400.1
      657 0.3337 libpthread-2.6.1.so
      611 0.3103 libgfx_gtk.so
      598 0.3037 libmozjs.so
      586 0.2976 libglx.so.100.14.19
      583 0.2961 libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.0
      557 0.2829 libgobject-2.0.so.0.1400.1
      479 0.2433 oprofiled
      467 0.2372 libpangoft2-1.0.so.0.1800.3
      461 0.2341 libxpcom_core.so
      409 0.2077 libpango-1.0.so.0.1800.3
      255 0.1295 libxpconnect.so
      243 0.1234 libX11.so.6.2.0
      214 0.1087 libnspr4.so.0d
      180 0.0914 bash
      148 0.0752 compiz.real
      124 0.0630 libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.1200.0
      112 0.0569 libgkgfx.so
       84 0.0427 libGL.so.100.14.19
       82 0.0416 libpangocairo-1.0.so.0.1800.3
       78 0.0396 libfade.so
       75 0.0381 ld-2.6.1.so
       52 0.0264 libcaps.so
       49 0.0249 libXrender.so.1.3.0
       48 0.0244 mysqld
       43 0.0218 libgthread-2.0.so.0.1400.1
       36 0.0183 libdbus-1.so.3.3.0
       34 0.0173 libwidget_gtk2.so
       33 0.0168 synaptics_drv.so
       32 0.0163 libanimation.so
       29 0.0147 libdocshell.so
       28 0.0142 libdecoration.so
       28 0.0142 pango-basic-fc.so
       26 0.0132 libimglib2.so
       22 0.0112 libfreetype.so.6.3.16
       21 0.0107 libextmod.so
       20 0.0102 libORBit-2.so.0.1.0
       18 0.0091 libwnck-1.so.22.2.4
       18 0.0091 mouse_drv.so
       17 0.0086 libthumbnail.so
       16 0.0081 libnecko.so
       15 0.0076 python2.5
       14 0.0071 libubuntulooks.so
       13 0.0066 libexpo.so
       13 0.0066 libswitcher.so

[JofArnold (j-arnold)]

Same issue in Hardy running on a Dell M4300, Intel 9500, 4GB ram, nvidia 360M 256mb (1900x1200), compiz, bleeding-edge nv drivers. As a rough guess, I'd say that switching tabs under FF3 is about 1/10th the speed it should be.
I thought it may be worth adding that canvas (e.g. www.blobsallad.se) is also incredibly slow on FF3 but at normal speed under FF2. On previous computers slow canvas was an indicator of a gfx driver issue. There is a time difference between switching tabs on FF3 v. FF2, but it's slight.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xulrunner-1.9/+bug/185469 Looks a lot like this issue.

[Anthony DeChiaro (adechiaro)]

Same thing here too.... AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual Core 6000+, GeForce7600 GT.

Emerald usage kills the CPU with firefox.

[Daniel James (daniel-netbreeze)]

I've noticed that canvas is extremely slow under ff3 - but only when using nvidia drivers. I also have a cheap onboard intel video card in one of my pcs and it renders canvas extremely fast with ff3. There seems to be an incompatibility between firefox 3 and nvidia drivers - I'm assuming this is because of 'hardware acceleration'.

http://www.netbreeze.com.au/test.html for a test that runs very quickly on intel card, but slow on nvidia. (closed source driver).

[JofArnold (j-arnold)]

Very good chance this is the nvidia drivers. Check out the posts on the nvidia forums, e.g.: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=112612

The good news is that nvidia have recognised there's a problem and are "working on it". Let's hope they get something out fairly soon :-S

[Pedro Santos (zubiru)]

This problem can be fixed by updating the graphic card's driver. The easiest way is to install Envy by typing " sudo apt-get install envyng-gtk" if you use Ubuntu or "sudo apt-get install envyng-qt" on a Kubuntu machine. Run it by accessing the shortcut installed in Applications->System tools->EnvyNG, then select NVIDIA, check "Install NVIDIA driver (Automatic detection of hardware) and press apply. It should take a while and in the end you' re asked to restart your computer.

With the new driver running emerald, both compiz animations and tab switching work flawlessly.

Best regards!

[Pedro Santos (zubiru)]

Also installing the packet "xserver-xgl" smooths animations and solves other problems like the media-flow plugin in songbird (just type "sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl" under the console or search the packet trough Synaptic).

Best Regards!