LXQT desktop environment hangs?

[kaye n]

Hi Friends!

LXQT says,

It will not get in your way. It will not hang or slow down your system.

However, I've experienced the opposite, especially when I'm using Firefox browser and attempt to open several pages in different tabs.

I don't think the problem lies with Firefox though because I didn't have that problem on Debian 10 XFCE.  I am now running Debian 11 LXQT.

I don't want to use XFCE again just because I want to try another.

Could LXDE be better?  Is there a way I can install LXDE to my existing Debian 11 running LXQT?  Or should I just fresh install Debian 11 with LXDE as the default desktop environment?

Thank you for your time.

[kaye n]

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 8:52 PM Andrew M.A. Cater <amac...@einval.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 08:22:15PM +0800, kaye n wrote:
> Hi Friends!
>
> LXQT says,
>
> It will not get in your way. It will not hang or slow down your system.
>
> However, I've experienced the opposite, especially when I'm using Firefox
> browser and attempt to open several pages in different tabs.
>

I think Firefox may actually be the problem: it _is_ memory hungry.
The Web is getting heavier and more memory hungry in general - maybe
open one or two pages and see how much faster it is.

> I don't think the problem lies with Firefox though because I didn't have
> that problem on Debian 10 XFCE.  I am now running Debian 11 LXQT.
>
> I don't want to use XFCE again just because I want to try another.
>
> Could LXDE be better?  Is there a way I can install LXDE to my existing
> Debian 11 running LXQT?  Or should I just fresh install Debian 11 with LXDE
> as the default desktop environment?
>

You could purge LXQT and install LXDE - using tasksel as root/root
equivalent.

YOu could just add LXDE to what you already have: they share some libraries,
I think, and then switch between them. Again, use tasksel to just add
it.

> Thank you for your time.

No problem: hope this helps,

Andy Cater

Maybe you're right about Firefox.  Any "light" browsers you can recommend?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 08:22:15PM +0800, kaye n wrote:

> Hi Friends!
>
> LXQT says,
>
> It will not get in your way. It will not hang or slow down your system.
>
> However, I've experienced the opposite, especially when I'm using Firefox
> browser and attempt to open several pages in different tabs.
>

I think Firefox may actually be the problem: it _is_ memory hungry.
The Web is getting heavier and more memory hungry in general - maybe
open one or two pages and see how much faster it is.

> I don't think the problem lies with Firefox though because I didn't have
> that problem on Debian 10 XFCE. I am now running Debian 11 LXQT.
>
> I don't want to use XFCE again just because I want to try another.
>
> Could LXDE be better? Is there a way I can install LXDE to my existing
> Debian 11 running LXQT? Or should I just fresh install Debian 11 with LXDE
> as the default desktop environment?
>

You could purge LXQT and install LXDE - using tasksel as root/root
equivalent.

YOu could just add LXDE to what you already have: they share some libraries,
I think, and then switch between them. Again, use tasksel to just add
it.

> Thank you for your time.

[Dan Ritter]

kaye n wrote:
> LXQT says,
>
> It will not get in your way. It will not hang or slow down your system.
>
> However, I've experienced the opposite, especially when I'm using Firefox
> browser and attempt to open several pages in different tabs.

That's not likely to be LXQT's fault.


Can you describe the problem more precisely?

-dsr-

[kaye n]

Hello!

For example when I'm using Firefox and I have about 10 to 12 websites opened in different tabs

First tab is google, second is ebay, third is amazon, third is youtube, etc.

That's when things get real slow.

I have the CPU Monitor widget on the taskbar. It goes up to almost 100.  I see that when the system slows down or hangs.

Again, I don't think this ever happened in my Debian 10 XFCE.  I am now running Debian 11 LXQT.

Maybe Debian 11 simply consumes more resources?

Thank you

[Dan Ritter]

kaye n wrote:
> Maybe you're right about Firefox. Any "light" browsers you can recommend?

The problem with web browsers is that they are basically a
second operating system for computers.

(The great thing about web browsers is that they are a
nearly-universal operating system.)

The lightest web browsers are also the least capable:

lynx
w3m
elinks
links

then

cog
dillo
epiphany-browser
falkon
luakit
midori
netsurf
surf


and then the heavies:

chromium
firefox

You can substantially improve the memory usage and speed of
firefox by installing the extension ublock Origin.

-dsr-

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

If all else fails, you could try netsurf: maintained by Debian developers who
really care about the quality of their code.

It depends: websites will vary. I've actually found elinks useful for
simple web links embedded in email, for example.

All best, as ever,

Andy Cater

[Eric S Fraga]

My experience is that Firefox, if you open too many tabs and especially
some of the very javascript heavy ones, gets bogged down quite severely
and requires restarting. It can slow the whole system down in my
experience.
--
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 28.0.60 & org 9.5 on Debian 11.1

[Linux-Fan]

kaye n writes:

> Hi Friends!
>
> LXQT says,
>
> It will not get in your way. It will not hang or slow down your system.
>
> However, I've experienced the opposite, especially when I'm using Firefox
> browser and attempt to open several pages in different tabs.
>
> I don't think the problem lies with Firefox though because I didn't have that
> problem on Debian 10 XFCE.  I am now running Debian 11 LXQT.

Note that from Debian 10 XFCE to Debian 11 LXQT a lot of things changed. I
am pretty sure that it is not LXQT's fault here especially if the problem
only occurs while Firefox is running.

I'd suggest to try debugging _why_ Firefox has become so much slower as per
the upgrade. It is unlikely that it is the new Firefox version being slower
than the old ones (although it may be possible). What I'd rather guess is
that something different changed in the system which now causes it to run
slower.

What GPU are you using? How is the RAM load during the slow phases? Can you
close invidual tabs to stop the slowness i.e. can you make out that the high
load is caused by a specific website or a specific type of website. It could
be possible that during the upgrade a combination of driver+GUI was
installed that is no longer compatible with your GPU. This would typically
manifest in high CPU load for things like video playing or animations of all
kinds because the system falls back to "software rendering" in case the GPU
is not supported properly.

> I don't want to use XFCE again just because I want to try another.
>
> Could LXDE be better?  Is there a way I can install LXDE to my existing
> Debian 11 running LXQT?  Or should I just fresh install Debian 11 with LXDE
> as the default desktop environment?

Adding LXDE to your existing installation should be as simple as

# apt-get install task-lxde-desktop

Watch out if APT displays any conflicts with your existing packages. During
login, you should then be able select different types of "sessions"
including LXDE and LXQT ones.

>From experiments on slow (old, i386) machines, my experience was that LXDE
was indeed a little bit faster than LXQT but the difference is probably not
notable on anything but >13 year old hardware :)

> Thank you for your time.

HTH and YMMV
Linux-Fan

öö

OT: If you want something that _really_ does not get in the way or slow
down, consider switching to any lightweight window manager like Fluxbox,
IceWM, i3 etc. These are know to be _very_ responsive even on old machines.
Of course, this will not solve the slowness caused by the software you use.
Webbrowsers will remain bulky and large as many sites do not work with the
lightweight browsers anymore...

[David Wright]

On Fri 29 Oct 2021 at 20:59:06 (+0800), kaye n wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 8:52 PM Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 08:22:15PM +0800, kaye n wrote:
> > > LXQT says,
> > >
> > > It will not get in your way. It will not hang or slow down your system.
> > >
> > > However, I've experienced the opposite, especially when I'm using Firefox
> > > browser and attempt to open several pages in different tabs.
> >
> > I think Firefox may actually be the problem: it _is_ memory hungry.
> > The Web is getting heavier and more memory hungry in general - maybe
> > open one or two pages and see how much faster it is.
> >
> > > I don't think the problem lies with Firefox though because I didn't have
> > > that problem on Debian 10 XFCE. I am now running Debian 11 LXQT.
> > >
> > > I don't want to use XFCE again just because I want to try another.
> > >
> > > Could LXDE be better? Is there a way I can install LXDE to my existing
> > > Debian 11 running LXQT? Or should I just fresh install Debian 11 with
> > LXDE
> > > as the default desktop environment?
> > >
> > You could purge LXQT and install LXDE - using tasksel as root/root
> > equivalent.
> >
> > YOu could just add LXDE to what you already have: they share some
> > libraries,
> > I think, and then switch between them. Again, use tasksel to just add
> > it.
> >

> Maybe you're right about Firefox. Any "light" browsers you can recommend?

Sorry, just trying to catch up here. Can we assume your internet
connection is running at better than 670kbps since Sep29?
And can you remind us whether your current problem is on the old
desktop or the 10-yr old laptop. I recall some specs for the former
(was there a typo — 10GHz?) but how much memory do they each have?
And are you running an installed 11 system, or a live USB stick?

Cheers,
David.

[Roy J. Tellason, Sr.]

On Friday 29 October 2021 09:10:29 am Dan Ritter wrote:
> You can substantially improve the memory usage and speed of
> firefox by installing the extension ublock Origin.

Thanks for posting this, I've installed it and reviewed a fair amount of the docs. It looks to be truly useful...


--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space,  a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed.  --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin

[Christian Britz]

At 29.10.21 Dan Ritter wrote:

> and then the heavies:
>
> chromium
> firefox

I was a long time user of Mozilla based browsers (Netscape -> Mozilla
Suite -> SeaMonkey -> Firefox) but lately I found Chromium based
browsers faster and more appealing.
Beat me, but I even prefer Chrome above Chromium. That is because I
actually like the Google integration and security updates from Google
are faster and more often delivered than for the Chromium in Debian.

Regards,
Christian

[Christian Britz]

Christian Britz wrote:

> Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
>
>>> Maybe you're right about Firefox. Any "light" browsers you can recommend?
>>
>> If all else fails, you could try netsurf: maintained by Debian developers who
>> really care about the quality of their code.
>

> Interesting, I will have a look at it too, out of curiousity. I heard
> that it is even available for "modern" incarnations of AmigaOS (My first
> personal web browser was IBrowse on an A1200...)

First impression: _Very_ fast but fails to render many popular sites
acceptably.

[Christian Britz]

Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

>> Maybe you're right about Firefox. Any "light" browsers you can recommend?
>
> If all else fails, you could try netsurf: maintained by Debian developers who
> really care about the quality of their code.

[harry...@tutanota.com]

--
Sent with Tutanota, the secure & ad-free mailbox.



30 Oct 2021, 03:29 by cbr...@t-online.de:

If you have any other KDE packages installed, try Falkon.
You will have to install one of the Konqueror extension programmes to get full configuration options, but not much space is taken up with that.
With all lighter options, there will always be compromising aspects, but I have found Falkon useful in some situations where Firefox fails, in SID, at least.
Cheers!

Harry

[riveravaldez]

On Friday, October 29, 2021, Dan Ritter <d...@randomstring.org> wrote:
> kaye n wrote:
>> Maybe you're right about Firefox.  Any "light" browsers you can recommend?
>
> The problem with web browsers is that they are basically a
> second operating system for computers.
>
> (The great thing about web browsers is that they are a
> nearly-universal operating system.)

$ dpigs -n2 -SH
287.7M linux-signed-amd64
195.4M firefox-esr

;)

[piorunz]

On 29/10/2021 14:57, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> My experience is that Firefox, if you open too many tabs and especially
> some of the very javascript heavy ones, gets bogged down quite severely
> and requires restarting. It can slow the whole system down in my
> experience.
>

Nah. Problem is your computer, not Firefox. Probably it's just too slow,
or you have bad hard drive or memory. I use Firefox with 50 tabs and
multiple profiles opened, Firefox total memory consumption is over 10GB
sometimes. Everything works perfectly, Firefox never let me down. But I
have plenty of RAM and decent CPU.

--
With kindest regards, Piotr.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀

[piorunz]

On 29/10/2021 13:56, kaye n wrote:
> For example when I'm using Firefox and I have about 10 to 12 websites
> opened in different tabs
>
> First tab is google, second is ebay, third is amazon, third is youtube, etc.
>
> That's when things get real slow.
>
> I have the CPU Monitor widget on the taskbar. It goes up to almost 100.
> I see that when the system slows down or hangs.

Please show screenshot of "htop" command running in the terminal.

[kaye n]

This currentLXQT /  Firefox slowing down computer issue is currently on the old desktop computer, which has access to good wifi speed.

RAM of this desktop computer is 3GB only. 

I'm running an installed 11 system, not a live USB stick.

Thank you.

[piorunz]

On 31/10/2021 13:22, kaye n wrote:
> This currentLXQT /  Firefox slowing down computer issue is currently on
> the old desktop computer, which has access to good wifi speed.
> RAM of this desktop computer is 3GB only.
> I'm running an installed 11 system, not a live USB stick.
> Thank you.

Please show screenshot of "htop" command running in the terminal. Let's
see if this problem you are experiencing is caused by LXQT (as you
assumed) or by inadequate hardware (my guess).

[Linux-Fan]

kaye n writes:

> SORRY I SHOULD HAVE SENT IT TO DEBIAN LIST

Never mind, I am taking this as an OK to post my answer to the list :)

> On Sun, Oct 31, 2021 at 9:16 PM kaye n <gui...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 29, 2021 at 10:35 PM Linux-Fan <Ma_S...@web.de> wrote:

[...]

> I'd suggest to try debugging _why_ Firefox has become so much slower as
> per 
> the upgrade. It is unlikely that it is the new Firefox version being
> slower 
> than the old ones (although it may be possible). What I'd rather guess
> is 
> that something different changed in the system which now causes it to
> run 
> slower.
>
> What GPU are you using? How is the RAM load during the slow phases? Can
> you 
> close invidual tabs to stop the slowness i.e. can you make out that the
> high 
> load is caused by a specific website or a specific type of website. It

[...]

>  What GPU are you using?

>   Device-1: Intel 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
>   Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: intel
>   unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
>   OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 945G v: 1.4 Mesa 20.3.5

>
> Can you  close invidual tabs to stop the slowness

> Almost always no.

Actually, this looks pretty OK to me. I conclude that it is most likely not
to be a GPU-related issue, although I do not know what else might be causing
the slowness. Others suggested to check the CPU load with `htop`. This might
indeed be a good next thing to try?

HTH
Linux-Fan

öö

[songbird]

riveravaldez wrote:
...

> $ dpigs -n2 -SH
> 287.7M linux-signed-amd64
> 195.4M firefox-esr
>
> ;)

things be different at this machine:

$ dpigs -n8 -SH
499.3M linux
359.6M golang-1.16
357.8M linux-signed-amd64
325.8M libreoffice
292.4M qemu
273.7M rustc
213.1M python3.9
203.5M firefox


songbird

[Eric S Fraga]

On Sunday, 31 Oct 2021 at 09:17, piorunz wrote:
> Nah. Problem is your computer, not Firefox.

Rather dismissive?

Everything else on this "slow" computer (yes, it's old but has 4
dual-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz processors and 32 GB
RAM) works just fine otherwise. Drive and memory all test fine.

Only Firefox causes me problems if I let it run for a long time. My
system is up 24/7.

YMMV, of course, and that's great for you. But don't dismiss other
people's experiences so out of hand please.

[piorunz]

On 01/11/2021 07:58, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Sunday, 31 Oct 2021 at 09:17, piorunz wrote:
>> Nah. Problem is your computer, not Firefox.
>
> Rather dismissive?
>
> Everything else on this "slow" computer (yes, it's old but has 4
> dual-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz processors and 32 GB
> RAM) works just fine otherwise. Drive and memory all test fine.
>
> Only Firefox causes me problems if I let it run for a long time. My
> system is up 24/7.
>
> YMMV, of course, and that's great for you. But don't dismiss other
> people's experiences so out of hand please.

Sorry if you felt offended. But you said yourself "It can slow the whole

system down in my experience."

No single application should slow down entire system with 32GB of RAM, 2
CPUs and multiple threads, unless something is misconfigured or
suboptimal, like GPU driver for example. I have 64GB of ECC RAM in this
machine, Firefox ESR didn't crashed even once since I installed
Bullseye, I never close it. I use Radeon card with open source driver.
GPU has a big effect on browsers, because they use hardware acceleration.
What GPU you have?

[Tixy]

On Mon, 2021-11-01 at 10:38 +0000, piorunz wrote:
> No single application should slow down entire system with 32GB of RAM, 2

> CPUs and multiple threads, unless something is misconfigured...

Sure it can, depends on how many processes and threads the application
uses. E.g. transcoding a video will quite happily eat most of the time
on all my CPUs, as will compiling a large program. And whilst I have no
performance problems with Firefox, myself, I see that it's config on my
machine is set to use 8 process by default, and sure enough there's
lot's of processes spawned when opening several tabs (which I don't
normally do). If I then turn off the ad blocker and enable javascript,
then it seems to use up to 100% of a single CPU total when doing
'nothing'. (Presumably that's crap and malicious java script doing
whatever it does.)

--
Tixy

[piorunz]

On 01/11/2021 13:14, Tixy wrote:
> Sure it can, depends on how many processes and threads the application
> uses. E.g. transcoding a video will quite happily eat most of the time
> on all my CPUs

In that case just decrease Firefox priority using htop when already
running, or nice during starting Firefox so CPU priority setting is
inherited to it's children processes. Even set priority to idle. That
way, Firefox eating all CPU time will not have any impact on other
programs running in your machine.

Everything can be sorted out. Even fact that Firefox spawns dozens of
processes as you add more tabs - just disable multiprocess spawning in
Firefox settings. Another proof that Firefox can be running for months
without any problem - problem it always in hardware or in the user not
being aware of configuration options available.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Monday, 1 Nov 2021 at 10:38, piorunz wrote:
> Sorry if you felt offended.

Not offended! :-)

> No single application should slow down entire system with 32GB of RAM, 2

Agreed, it shouldn't. But my experience is that it does. Why? I don't
know.

Your comment about the GPU driver is helpful as I probably don't have
the optimum graphics card settings (I do very little graphical work:
mostly text in Emacs all day long...). I have an nvidia graphics card
and my experience with nvidia has never been positive, to be fair.

[piorunz]

On 01/11/2021 14:02, Eric S Fraga wrote:

> Your comment about the GPU driver is helpful as I probably don't have
> the optimum graphics card settings (I do very little graphical work:
> mostly text in Emacs all day long...). I have an nvidia graphics card
> and my experience with nvidia has never been positive, to be fair.

Glad I could help you move to (hopefully) right direction. Nvidia
provides closed source drivers only which are known to have errors and
bugs. I you don't use closed source drivers, open source equivalent -
nouveau driver, is (or could be) even more buggy and basic.

Sometimes Nvidia drivers are blacklisted in browsers and you have no
acceleration whatsoever, because of bugs. Can you change your GPU to
AMD? To Radeon card with open source driver? I do 4K 60FPS gaming on my
radeon card with open source driver, no problems at all. Didn't hang on
me since I installed Bullseye.

Please check hardware acceleration settings in Firefox. Maybe they can
be enabled, disabled, changed, or reset to default. Reason of this
procedure is that Firefox works better with your GPU. See what you can
do, start from about:support page in Firefox. But that perhaps is
offtopic discussion in this Debian mailing list.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Monday, 1 Nov 2021 at 14:53, piorunz wrote:
> Glad I could help you move to (hopefully) right direction.

Thank you for all the suggestions.

My solution is straightforward: I open Firefox when I need it (usually
these days only for banking, using eww in Emacs for most everything else
web related... ;-)) and then close it immediately. No performance
issues then!

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 01 nov 21, 07:58:09, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Sunday, 31 Oct 2021 at 09:17, piorunz wrote:
> > Nah. Problem is your computer, not Firefox.
>
> Rather dismissive?
>
> Everything else on this "slow" computer (yes, it's old but has 4
> dual-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz processors and 32 GB
> RAM) works just fine otherwise. Drive and memory all test fine.
>
> Only Firefox causes me problems if I let it run for a long time. My
> system is up 24/7.

I've seen some hints on the web that slow storage can also have an
impact, something to do with periodic flushing of some sqlite database
to persistent storage.

Even on older hardware, persistent storage is significantly slower than
the rest, a fast SSD can really breath new life into it.

Kind regards,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

[Eric S Fraga]

On Friday, 10 Dec 2021 at 12:23, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> I've seen some hints on the web that slow storage can also have an
> impact, something to do with periodic flushing of some sqlite database
> to persistent storage.

This is indeed a very likely explanation. The disk drives on this
system are definitely on the slow side. I could upgrade but killing
firefox periodically is an easier (and cheaper 😉) solution for me! 🙂

--
Eric S Fraga with org 9.5.1 in Emacs 29.0.50 on Debian 11.1

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Lu, 13 dec 21, 11:40:15, Eric S Fraga wrote:
> On Friday, 10 Dec 2021 at 12:23, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> > I've seen some hints on the web that slow storage can also have an
> > impact, something to do with periodic flushing of some sqlite database
> > to persistent storage.
>
> This is indeed a very likely explanation. The disk drives on this
> system are definitely on the slow side. I could upgrade but killing
> firefox periodically is an easier (and cheaper 😉) solution for me! 🙂

If at all possible, that system would benefit greatly from moving the
system to an SSD.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Tuesday, 14 Dec 2021 at 09:14, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> If at all possible, that system would benefit greatly from moving the
> system to an SSD.

I do have one system with an SSD and these drives do have an incredible
positive performance impact.

With respect to the system I have been referring in this thread, I'm
sure replacing the drives with an SSD would help the system but this
would cost money and, more to the point, this system is scheduled to be
replaced in the near future by a much newer (albeit not new: 4-5 years
old) system.

If it were a big issue for me, then the cost could be worth it, of
course, but it's not really. I only posted earlier in the thread as a
data point on what things can slow desktop environments down.

Thank you for your suggestions!