Ubuntu 8.04 Xgl fix
Spent my entire Saturday afternoon upgrading my IBM Thinkpad T41 from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04. Spend roughly 5~6 hours on the entire process. No, I didn’t have any problem using the update manager nor was I on 56k modem. Actually the entire upgrade process was pretty fast and smooth that less than a hour to finish. So why did it take me 5~6 hours ?
My first reboot after the upgrade finished takes me to the new Ubuntu 8.04 login screen. I login and waited for it to load. It was so sluggish even as I browse through the top menu looking for new features. Web browsing on the latest Firefox 3 Beta 5 was extremely slow and not to mention scrolling down on a webpage.. it barely runs as Firefox would turn gray meaning the application is “not responding” I checked to see if my Hardware drivers (ATI X300) were installed and yes they are. No settings has been changed since upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04. I was beginning to regret upgrading.
I had Ubuntu 7.10 running so smooth along with compiz and xgl. I thought a simple upgrade to 8.04 would improve my current performance. After a couple reboots and reinstalling of my Hardware driver, no improvement was seen. I even download Ubuntu 8.04 burned onto a cd and fired up the liveCD. I wanted to see the performance of 8.04 on a LiveCD and to my surprise, it was amazingly fast and smooth. Then I am wondering why my is so sluggish to the point I want to do a fresh install of Ubuntu 8.04. I mean it won’t hurt since I am not losing any data but then again… I didn’t want to go through the trouble of reinstalling some applications. I liked what I have setup and wasn’t going to change it.
I looked at the system monitor and it was Xgl eating up 50%~70% of my cpu. I upped the nice +5 on Xgl and the problem continues. I went on google and do a few search on solving the issue but none came up. Many results that I do find were talking on earlier versions dating back to Ubuntu 5.10. At that point, I thought I try to fix it and if I don’t succeed then I can always do a fresh install later when I screw up the system.
First, I uninstall anything related to Compiz.
compiz, compiz-bcop, compizconfig-backend-gconf, compizconfig-backend-kconfig, compizconfig-settings-manager, compiz-core, compiz-fusion-plugins-extra, compiz-fusion-plugins-main, compiz-gnome, compiz-plugins
Reboot~~ still sluggish! Xgl is killing me.
So I thought, might as well remove Xgl
xserver-xgl
Reboot~~
Sluggish performance is all gone and I am left with fast, responsive Ubuntu 8.04 OS. Just without any special effects. Which I can definitely live without.
Thanks for this post. I run a Dell D610 with an ATI X300 video card and I had the exact same issue.
Your suggestion gave me back my snappy interface again, and I never used compiz eye candy crap anyway.
I did however have an Mplayer complication, the standard Xv: X11/Xv driver would not work once I did as you suggested, so I had to switch drivers to plain X11, which allowed mplayer to address the video subsystem, though mplayer now takes 4x longer to actually RUN, though once running, it runs fine. I also had to add “zoom=yes” (without quotes) to the “config” file under my /home/user/.mplayer directory, becuase the new driver would not zoom to full screen properly.
Although my brightness and contrast keys (1-4) no longer work, . I am glad I upgraded only my “side” laptop to 8.04 … I will wait a few months until the forums fill up with fixes and posts about these various issues — but thanks to you I can actually USE the laptop now!
Here is part of my xorg.conf file showing that I am currently running fglrx driver for my ATI X300 video card. I installed the recommended driver under the Hardware Driver. As well using Envy to install ATI drivers.
Section “Device”
Identifier “ATI Technologies Inc M22 [Mobility Radeon X300]”
Boardname “ati”
Busid “PCI:1:0:0″
Driver “fglrx”
Screen 0
Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
Option “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
EndSection
Section “Device”
Identifier “device1″
Boardname “ati”
Busid “PCI:1:0:0″
Driver “fglrx”
Screen 1
Option “VideoOverlay” “on”
Option “OpenGLOverlay” “off”
EndSection
I also have DELL D610 with ATI X300 video card.
After update and reboot I founf the fglrxinfo no longer reports “ATI Mobility Radeon X300″ but “Mesa” instead.
It appears that the problem is with Xgl. I uninstalled just Xgl and now my video card is reported properly in ‘fglrxinfo’.
Don’t know what is wrong…
here is my output of fglrxinfo as of right now. For me, I did reinstall the ATI X300 driver using Envy & from Hardware driver. Envy even installed “ATI Catalyst Control Center” Check it out!!
01:46:39 aric@aric-laptop:~$ fglrxinfo
display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300
OpenGL version string: 2.1.7412 Release
Thanks for the fix! I have a T41 and upgraded to 8.04 when it came out. The extreme laggyness only developed a couple of days a go.
Thanks for the comments. I had the same problem and now is fixed. Basically I take out compiz and xserver-xgl and reinstall fglr Everything is Ok.
Thx very much also for posting the xorg.conf (or parts of it).
I’ve been having a lot of troubles finding out how to enable ati-drivers.
Maybe this helps also:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Hardy_Installation_Guide#Method_2:_Manual_Method
http://lifein0and1.com/2008/05/05/fixed-slow-gui-on-hardy-heron/
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_AIGLX#Installing_AIGLX
Wow, thanks for the post! After removing the compiz and xgl I got the DVD player actually play without jumping each frame, very cool!
Had exactly the same problem – T41 display runs VERY slowly on a clean install of Ubuntu 8.04 – even without desktop effects (which are so slow as to be unusable!). I tried all kinds of stuff to get it running acceptably to no avail.
Finally did a clean install of Gusty 7.10 and it’s running really fast, even with all the effects enabled.
I found a post in Ubuntu’s launchpad where the team said ubuntu wasn’t really about the effects and even after quite a few complaints marked it as Solved. Oh dear – this kind of attention to detail’s what convinced many people like me to try Ubuntu – I hope it’s not a sign of things to come!
I was installing it for my grandmother but I’m seriously considering Windows now which is a real shame.