Out-of-the-box LEAP 4.2 omn late 2016 Dell XPS is incredibly sluggish

Hi there,

I have just installed LEAP 42.2 on a Dell XPS (late 2016, as defined at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(9360))

The installation was fine; however, the KDE desktop is incredibly sluggish to do anything involving the graphics; when I run top I see the “kwin_x11” process at the top of the list consuming around 2% CPU. If I move the window, it can ramp up to 60%!

I appear to have the latest Intel drivers installed - can anyone please point out what I’m missing here? As per http://www.cio.com/article/3083925/hardware/dell-xps-13-skylake-2016-review-a-lot-for-a-linux-user-to-like.html it appears LEAP should work out of the box on this device - so what am I missing?

Thanks all!

Dave

I don’t have a definitive answer to this, but one workaround I’ve seen previously is to use the UXA acceleration rather than SNA.

This may help (hopefully)…
https://fedoramagazine.org/solution-graphics-issues-intel-graphics-chipsets-fedora-22/
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Plasma-5-Driver-Crash

My apologies if I’m on the wrong track here.

Corroborated here as well…

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/521062-Leap-42-2-KDE-Issues?p=2800279#post2800279

I shall try that - thank you!

I did install Kubuntu and it didn’t have the same issue - what’s very odd is that, according to the Info Center, the graphics drivers under LEAP were virtualized drivers while under Kubuntu they were the actual Intel drivers… any idea why that happened!?

Was this Kubuntu 16.10? It seems you’re running the very latest Kaby Lake processor, which needs some changes in the kernel to support properly. Kubuntu 16.10 includes Linux 4.8 while openSUSE Leap 42.2 includes Linux 4.4.

I think there are some settings to change to help fix this issue, but I don’t run a Kaby Lake system so can’t help you that much there. Also try searching for issues with Skylake, as Kaby Lake is somewhat similar to its previous generation.

Alternatively, you could upgrade the kernel to the latest “stable” version, but this is (technically) not officially supported.

I tried both Leap 42.2 and Tumbleweed on my 9360, and Tumbleweed seems to work much better. Graphics were laggy with Leap 42.2. I asked on one of the opensuse forums about this, and was snottily told that going back to Tumbleweed was the thing to do. That’s what I’d already done, anyway, and I haven’t had any problems with video or graphics.

Thank you all for your help. I’m happy with KDE at the moment but I might give Tumbleweed a try.

I appreciate your input.

Hmmm. If you indeed meant KDE (Plasma5), that is the desktop, not the openSUSE version. KDE is also in Tumbleweed, so if you did decide to try Tumbleweed, your desktop will still be the same (unless you decide otherwise).