I've noticed lately that the performance of the UI in Gnome 3.36.2 seems to decay with uptime.
The most obvious manifestation is that over time, window animations have a delay and feel "sticky". Applications themselves seem unaffected.
When I tell gnome to switch workspaces, there's about a half second to full second delay before the animation happens. This also applies to things like pressing the meta key to show all my windows or pressing alt-tab. Each one appears to share the same delay.
I'm running a fairly unremarkable desktop setup using vanilla gnome on Ubuntu 20.04.
My research on this issue seems to indicate that there were memory leak issues in 18.xx versions of the OS, but that those were supposedly fixed. The only thing I can conclude at this point is that a new issue has emerged, there was a regression, or the original fix didn't work.
The animation delay is sapping productivity to the point that I eventually have to reboot my system. The gnome-shell process definitely leaks over time as it starts around ~300mb and if left for a day will sit at ~600mb or more.
Regarding my overall hardware and nominal state of my system, I'm experiencing this issue even as I'm creating this question. I'm running the stock/vanilla gnome desktop, not the ubuntu customized one.
My system has 32gb of RAM, only 6gb of which are in use currently. My CPU usage fluctuates across 12 vcores up to 20% max. I have an RTX 2060 for my GPU.
At least as best as I can tell, I see no issue with the amount of resources gnome-shell is getting right now. ?
Links
top - 08:52:58 up 16:18, 1 user, load average: 0.75, 0.85, 0.77
Tasks: 494 total, 1 running, 491 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
%Cpu(s): 2.9 us, 1.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 95.7 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.3 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 32029.7 total, 20316.2 free, 5763.1 used, 5950.4 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 2048.0 total, 2048.0 free, 0.0 used. 25355.6 avail Mem
ls -al ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
drwxrwxr-x 3 atrauzzi atrauzzi 4096 Apr 20 09:07 .
drwx------ 3 atrauzzi atrauzzi 4096 Jun 9 08:46 ..
ls -al /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Apr 2 10:36 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Jun 1 15:39 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 19 20:24 desktop-icons@csoriano
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Apr 2 10:36 ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 May 30 10:18 ubuntu-dock@ubuntu.com
(none of the above extensions are enabled as I'm running the vanilla gnome desktop, not the Ubuntu one)
sysctl vm.swappiness
vm.swappiness = 60
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 31Gi 5.8Gi 19Gi 570Mi 6.3Gi 24Gi
Swap: 2.0Gi 0B 2.0Gi
*-firmware
description: BIOS
vendor: LENOVO
physical id: 0
version: BVCN11WW(V1.07)
date: 07/04/2019
size: 128KiB
capacity: 10MiB
capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect edd int13floppynec int13floppytoshiba int13floppy360 int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int9keyboard int10video acpi usb biosbootspecification uefi
*-cache:0
description: L1 cache
physical id: 5
slot: L1 Cache
size: 384KiB
capacity: 384KiB
capabilities: synchronous internal write-back unified
configuration: level=1
*-cache:1
description: L2 cache
physical id: 6
slot: L2 Cache
size: 1536KiB
capacity: 1536KiB
capabilities: synchronous internal write-back unified
configuration: level=2
*-cache:2
description: L3 cache
physical id: 7
slot: L3 Cache
size: 12MiB
capacity: 12MiB
capabilities: synchronous internal write-back unified
configuration: level=3
*-memory
description: System Memory
physical id: 25
slot: System board or motherboard
size: 32GiB
*-bank:0
description: SODIMM DDR4 Synchronous 2667 MHz (0.4 ns)
product: KHX2666C15S4/16G
vendor: Kingston
physical id: 0
serial: C2A812C5
slot: ChannelA-DIMM0
size: 16GiB
width: 64 bits
clock: 2667MHz (0.4ns)
*-bank:1
description: SODIMM DDR4 Synchronous 2667 MHz (0.4 ns)
product: KHX2666C15S4/16G
vendor: Kingston
physical id: 1
serial: C1A82704
slot: ChannelB-DIMM0
size: 16GiB
width: 64 bits
clock: 2667MHz (0.4ns)
*-memory UNCLAIMED
description: RAM memory
product: Cannon Lake PCH Shared SRAM
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 14.2
bus info: pci@0000:00:14.2
version: 10
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz (30.3ns)
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: iomemory:400-3ff iomemory:400-3ff memory:4022210000-4022211fff memory:4022217000-4022217fff
sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
BVCN11WW(V1.07)
I don't believe my system is underpowered or in any way misconfigured such that this leak is as a result of my own doing.
Best Answer
I can confirm that I'm also experiencing the same memory leak with
gnome-shellwith a Ryzen 7 machine and Radion R9. After up-times approach roughly 2 days, I can visibly notice the lag the OP is experiencing. In addition, if I compare the memory of the process from the start, I will notice that it has climbed significantly and is still climbing.A temporary workaround is ALT+F2+r, but really they should fix this. Especially if your working on a server which is left running all the time.
Edit: It seems like the memory leak is caused by
gnome-shellanimations and interactions. So if you do something like constantly minimise and maximise a window, or keep summoning and dismissing the activities view, you can seegnome-shellmemory start to increase. It may appear to fluctuate for a while, but eventually the maximum amount of memory it uses will slowly rise and never fall.