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Stretch MATE very slow

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tcat
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Stretch MATE very slow

#1 Post by tcat »

Hi,

I have just installed Debian 9 Stretch, MATE 1.18 desktop, on my legacy PC, 1000Mhz Athlon PC.
I still keep earlier version of Debian 8 with MATE 1.8 in a separate partion.

Comparing both installs in performance, I notice Debian 8 MATE 1.8 is reasonably responsive on my old PC, however I notice a big slow down in desktop responsivness of Debian 9 MATE 1.18.

Also Debian Stretch seems to have unreasonably high DPI svg desktop themes compared to erlier versions for legacy systems. Fonts and desktop icons are rendered twice as big to the earlier version at the same font dot size. Dragging a window acrross desktop takes a very long time, while traling unrefreshed black rectangles.

Can anyone help with settings of `Stretch' MATE to get on the same performance as before?
Many thanks.

Tomas

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#2 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Please post the full output of

Code: Select all

lspci -knn | grep -A2 '\''[030[02]\]'
deadbang

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#3 Post by tcat »

Debian 9 aka Stretch

Code: Select all

$ lspci -knn | grep -A2 '\''[030[02]\]'
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 [1023:8500]
	Subsystem: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 [1023:8500]
	Kernel modules: tridentfb
Debian 8 aka Jessie

Code: Select all

$  lspci -knn | grep -A2 '\''[030[02]\]'
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 [1023:8500]
	Subsystem: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 [1023:8500]
Many thanks so far.
Tomas

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#4 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Well that's confusing — the stretch system has a driver loaded but the jessie system does not, I would expect the stretch system to perform better in that case :?

We could try removing the Trident DDX driver:

Code: Select all

# apt purge xserver-xorg-video-trident
Intel cards can do better with the modesetting driver so perhaps your card will too.
deadbang

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#5 Post by tcat »

Hi,

Appologies for the confusion.

Quite the opposite, Jessie outperforms Stretch, at least 10x-15x times on my System.

I have installed the trident driver on Stretch for my video card, rendering is now alright in `lightdm', but still is a way too slow in MATE compared to Jessie. With the driver installed I can now set 1280x1024@60Hz.

Why is Stretch so slow?

Tomas

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#6 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Are there any errors or warnings in the Xorg log file?
deadbang

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#7 Post by tcat »

Debian 9 Stretch

Code: Select all

$ grep \(EE\) /var/log/Xorg.0.log
	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[    25.833] (EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
[    25.864] (EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory
[    26.306] (EE) TRIDENT: Failed to load module "xaa" (module does not exist, 0)
[    26.732] (EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering
Debian 8 Jessie

Code: Select all

$ grep \(EE\) /var/log/Xorg.0.log
	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[   105.516] (EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering
Many thanks so far.
Tomas

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#8 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

A search for

Code: Select all

TRIDENT: Failed to load module "xaa" (module does not exist, 0)
returns this guide as the top result:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Trident

tl;dr: add your user to the video group (if they are not already a member) or try the suggested Xorg configuration file:

Code: Select all

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-trident.conf
Section "Device"
   Identifier "trident"
   Driver "trident"
   Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
EndSection
deadbang

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#9 Post by tcat »

Hi,

EXA accelerator on Stretch has visual errors in rendering on my system, while XAA is no longer available. Also there is no improvement in speed of render.

Mounting Jessie on /mnt, to see differences.

Code: Select all

$ grep -i exa /mnt/var/log/Xorg.0.log
[   105.334] (**) TRIDENT(0): Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
[   105.334] (**) TRIDENT(0): Using EXA for acceleration
[   105.542] (II) Loading sub module "exa"
[   105.542] (II) LoadModule: "exa"
[   105.542] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libexa.so
[   105.583] (II) Module exa: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[   105.721] (II) EXA(0): Offscreen pixmap area of 3145728 bytes
[   105.721] (II) EXA(0): Driver registered support for the following operations
So EXA is used by default in Jessie and is fine.
Binary compare detects differences in `libexa.so ' in shared object.

Code: Select all

$ cmp /mnt/usr/lib/xorg/modules/libexa.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libexa.so
/mnt/usr/lib/xorg/modules/libexa.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libexa.so differ: byte 25, line 1
Trying now to copy EXA module over from Jessie to Stretch..

Many thanks so far.
Tomas

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#10 Post by tcat »

Hi,

Temporarilly copied over `Jessie xorg-server' install to `Stretch', needed also to change input methods.

X comes up, with EXA accel, but does not render correctly nor brings speed improvement. That possibly explains why EXA was removed from the Stretch release.

Reverting back to `Stretch xorg-server'.

I am not any wiser, Stretch just remains slow to use.

Tomas

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#11 Post by bw123 »

I had some issues running stretch on an older pc also (not that old though). Maybe you should take a look at the mate desktop settings instead of the driver, and X?

Looks like a decent wiki here, there are suggestions for enabling compositing, and adjusting dpi.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MATE

Keep that thing running!
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tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#12 Post by tcat »

Hi,

Thank you, toyed with DPI, set 74DPI by default both `Jessie', `Stretch'.

On this particular PC, I once run Debian Potato/Lenny releases between years 2000-2009, I remember at those days, streaming worked, youtube video played in web browser window, DVD could play as well, so were flash plugins, all that possible at 700Mhz old processor, 256MB RAM!

Sigh, not possible ever since, not to blame Debian, though, as today's computing grows it requires more power.

Tomas
Last edited by tcat on 2018-06-25 05:09, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#13 Post by HuangLao »

tcat wrote:Hi,

Appologies for the confusion.

Quite the opposite, Jessie outperforms Stretch, at least 10x-15x times on my System.

I have installed the trident driver on Stretch for my video card, rendering is now alright in `lightdm', but still is a way too slow in MATE compared to Jessie. With the driver installed I can now set 1280x1024@60Hz.

Why is Stretch so slow?

Tomas
Keep in mind that MATE has become much "heavier" between those versions, partly as the result of transitioning to GTK3. Have you tried any lightweight DE's ie: Xfce, LXDE or LXQt?

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#14 Post by Caitlin »

I use MATE under Stretch and I haven't noticed any performance problems.

Caitlin

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#15 Post by tcat »

Hi,

Yes, I believe so, what computing resources you have, just currious? Do you buy a new computer with each OS release?

I have other platforms at home, but I used my legacy PC, (at those days experimental h/w), as a reference platform for testing OS relases. Between Potato-Lenny, I was getting new functionality with each release on this platform, past Lenny releases I was loosing the same fuctionallity gained before, in favour of user interface beauty that required constantly new faster h/w.

Tomas

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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#16 Post by bw123 »

tcat wrote:Hi,

Yes, I believe so, what computing resources you have, just currious? Do you buy a new computer with each OS release?

I have other platforms at home, but I used my legacy PC, (at those days experimental h/w), as a reference platform for testing OS relases. Between Potato-Lenny, I was getting new functionality with each release on this platform, past Lenny releases I was loosing the same fuctionallity gained before, in favour of user interface beauty that required constantly new faster h/w.

Tomas
I have always used second hand hardware, about 5 yrs old. It's cheap, well tested, and plenty of known bug/quirk workarounds. But after about ten yrs, the useful life curve seems to drop off dramatically, especially on hardware from a defunct vendor.

People swear that hardware has gotten better and faster, but I still see machines all the time that take minutes to boot, seconds to respond, frequently crash or hang, etc.

It's a good observation you made, but it's probably not going to change.

I always do a full desktop environment install, and a lean window manager install. When I need some fancy app or browser, I use the DE, but when I want to get some work done, I really prefer the plain window manager and xterm.
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tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#17 Post by tcat »

It's a good observation you made, but it's probably not going to change.
Yes, hard to come to terms with.
I always do a full desktop environment install, and a lean window manager install. When I need some fancy app or browser, I use the DE, but when I want to get some work done, I really prefer the plain window manager and xterm.
Same here.

What I liked about advent of touch screen mobiles was, that initially resouces were minimal. Developers could not simply copy all desktop `MEGA' computing stuff over to mobile technology. So they faced a dilema what is really essential for the user to run on mobile. This process led to lean software design, while embelishing the rest. True, you could not do the same on mobile as with computer.

Tomas

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#18 Post by tcat »

Hi,

In the end, I have resolved slower MATE responsivenes in `Stretch' by setting these values.

Code: Select all

$ gsettings set org.mate.interface gtk-enable-animations false
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general reduced-resources true
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general compositing-manager false
$ gsettings set org.mate.Marco.general side-by-side-tiling false
It works for me, and my legacy PC well, though it removes some animation beauty, that works normally in `Jessie'.

I have also filed a bug report against `xserver-xorg-video-trident' and `EXA accel'. But I feel it may affect marco window manager, too. Cannot tell for sure.

Tomas

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#19 Post by tcat »

Hi,

Did further search in `Jessie' install, I have dug out, my `xorg.conf' sitting right in /etc/X11/.

Code: Select all

# xorg.conf for Trident family of drivers
Section "Device"
	Identifier "Video Driver"
	Driver 	"trident"   
	Option 	"AccelMethod" "EXA" 
	Option 	"MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
EndSection
It is the heuristics mode above making the EXA accelartion render correctly in `Stretch'. So I have some improvement back, not as fast as `Jessie', but usable.

What troubles me, I do not remember how I worked out the heuristics option back in `Jessie' as man xorg, man xorg.conf, nor man trident does not mention this option?

Many thanks for all the tips I received here, they were actually pointing in the right direction.

I may link this post to `Hardware' section, too.
Tomas

tcat
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Re: Stretch MATE very slow

#20 Post by tcat »

Hi,

I was encouraged to run `glxgears' in Hardware section, here is benchmark.

Debian 8 Jessie

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$ glxgears
60 frames in 5.0 seconds = 11.934 FPS
111 frames in 5.0 seconds = 22.063 FPS
111 frames in 5.0 seconds = 22.107 FPS
111 frames in 5.0 seconds = 22.124 FPS
111 frames in 5.0 seconds = 22.019 FPS
Debian 9 Stretch

Code: Select all

$ glxgears
46 frames in 5.0 seconds =  9.168 FPS
146 frames in 5.0 seconds = 29.012 FPS
146 frames in 5.0 seconds = 29.021 FPS
146 frames in 5.0 seconds = 29.051 FPS
145 frames in 5.0 seconds = 28.931 FPS
I get more frames per sec in Stretch, yet Stretch `on my system' has far less responsive desktop, at least 10-15x times?

Tomas

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