Overhead in 14.04 Comparing Xubuntu and Lubuntu

[John Hupp]

On 5/11/2014 11:45 PM, Aere Greenway wrote:
> On 05/05/2014 10:08 AM, Aere Greenway wrote:
>> Xubuntu Results:
>>
>> After booting, and signing-in, it takes a long time for the icons to 
>> appear on the screen.  The CPU-graph applet on the task-bar stayed at 
>> 100%.  When the icons finally appeared on the screen, the CPU-graph 
>> applet finally went down to 83% usage, with no windows active.
>>
>> I started up a terminal session, and ran a "top" command in it. That 
>> showed that the Xorg process was using around 64% of the CPU (it 
>> varied between 63% and 66%, but most often near 64%). There was some 
>> percent going to the CPU-graph (and System Monitor applets) in the 
>> task-bar, but not anywhere near as much as the Xorg process.
>>
> All:
>
> I have a few more observations and ideas on what might be causing the 
> graphics overhead on Xubuntu.
>
> First, Xubuntu (or UbuntuStudio) performs much better on a machine 
> with a graphics card that can perform graphics acceleration.
>
> Second, on the machines without graphics acceleration, on Xubuntu, the 
> mouse-pointer is constantly 'flickering', as if it is being re-painted 
> over and over again, as fast as the CPU can re-paint it, even when the 
> mouse pointer is not moving.  This 'flickering' of the mouse pointer 
> does not occur on machines with a NVIDIA card.
>

I think the pointer flickering is a simple consequence of the state of 
high-CPU usage.