Performance issues with all browsers

[RebelCoder]

Hello.

I am a full-time Debian user for last 2 years. Debian is the only distro that works on my Optimus (Intel + Nvidia GPU using Bumblebee) enabled laptop out of the box.
I seem to have only one issue (it seems to happen on all distros I have tried though): No matter what browser I use, all of them have exactly the same issue:

Overtime (after opening/closing tabs, viewing few YT Videos) the browser just slows down my computer, starts using 1-2 CPUs to 100% when nothing is playing and browsing becomes super slow. My laptop fan starts blowing like I am playing a game or something. If I kill all browser threads or reboot the system, it goes to normal but happens again after some browsing.

Browsers I have tried:
Chromium, Waterfox, Firefox, Vivaldi, Yandex, Opera.
They all have exactly the same problem.

All other applications and games run super smooth and don't slow down my system over time. Maybe some acceleration or memory leak problems?

So I am looking for someone, who had similar/same problem and has experience fixing it.

My system:
Intel Core i7-4710MQ
Intel HD 4600 + GTX 765M (Running bumblebee propitiatory drivers)
Kingston SSD 256Gb
8GB DDR3

Debian Stretch
Kernel: x86_64 Linux 4.9.0-5-amd64 (tried few with the same result)


Regards.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Do you experience these problems with the nouveau drivers?

They are less buggy that the blobs, apparently.

Did you check `top` or `ps aux` to see which process was eating all your cycles?

Is there anything relevant in ~/.xsession-errors?

[RebelCoder]

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I use htop to view my stats at all times. Browser threads just keep using more CPU cycles the more I use the browser. It kills performance faster after few YT vidz. It happened just now again. I have switched to Chromium for videos and heavy browsing + Waterfox for my coding related tabs. So I can just kill Chromium if system start to crawl. It is strange.

I had this problem from day one. Extensive use of any browser just slows the system to a crawl, even though there is still RAM available, lot's of free CPU to use. In come cases I have to reboot to get back to normal. I know Flash is garbage and might just run all stuff in 1 thread and just kill performance but I don;t use Flash at all. Strange.

As for ~/.xsession-errors, there is a ton of stuff in there. Not sure where to begin. But a quick scroll through showed up some errors. Any tips for what to look for exactly ?

As for drivers, I use primus + bumblebee (so I can run primusrun ./AppName) on a GTX card. I need this for my work (coding graphics and simulations). So I use NVidias drivers from the main repo.

Thanks a ton again!

[Bulkley]

Just for kicks, try running a browser in user space instead of installed. For example, download waterfox-56.0.2.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2 and open it. Run ~/waterfox/waterfox (or something similar). Waterfox, Firefox, Pale Moon and some others will run this way. I have not been able to do it with Chrome but since I don't like it I didn't try hard.

This may not help you but it's a cheap test and won't hurt anything.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

As for ~/.xsession-errors, there is a ton of stuff in there. Not sure where to begin. But a quick scroll through showed up some errors. Any tips for what to look for exactly ?

Not sure myself really, it's probably just full of Gtk SNAFUs anyway

The systemd journal can be useful sometimes:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/ ... stemd-logs

Note that FF doesn't do hardware acceleration under GNU/Linux so don't `optirun` it.

[Zjho]

No mention of trying Chrome in OP, suggest doing so, particularly for YT vidz.
Might at least make the problem less severe if not identifying root cause.
Chrome is at https://www.google.co.uk/chrome/browser/desktop/
This post of manishthattes may also be of help http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... me#p540665

[RebelCoder]

Thanks everyone. All FF Based browsers I was running just by unzipping the folder and running the executable.
Chromium is Debian stock (Not running chrome).

I will try few more thing. Running clean install of chromium all day today with tons of navigation and work and it seems to be good so far. Hope this is one of those cases "It did not work at all before, but when you looked at it, it just worked" =)))

Will report back if issue comes back.

[stevepusser]

Are you using the modesetting or intel video driver? Installing inxi and running

Code: Select all

inxi -G

should report which.