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I'm a fan of Linux, and have used many distros (arch, ubuntu, debian, fedora, mint, centos, rhl) and many desktop environments (KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, xfce, Enlightenment) before asking this question.

But every single one of these desktop environments always have felt slow to respond in some cases, where I click something and it doesn't open/close immediately, or i double click something but it fails to open or select something. basically I'm not confident my actions on the GUI will have guaranteed, quick responses within reasonable time. I've never ever had this issue with Microsoft OSes (keeping aside the many badly coded softwares which hang or crash). I'm not talking about specific softwares, this is just general usage of opening settings and using the file manager, window menus.

I'm pretty sure my hardware is not the issue. I've run everything on the same rig. And this has always kept me from fully committing myself to a Linux distro. But I can never be sure about display drivers, as they're not identical. But the issues in Linux has been noted by me for many years. So I doubt it's the drivers either.

Is there anybody who agrees with me and know why Linux is the way it is like that, or is this just me facing this annoyance?

Comments
  • 2
    hey cat @irene! I admit that combination is where I've seen it the least, but still i get the occasional stutters. it's not always there, but you know it's not snappy as I'd like it to be. really got my mind set this time to drill down to the issue and solve it for good.
  • 2
    @EmperorRXF i have the same impression.
    also in linux world the whole GUI-related stuff is way more layered than in windows or macos. which has its pros and cons. i mostly like it tho.

    but in general on linux i use GUIs only the bare minimum, basically just to open VSCode and Chrome. i find almost all of them pretty sloppy and not really systematic/productive.

    last months i've been on arch with deepin, not bad.
  • 1
    @thatsnotnice that's very true. I've now started to use Linux only for running my servers and not as my daily driver because of this non responsiveness. I need to try deepin though!
  • 2
    Not noticable on ubuntu 18
  • 0
    You either have a shitty computer or perceive time in Nano seconds
  • 1
    I use gnome 3 (boo hiss), and I made it significantly faster by disabling animations. See if you can do something similar with ur de of choice.
  • 0
    Hardware related maybe? I've ran tons of distro's and never had this.
  • 3
    Try i3wm. Never had any issues with it
  • 1
    I have had that issue using the same hardware. It's not bad, just noticeable sometimes.

    I think it's more noticeable if you use both Windows and Linux.

    I still like both though.
  • 0
  • 1
    Yeah, try i3wm or bspwm or some tiling window manager, there's not much that's even lighter than these.
  • 1
    I had the same issues as you when I was using either KDE or gnome. But with xfce everything is super responsive. Same for lxde.
    Try to monitor your system while it's being slow.
  • 1
    @LynxMagnus I think so too. one has to use both OSes for a considerable time to notice it. Like you said it's noticeable but not bad enough to complain on the forums, but I prefer windows just due to the UI snappiness it gives over linux. But I got some good suggestions which I'm gonna try now
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