Sluggish GNOME/Wayland desktop on 2015 i7 Macbook
Hi, folks -
I used to run Fedora on a 2013 i5 Macbook, and performance was good. Recently my company bumped me up to a newer laptop since I was having issues with only having 4GB RAM on my old machine. On the new machine, the desktop just feels sluggish. Moving or resizing windows seems to render at maybe 7 or 8 FPS and feels jerky.
Videos play fine, even fullscreen - it seems to just be GNOME itself that is sluggish.
I am also having issues with the system refusing to stay suspended when I close the lid - it repetitively wakes up and goes back to sleep (and gets quite hot!). I am unsure whether that is related - I mention it because during the suspend/wake cycle this message is logged at each suspend and each wake:
journal[1519]: Failed to set power save mode for output eDP-1: Permission denied
I'm wondering if that might cause the GPU to remain in a throttled state or something?
I've verified that I am using the proprietary Intel driver, and glxgears runs around 10000FPS if I set vblank_mode=0, so performance seems normal, I think?
Additionally, the intelgputop utility only shows about 6% to 10% load at idle, and goes up to perhaps 35% to 40% if I rapidly drag windows all over the screen - but it's still jerky. I have >8GB ram free, htop shows overall about 6% CPU usage and a load average of 0.5 to 1.5 (on an 8-thread machine).
Some info about the system - I am sure more is needed but I'm not terribly experienced troubleshooting GUI issues - I mostly use *nix in an ssh session, so I'm not sure exactly where to look for problems.
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name' | head -n1
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4870HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz
lspci -vv -s 00:02.0
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Crystal Well Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 08) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device 0147
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
glxinfo | grep OpenGL:
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Haswell Mobile
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5 (Core Profile) Mesa 18.0.5
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.50
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 18.0.5
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.1 Mesa 18.0.5
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.10
uname -a
Linux boss429 4.18.10-200.fc28.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Sep 26 09:48:36 UTC 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU ...
Hi, update your question with output of
inxi -SMGxxxz
.PS Apple's dream come true: need more ram? Buy newer macbook ;/
I updated it - thanks for the quick reply.
Does it also happen without external monitor?
You can try x.Org session instead of wayland (use a gear icon on login screen).
There's an updated firmware for MBP114, but you probably need OS X and App Store for that.
Try booting Fedora 29 beta from a live USB. It has many newer packages with lots of fixes, e.g. mesa (open source GPU driver you're using), Gnome, Wayland etc.
It does happen without an external monitor.
When I was using X.org instead of Wayland, it definitely ran more smoothly, but I had other issues that were more painful to deal with than a slow desktop, so I think going back to X is a non-starter.
I will give Fedora 29 a shot, probably this weekend - although since it's expected to release at the end of the month perhaps I'll just wait until then and upgrade.
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I'll report back if I unearth a fix or more evidence of what the source of the trouble might be.