Re: [gnome-flashback] Main menu 10 times slower in Ubuntu 12.04 vs 10.04

[Erick Brunzell <lbsolost yahoo com>]

On 01/22/2014 10:43 PM, Alkis Georgopoulos wrote:
> A video of gnome-panel menus in Ubuntu 12.04 (1:3.4.1-0ubuntu1) going
> incredibly slowly, able to draw only about 2 menu items per second:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEoe2LlrY-I
>
> Doing the same thing in Ubuntu 10.04 (1:2.30.0-0ubuntu1) shows that
> the menus there were 10 times faster:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZGW2eJEHvY
>
> Those are on the same PC, Pentium 4 at 1.7 GHz with 1 GB RAM.
> I tried several graphics cards, it's not related to the graphics card
> drivers.
>
> So, somewhere between those 2 gnome-panel versions (maybe the gtk3
> move was involved?) a huge regression happened, and now the menus are
> almost unusable in older PCs.
>
> It's possible that the problem is not in gnome-panel itself but in
> some of the involved libraries, or the themes, or even the gcc
> compilation options, but does anyone have some idea what would be
> responsible for this and how to pinpoint it so that we report it to
> its developers, _if_ gnome-panel is not to blame here?
> I didn't notice (yet) any significant regression in other applications.
>
> Thanks,
> Alkis
> _______________________________________________
> gnome-flashback-list mailing list
> gnome-flashback-list gnome org
> https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-flashback-list

What I have to say may not be helpful at all but I still maintain 21 old
boxes with this hardware:

VIA C7 CPU @ 1500MHz
VIA CN700/P4M800 Pro/P4M800 CE/VN800 Graphics [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01)
VIA VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
1GB DDR2 RAM

Not great by any means but I bought a whole pallet of those old WalMart
computers that shipped with gOS because it fit my budget :^)

They run 12.04 and 12.04.1 "fallback w/metacity" just fine but there are
notable regressions in performance with 12.04.2, 12.04.3, and what will
be 12.04.4 is totally unusable because of this bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-openchrome/+bug/1205643

So I've found using the archived 12.04.1 images to provide the best
results with older hardware:

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/edubuntu/12.04.1/release/

I know that shows 12.04.2 which shipped the Quantal Hardware Enablement
Stack but the original 12.04 and 12.04.1 are there :^)

So you may want to check which kernels and X-stacks you're using.

I've not found a dependable way of downgrading the hardware enablement
stacks.

Lance