The More Applications window takes far too long to come up

[Scott Severance]

Binary package hint: gnome-main-menu

My machine, which is running Edgy, is an older one with a slow processor and little physical RAM (though I have lots of swap). When I click on the more applications button, the window takes anywhere between 10-25 seconds to appear and become fully functional (sometimes it appears, but the contents haven't yet been drawn). This delay seems to be caused by the overhead of launching a separate, high-overhead process.

In my opinion, the delay should be no longer than 1 second, and whatever measures necessary to avoid such a delay (using a single process, keeping the application browser in memory, etc.) should be taken. The application browser is in effect a menu, and should be just as easily accessible--especially since there's no other way to access programs not in the favorites list through gnome-main-menu.

I'm not sure if I'm reporting this in the right place. I installed the package gnome-main-menu, not slab (which doesn't exist in the edgy repos). I followed a link here from the Launchpad entry for gnome-main-menu.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 beta?

[Scott Severance (scott.severance)]

The machine I was using when I reported this bug is no longer working. My current machine, running Hardy, is much more powerful, with 3 GB of RAM instead of 512 MB. So while the menus still take time to appear, the time is on the order of 0.5 sec.

I'm not running Intrepid yet. I'll try to remember to test this again once I upgrade (after the release).

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

From clicking on the main-menu icon, for the menu to open, takes about 8 seconds,

that is, on a reboot or boot into Karmic OS.

After the initial main-menu icon click,

the main-menu will then open immediately, from that time onwards.

It appears, as if the main-menu is not saved in cache or buffer,

when a shutdown, boot or a reboot occurs.

I have no idea of the underlying processes of the main-menu,

nor do I know which log would help the maintainers & developers.

BavarianPH

Ubuntu forever!

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

A recent update (Oct 24, 2009, 2:30pm), (or reinstall, since version numers did not change)

of grub2 1.97~beta4-1ubuntu3, did not repair the bug related to

recordfail=1, regardless of edits to other grub scripts, & normal

shutdown, boot, reboot success, recordfail, in grubenv,

will change to 1, & will halt grub2-menu at next boot or reboot.

BavarianPH,

Ubuntu forever!

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

BavarianPH addendum: comments written on 2009-10-24

 belong to bug 439784 & related bugs.

(so many comments, I used the wrong bug number

concerning grub2 recordfail=1)

apologies, "my bad."

I would be happy to add a initialization log that enumerates

OS initial processes, that would include main-menu.

Alas, there are just too many logs, & so little time.

BavarianPH,

not much help, but I would be willing to learn.

Ubuntu forever!

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

Latest developments:

after upgrading every day with

Update Manager with backports,

proposed updates enabled,

the main menu problem has been

repaired.

The main menu takes only 1 to 2

seconds to appear in the initial

first click afer starting Karmic or

restarting Karmic.

Unfortunately I cannot tell you

exactly which update package fixed it.

Kudos to the developers!

BavarianPH,
Ubuntu forever!

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

Latest developments:

After upgrading with backports

and proposed updates enabled,

every day, for the last week,

the main menu problem has been

fixed.

It now only takes 1 to 2 seconds

for the menu to appear at the initial

click.

Unfortunately, I could not tell you

which update it was.

Kudos to the developers!

BavarianPH,
Ubuntu forever!

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

Newest development:

After updating a few more days,

The Main Menu reverted back to taking

8 seconds to appear after one clicks on it

the first time when the PC is started

and after the PC has been rebooted.

I wish I knew which program update it

was that temporarily fixed the delayed Main Menu.

I do not know which logs report this issue?

BavarianPH,

Ubuntu forever!

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

as of now the delayed menu bug is repaired

in the latest Koala and Lucid OSs.

It takes 2 to 3 seconds now, and I can live

with that.

Regularly upgrading and updating fixes

most bugs in either OS.

It just takes patience.

Lucid alpha is getting better by almost

every update!

Thank you developers!

BavarianPH,

Ubuntu forever!

[BavarianPH (bavarianph)]

as of this date, the last two or three updates have

repaired the menu delay in Lucid-alpha2

The main-menu is available immediately

even on boot-up or after a reboot!

Thank you very much (danke schoen)

Ubuntu masters and developers!

BavarianPH,
Ubuntu forever!

[rusivi2 (rusivi2-deactivatedaccount)]

Scott:

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. I noticed the package your bugging is updated in Maverick. Does this occur in it? If so, please feel free to mark this bug as new. Thanks in advance!

[Scott Severance (scott.severance)]

I'm not running Maverick, since I can't afford the downtime risk inherent in running pre-release software. However, considering that the upstream bug hasn't been touched for quite some time, it's reasonable to assume that this bug hasn't been fixed.

[xteejx (xteejx-deactivatedaccount)]

This bug hasn't been updated for some time and we were wondering if this is still a problem? If so, please report back, and may I also suggest nudging the upstream bug report to make them aware as they are the developers. Thank you.