Zorin 8/9 CPU at 50% Idle

I'm running Zorin 9 in VirtualBox and it's really slow. When applications start up they come up in slow motion. So I looked at the System Monitor and noticed (while running Firefox) that my CPU usage was topped out at 100%. System is at a crawl at this point.

So I restart and start up System Monitor again, this time I notice that, even though idle, the CPU is still running at approximately 50%. So to compare, I quit and launch my Mint 16 VM but it's idle state is around 5%. Tried the same experiement using my Z8 VM...same as Z9.

Does Zorin just run extra hot?

Hi, A good place to start would be to see what processes are running whilst idle and compare that with what services are running in Mint VM.

Zorin uses compiz which is "heavy" for the various efects.

Mint does not use any compositor this is why it is so light. If you want to have effects in mint like in zorin (like cube, transparencies etc) you will have to install and load a compositor and if you install and load compiz, then mint will become as heavy as zorin.

Log out of zorin and select the "zorin no effects" and you will see that zorin will be much faster.

madvinegar wrote:Zorin uses compiz which is "heavy" for the various efects.

Log out of zorin and select the "zorin no effects" and you will see that zorin will be much faster.

I was just about to post my findings MadVinegar! You're too quick!

I noticed that when I set system monitor to full size, my idle CPU usage increased to 85%!!! When I looked at the Processes tab, Compiz was the culprit. Sure enough, when I reexamined my Mint VM, compiz doesn't appear to be running on it at all.

It appears to be a bug with compiz that's been around for a while. Reports are that it's especially bad in 14.04. But it may be that if you're going to use compiz, you'd better expect a resource hit.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/compiz/+bug/1293384

Thanks for the tip on "zorin no effects" - for anyone reading this trying to do the same thing, click on the Z icon at the login screen.

D'oh! How could I have missed that one! 120 blue jewels to madvinegar and 60 for the OP for the bug link!

Hi

I tried to test how heavy processes the compiz effects are compared to other processes. I opened few applications and windows to the desktop and here can be seen the wobbly windows load. The load indicator is the green ball on the Docky. I have Zorin 9 Educational now installed and updated in my desktop.



If the window is not moved, CPU load is ca. 5 % and when moving fast, up to 20%. So the load is not very heavy. The load can depend on what you have in the window and how big it is. The heaviest applications are the running of high resolution videos with VLC when there the sharpening tool is used. There the CPU load goes normally up to 100% very easy.

Don't forget that SplatOz is using virtualbox. So the GPU used is the VB low power GPU. Compiz (and generally screen effects) affect a lot the performance in VB.

Try installing win7 in VB. And then experiment between using Aero effects and no-effects. The difference in speed is vast...

Installing a distro in your PC using the whole strength of your GPU, Ram and cores is a lot different when installing the same disto in VB with a week GPU, half your ram, half (or only one) of your cores etc.

Bumped up the number of cores from 1 to 2 and noticed an immediate difference. With 1 core, system monitor at full screen CPU usage was at 85%, with 2 cores the average usage was about 50%.

The question is whether I really need the bells and whistles I'd lose if I were to disable compiz ("no effects"). I did notice that with "no effects" the menu seems a bit sluggish at first. Still debating that but ways to improve performance in a VM.

I would also suggest you allocate the max (i think it is 128MB) of video memory. It will help quite a bit.