Gnome is lethargic sometimes on my two GPU system

Bluefin
1

Not really sure where to go with this, so I thought I’d see if anyone here has experienced it.

Sometimes when I reboot, during login and use of Gnome, it is very lethargic (i.e. laggy). Maximizing windows might take a second or more. Clicking the panel to, say, make Bluetooth settings might take a second or two.

The fix is to either reboot, or turn my machine off for a bit, then turn it back on. Sometimes just rebooting helps, sometimes not.

I’ve looked at logs in the past, but they’re a lot of haystack, and not much needle.

This may very well be because I have two GPUs, an Intel Arc A380 that drives my displays, and an Nvidia RTX A4500 for CUDA/machine learning only.

It’s definitely something I can work around, just a papercut :slight_smile:

john@beast
----------
OS: Bluefin (Version: 41.20250209.1 / FROM Fedora Silverblue 41) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 6.12.9-200.fc41.x86_64
Uptime: 21 mins
Packages: 2551 (rpm), 74 (flatpak), 276 (brew)
Shell: zsh 5.9
Display (LG SDQHD): 2560x2880 @ 60 Hz in 28" [External]
Display (LG SDQHD): 2560x2880 @ 60 Hz in 28" [External] *
Display (LG Ultra HD): 3840x2160 @ 60 Hz in 27" [External]
DE: GNOME 47.2
WM: Mutter (Wayland)
WM Theme: Adwaita
Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3/4]
Icons: Adwaita [GTK2/3/4]
Font: Inter (12pt) [GTK2/3/4]
Cursor: Adwaita (24px)
Terminal: Ptyxis 47.6
Terminal Font: JetBrains Mono (18pt)
CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900K (32) @ 5.80 GHz
GPU 1: NVIDIA RTX A4500
GPU 2: Intel Arc A380 @ 2.45 GHz [Discrete]
Memory: 46.99 GiB / 125.48 GiB (37%)
Swap: 0 B / 8.00 GiB (0%)
Disk (/sysroot): 1.15 TiB / 1.82 TiB (63%) - btrfs [Read-only]
Disk (/var/mnt/nvme): 2.85 TiB / 3.64 TiB (78%) - btrfs
Disk (/var/mnt/tank): 24.24 TiB / 42.16 TiB (58%) - zfs
Local IP (eno1): 10.0.0.9/24
Locale: en_US.UTF-8
3

  • Configure Gnome to use Nvidia:

    • Software & Updates:
      • Open the “Software & Updates” application.
      • Navigate to the “Graphics” tab.
      • Select “Nvidia” as the preferred graphics processor.
    • Environment Variable (advanced):
      • Open a terminal and run export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=nvidia before starting Gnome.
      • To make this permanent, add the line export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=nvidia to your .bashrc file.
4

Thanks, but I don’t think ChatGPT has any idea about this.
I originally had my displays on the Nvidia. But wanted to free up a little GPU memory. So bought the Intel.

1 Like
5

I used perplexity its much better then GPT.
Using AI for looking up problems, documentation etc.
Works great for me instead of out dated endless google searches. More people should try it instead of google.

6

Thanks, but I don’t think ChatGPT Perplexity has any idea about this.

1 Like
7

Perhaps setting GSK_RENDERER=gl will help? If my memory serves me right, the default renderer was switched to Vulkan a while ago and it caused slowdowns on certain devices, and setting it back to gl in /etc/environment/ is what solved the problem for the affected devices.

Arch wiki has it documented here: GTK - ArchWiki

8

Thanks.
The weird thing is, when it happens I can power down, wait a bit, and power on and it works fine.

Someone on the gnome forum suggested disabling extensions. I did, rebooted and it worked fine. Re-enabled them, rebooted, and it worked fine.

Intermittent problems are a pain.