Notifications menu needs some optimization

[anaximeno]

Distribution

LMDE 6

Package version

Cinnamon 6.0

Graphics hardware in use

Intel Alder Lake-UP3 GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]

Frequency

Always

Bug description

If there are some notifications on the notifications menu, it becomes too slow, doesn't even need to be a lot, and uses a lot of CPU resources while it's open.

Steps to reproduce

2024-07-14.21-00-20.mp4

Expected behavior

It probably shouldn't use this many resources to keep the notification menu open for only these notifications. So maybe some optimizations might be necessary.

Additional information

No response

[rcalixte]

If there are some notifications on the notifications menu, it becomes too slow, doesn't even need to be a lot, and uses a lot of CPU resources while it's open.

I've confirmed that this activity does spike the CPU but I've also noticed it with the Menu applet. This leads me to believe it goes deeper and likely into the toolkit. That means it could take a while to even trace.

[JosephMcc]

I don't really see how this is a bug. So, you are using your computer to do something and it used more cpu? Kind of what you would expect. Also curious how htop is showing Cinnamon using like 94% cpu and obs using 50+ %. Not to mention everything else that is using some. Not sure how htop works. Tested here and cinnamon never uses more than 12% with the notification applet. Uses more when moving around in the start menu, but would sort of expect that since a lot of redrawing is going on.

[anaximeno]

I don't really see how this is a bug. So, you are using your computer to do something and it used more cpu? Kind of what you would expect. Also curious how htop is showing Cinnamon using like 94% cpu and obs using 50+ %. Not to mention everything else that is using some. Not sure how htop works. Tested here and cinnamon never uses more than 12% with the notification applet. Uses more when moving around in the start menu, but would sort of expect that since a lot of redrawing is going on.

What's strange is that after opening the notification menu, the CPU usage continues constantly high. What you would expect is to have some increase in CPU use (probably while constructing the menu for the first time) and then it should reduce the CPU use, I've tested with the start menu and this is the case, and another point is that the start menu does not directly use as many resources as the notification menu is using (while only having 5 notifications). In the video, the notification menu also takes some time to open, more than the start menu takes usually, which is why I noticed this issue.

It seems to me that something needs to be optimized.

About OBS using less CPU I suppose it's because OBS is using multiprocessing, and the Notification menu is executing in that specific Cinnamon process that appeared in the video.

[gsarkardev]

Can confirm. +1

[alexkuz]

@rcalixte it definitely goes deeper and is not always reproducible. I shared one of the scenarios that seems to be always triggering this behaviour here

[murrple-1]

+1. Video in OP comment is similar to what I'm seeing

Details

System:
  Kernel: 6.8.0-40-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.2.0
    clocksource: tsc
  Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.2.9 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.2.0 vt: 7
    dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 22 Wilma base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: XPS 15 9510 v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0WH7HY v: A01 serial: <superuser required> part-nu: 0A61
    uuid: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell v: 1.24.0 date: 09/12/2023
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 78.6 Wh (100.0%) condition: 78.6/84.3 Wh (93.2%)
    volts: 12.4 min: 11.4 model: BYD DELL M59JH21 type: Li-poly serial: <filter>
    status: full
Memory:
  System RAM: total: 32 GiB available: 31.07 GiB used: 10.49 GiB (33.8%)
  Message: For most reliable report, use superuser + dmidecode.
  Array-1: capacity: 64 GiB slots: 2 modules: 2 EC: None
    max-module-size: 32 GiB note: est.
  Device-1: DIMM A type: DDR4 detail: synchronous size: 16 GiB
    speed: 3200 MT/s volts: 1 width (bits): data: 64 total: 64
    manufacturer: 80CE000080CE part-no: M471A2G43BB2-CWE serial: <filter>
  Device-2: DIMM B type: DDR4 detail: synchronous size: 16 GiB
    speed: 3200 MT/s volts: 1 width (bits): data: 64 total: 64
    manufacturer: 80CE000080CE part-no: M471A2G43BB2-CWE serial: <filter>
CPU:
  Info: 8-core model: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    smt: enabled arch: Tiger Lake rev: 1 cache: L1: 640 KiB L2: 10 MiB
    L3: 24 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 955 high: 1173 min/max: 800/4600 cores: 1: 1080 2: 1069
    3: 1075 4: 800 5: 1098 6: 923 7: 800 8: 1100 9: 800 10: 1173 11: 800 12: 800
    13: 1014 14: 1151 15: 800 16: 800 bogomips: 73728
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel TigerLake-H GT1 [UHD Graphics] vendor: Dell driver: i915
    v: kernel arch: Gen-12.1 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1,DP-2,DP-3
    bus-ID: 0000:00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:9a60 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: NVIDIA GA107M [GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile] vendor: Dell
    driver: nvidia v: 535.183.01 arch: Ampere bus-ID: 0000:01:00.0
    chip-ID: 10de:25a2 class-ID: 0302
  Device-3: Microdia Integrated_Webcam_HD driver: uvcvideo type: USB
    rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3-11:4 chip-ID: 0c45:672e
    class-ID: 0e02
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915
    display-ID: :0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 3456x2160 s-dpi: 98 s-size: 898x561mm (35.35x22.09")
    s-diag: 1059mm (41.69")
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: Samsung 0x414d res: 3456x2160 hz: 60 dpi: 261
    size: 336x210mm (13.23x8.27") diag: 396mm (15.6") modes: 3456x2160
  API: EGL Message: No EGL data available.
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: intel mesa v: 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.1 glx-v: 1.4
    es-v: 3.2 direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics (TGL GT1)
    device-ID: 8086:9a60
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-H HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 0000:00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:43c8 class-ID: 0403
  API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-40-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake PCH CNVi WiFi vendor: Rivet Networks
    driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 0000:00:14.3 chip-ID: 8086:43f0
    class-ID: 0280
  IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: br-1fdb4f00a57b state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-2: br-e4ff5e370787 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-3: br-f5332979d459 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-4: docker0 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-5: vpn0 state: down mac: N/A
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX201 Bluetooth driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 2.0
    speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 3-14:6 chip-ID: 8087:0026 class-ID: e001
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 5.2
    lmp-v: 11 sub-v: 20f9 hci-v: 11 rev: 20f9 class-ID: 7c010c
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd
    v: 0.6 port: N/A bus-ID: 0000:00:0e.0 chip-ID: 8086:9a0b rev: class-ID: 0104
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 480.68 GiB used: 46.95 GiB (9.8%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: SK Hynix model: PC711 NVMe 512GB
    size: 476.94 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 tech: SSD serial: <filter>
    fw-rev: 41001131 temp: 45.9 C scheme: GPT
  ID-2: /dev/sda model: USB Flash Disk size: 3.74 GiB type: USB rev: 2.0
    spd: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 tech: SSD serial: <filter> fw-rev: 1100 scheme: MBR
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 466.01 GiB used: 43.94 GiB (9.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0
    mapped: vgmint-root
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
  ID-3: /media/mchristo/e780fbef-7301-4ef4-96c3-0cfe125b1375 size: 3.6 GiB
    used: 3 GiB (83.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 1.91 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2
    dev: /dev/dm-1 mapped: vgmint-swap_1
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 48.0 C mobo: 43.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): cpu: 2373
Repos:
  Packages: 2173 pm: dpkg pkgs: 2160 pm: flatpak pkgs: 13
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu noble stable
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
    1: deb https://mirrors.cicku.me/linuxmint/packages wilma main upstream import backport
    2: deb https://mirror.it.ubc.ca/ubuntu noble main restricted universe multiverse
    3: deb https://mirror.it.ubc.ca/ubuntu noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
    4: deb https://mirror.it.ubc.ca/ubuntu noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
    5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/slack.list
    1: deb https://packagecloud.io/slacktechnologies/slack/debian/ jessie main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sublime-text.list
    1: deb https://download.sublimetext.com/ apt/stable/
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list
    1: deb [arch=amd64,arm64,armhf] https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable main
Info:
  Processes: 449 Power: uptime: 1d 8h 26m states: freeze,mem suspend: s2idle
    wakeups: 1 hibernate: disabled Init: systemd v: 255 target: graphical (5)
    default: graphical
  Compilers: gcc: 13.2.0 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.21 running-in: gnome-terminal
    inxi: 3.3.34

[oddstr13]

I am seeing this with nohang-desktop producing a lot of notifications, which can stack up quickly in memory constrained situations. triple digit number of notifications is not unusable, a few thousand is not unheard of. (ideally I would be able to set them to automatically clear after a few minutes, or new ones replace the old one)

Sometimes, opening the notification tray completely locks up the system for a while, other times it simply slows it down significantly.
While my system is starting to become a bit aged, it is by no means slow, even by today's standards (medium-high-end gaming system from 2017).

I first noticed the issue while running Mint 19, so it has been around for a while. My workaround at the time was to disable nohang, and otherwise mostly ignore notifications.

I'm noticing this issue more again due to turning nohang back on recently.

[vyalyh-oleg]

Confirm.
If the amount of notifications is about 4-7 and more the process of opening the list of notifications is very slow, even not slow but jerkily. And it is not only about the resource consumption. Yes the CPU usage spikes up to a 100% of one core, but the rendering of the entire interface is slowdown significantly.

LM Cinnamon (6.2.9) 22

System:
  Kernel: 6.8.0-45-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.2.0 clocksource: tsc
  Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.2.9 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.2.0 with: plank vt: 7 dm: LightDM
    v: 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 22 Wilma base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 20QT001WUS v: ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 serial: <superuser required>
    Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: LENOVO model: 20QT001WUS v: SDK0J40697 WIN serial: <superuser required>
    part-nu: LENOVO_MT_20QT_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 uuid: <superuser required> UEFI: LENOVO
    v: N2OET65W (1.52 ) date: 08/05/2024
CPU:
  Info: 6-core model: Intel Core i7-9750H bits: 64 type: MT MCP smt: enabled arch: Coffee Lake
    rev: A cache: L1: 384 KiB L2: 1.5 MiB L3: 12 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3644 high: 4202 min/max: 800/4500 cores: 1: 4023 2: 4142 3: 3940 4: 4193
    5: 4014 6: 800 7: 1975 8: 4200 9: 4197 10: 4202 11: 4111 12: 3935 bogomips: 62399
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel CoffeeLake-H GT2 [UHD Graphics 630] vendor: Lenovo driver: i915 v: kernel
    arch: Gen-9.5 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: none bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:3e9b class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: NVIDIA TU117GLM [Quadro T2000 Mobile / Max-Q] vendor: Lenovo driver: nvidia
    v: 550.107.02 arch: Turing pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: none
    empty: DP-1,DP-2,HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:1fb8 class-ID: 0300
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915 display-ID: :0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 3840x2160 s-dpi: 98 s-size: 998x561mm (39.29x22.09") s-diag: 1145mm (45.07")
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: BOE Display 0x0809 res: 3840x2160 hz: 60 dpi: 284
    size: 344x194mm (13.54x7.64") diag: 398mm (15.7") modes: 3840x2160
  API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: intel iris drv: nvidia platforms: device: 0 drv: nvidia device: 2
    drv: iris device: 3 drv: swrast gbm: drv: nvidia surfaceless: drv: nvidia x11: drv: iris
    inactive: wayland,device-1
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.1 glx-v: 1.4
    direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2) device-ID: 8086:3e9b
  API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 layers: 9 surfaces: xcb,xlib device: 0 type: integrated-gpu driver: N/A
    device-ID: 8086:3e9b device: 1 type: discrete-gpu driver: N/A device-ID: 10de:1fb8 device: 2
    type: cpu driver: N/A device-ID: 10005:0000

[anaximeno]

I wonder if the cause for the issue is the box-shadow (the notification items look like they have some box-shadow around), it can be a bit expensive I think.

[vyalyh-oleg]

I switched to 'Mint-L-Dark-Teal' (the key is 'Mint-L-...') and the behaviour changed -- the entire menu bar and tray menus started working smoothly, as did the main menu.

[murrple-1]

Can't say for sure if it's anything to do with the box-shadow as @anaximeno noted, but @vyalyh-oleg's suggestion did fix the issue - I went to Themes > Advanced Settings and changed my Desktop from Mint-Y-Dark to Mint-L-Dark and the notifications panel stutter is non-existent now.

[anaximeno]

@clefebvre @JosephMcc might be worth a note for the default themes, specially Mint-Y.