System extremely slow

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1

We are running an aged Lenovo T520 with Core i5 and 4GB of RAM.
Startup has never been rapid, but with older machines this has never been a surprise; however, running applications has become a measure of patience. Even loading simple pages from the interweb on Firefox (always the latest version) has become a chore.
All applications take an age to start - Thunderbird, Firefox and LibreOffice possibly the worst but even relatively lightweight apps like Obsidian take an age.

The installation is a standard “out of the box” format of the HDD; dups are done at frequent intervals (usually once a week).
I have tried removing / disabling unused or unnecessary services. Apparmor is still active (deactivation seemed to change nothing) but no SELinux.

Any ideas? Could it simply be hardware - a sluggish HDD due to age, perhaps?

1 Like
2

Isn’t it swapping? How much Swap space you have. And you can look with e.g.top how much is free.

3

And you say you are using Firefox, that hints to also using a desktop, but you failed to explain which one. Some have a considerable larger footprint then others.

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I did mention what computer - a Lenovo T520, a laptop with 4GB (and 256GB HDD, not mentioned). There is 4GB of swap which according to htop is rarely at more than 50% utilization. The HDD is only at 60% use. Not sure why you think Firefox hints at a desktop - I use Firefox on an iPhone… but that is neither here nor there. Hoop dit helpt…

5

4 GB of RAM is not a lot for a full desktop environment. Are you running GNOME, KDE, XFCE, or something else?

6

We are talking of openSUSE right. Then using these (e.g. Firefox) hints (it even requires) using a desktop. But you never identified which desktop. And as said, different desktops have different requirements of resources.

7

Henk, a misunderstanding here, you think of a “Desktop Environment” (e.g. Gnome), the OP thinks about a box apparently…

8

Swap use per-se is not a problem, but if the system is actively swapping with a small and slow (by today’s standards) rotating rust disk, that is surely a serious problem.
If you tell us what desktop environment you are using, I can be more specific.

9

Oh boy, I see.

I tried to soften the message that he left out crucial information wanting to be nice and polite. And failed. :frowning:

10

The issue with #2 is because of #1 - that’s the plain and simple, and the obvious answer, even if using XFCE or similar. Using Runlevel 3 might be okay.

To contemplate (or deeply discuss) what else might be causing the slowness would be a “lost cause”.

11

There is clearly some misunderstanding here - certainly in part, my fault. We are running KDE, Wayland and yes, as noted in the keyword, Tumbleweed updated to most recent spec. every week.

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Ja, mijn fout op de vraag ‘desktop’ - maar je opmerking was voor mij niet zo helder!!! Te veel jaren bovenaan de ICT afdeling van het grootste SW-bedrijf van Nederland doet alleen maar denken aan desktop/laptop… :exploding_head:

13

I think you have a good point and it is one of my own theories - the disk itself is not going to be rapid, even by modern-day true disk HDDs standards, but I also wonder if the general health of the disk in not suffering too.

14

I already admitted that I should have been more clear.

1 Like
15

The problem is that it seems to be getting worse. When I first installed the system, it was to replace Windows 7 and it was like night and day - but now it seems to be running slower than with Window (heretic that such a statement should be uttered!)

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No problems - my poor interpretation

17

@TijgerD Hi, sounds like you need to check the hard drive as root user with smartctl -x /dev/sda assuming that’s the drive in question…

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I still have a HP dual core with 4GB of RAM, It is slow now a days with the newer openSUSE.
I got it a bit snappier by using an nvidia GPU with 4GB memory.

19

Software is getting heavier and heavier with every new version, so not surprising that current Tumbleweed might be slower than W7 (from 15 yrs ago?).
Nevertheless KDE on i5xxx/4GB should still be usable for browsing, word processing etc.; I have a test install on a Core2Duo/2GB :smiley:
Are you using BTRFS as the /root filesystem? There is a significant overhead compared to EXT4 and, worse than that, it may get highly fragmented with use unless housekeeping is regularly performed and that has dramatic effects on slow disks.
Swapping in an SSD might solve most problems; doubling the RAM comes next.
If that is not possible, use EXT4 as filesystem. Keep an eye on swap usage, if it goes above 1GB maybe it is also actively swapping and it is time to close some app (or a few open tabs in Firefox etc.).
If none of the above is readily feasible, try an even lighter desktop, XFCE, LXQT or LXDE according to user taste and perform regularly BTRFS maintenance if that system is needed (for instance to keep snapshots).

3 Likes
20

@OrsoBruno makes some excellent points, I would recommend upgrading from 4G to 8G of RAM - you should be able to purchase used ones without the recent price gouging as your machine uses older DDR versions. While KDE itself would work happily with 2G of RAM, websites these days are bloated and really need that extra bit of RAM. :smiling_face_with_tear:

Add an inexpensive 128G SSD and this machine would be saved from being e-waste for the next decade at least. :innocent:

Yep, that would slow things down in a major way when using HDDs. :warning:
With your machine specs, any swap usage could be bad. Reduce swappiness from the default value of 60 to 10.

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
echo 'vm.swappiness=10' > /etc/sysctl.d/00-custom.conf
sudo sysctl -p

Could you provide the smart output for this drive?

sudo smartctl -x /dev/<your-drive>