Ubuntu 18.04 takes forever to load system settings

[Eug]

I had Ubuntu 17.10 installed and it seemed to work fine on my Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz MacBook 2008 with Intel 330 SSD and 4 GB RAM.

So, I installed the final release version (coming out this week) of Ubuntu 18.04. This is a brand new clean install and while it works fine, trying to load up system settings takes eons. For example, if I go to Activities and type in "Time" to load up the Date & Time setting in Settings, it takes literally over a minute to load. I just timed it and it took 63 seconds. In contrast, Firefox loads in under 5 seconds, and the default home page is loaded at about the 10 second mark. Files loads in just a couple of seconds.

I loaded up System Monitor to see what happens, and it just is locked up during that period when Time is trying to load. I can't do anything at all, and neither can System Monitor.

I think I might have to go back to 17.10 for now, if there isn't an easy solution for this.

 

[Eug]

This must be a bug with 18.04. I got the same result with an update from 17.10 to 18.04 beta 2 and then with a fresh install of the latest/final beta of 18.04. 1 minute to load the Time and Date setting and other settings.

I did a fresh install back to 17.10 and the issues are gone. I guess I will stick with 17.10 for the time being... which means I'll have to shut off automatic updates, as 18.04 officially launches in 3 days with that final beta build.

BTW, booting 17.10 seems faster than 18.04 too.

 

[EXCellR8]

Might be unrelated but I am running 18.04 on a VM and it's MUCH slower than 17.04 and 16.04 on the same hardware, at almost everything. Like, not only do the system settings load very slowly but there's a massive delay with even the simplest of apps and programs. I haven't done a whole lot of digging on why though.

 

[Eug]

Might be unrelated but I am running 18.04 on a VM and it's MUCH slower than 17.04 and 16.04 on the same hardware, at almost everything. Like, not only do the system settings load very slowly but there's a massive delay with even the simplest of apps and programs. I haven't done a whole lot of digging on why though.

So I’m not the only one. Do you mean 16.04 and 17.10? What hardware are you running?

I will stick with 17.10 for now. It’s supported until July at least.

BTW, turning off animations makes 17.10 feel a bit faster, but yeah, it is massively faster than 18.04 on my system regardless.

 

[EXCellR8]

Yes sorry, 16.04 and 17.10 ran much better that 18.04 does from what I've experienced.

I was running it as a 40GB VM on a i7 4770 with 16GB memory; the hard drive it was on was mechanical though so I can't imagine that that helped the performance--though the last couple of versions of Ubuntu ran fine for the most part. I plan to try the distro again on an SSD just for testing purposes but I was definitely having issues running it.

 

[stAbb]

So... the release actually came out now, so we are not longer discussing beta's.

Opening up system settings in a desktop environment sounds rather desktop environmenty, don't you think? Especially since your other apps work just fine.

In your case I'd just try the first stable release of Ubuntu 18.04. Perhaps with a different desktop environment since Gnome might be the issue here.
If you want something shiny, I'd recommend Ubuntu Budgie. It feels way snappier then Gnome, the desktop environment Ubuntu ships with by default.

If Ubuntu 18.04 doesn't work out you can always use Ubuntu 16.04. At least you'll have updates until 2021 so you don't have to worry about this nonsense every release.

With kind regards,
stAbb

PS:
Core2duo is an old architecture that might actually prefer Ubuntu 16.04. My Core2duo system runs great on it.
Once Ubuntu hits the 18.04.1 milestone I'll try an upgrade on my Core2duo system. Let me know if you're interested in my findings.

 

[Eug]

So... the release actually came out now, so we are not longer discussing beta's.

I was told the version I downloaded was the final release build. It was just a couple of days before the release came out. No matter though. I'll just wait until summer until I try again. 17.10 works fine.

Opening up system settings in a desktop environment sounds rather desktop environmenty, don't you think? Especially since your other apps work just fine.

Yes, I agree.

In your case I'd just try the first stable release of Ubuntu 18.04. Perhaps with a different desktop environment since Gnome might be the issue here.
If you want something shiny, I'd recommend Ubuntu Budgie. It feels way snappier then Gnome, the desktop environment Ubuntu ships with by default.

If Ubuntu 18.04 doesn't work out you can always use Ubuntu 16.04. At least you'll have updates until 2021 so you don't have to worry about this nonsense every release.

With kind regards,
stAbb

I thought I'd stick with the default, just because I'm a relative n00b for Linux and want to learn it. That's one reason I want to stick with 17 or 18, because it's using Gnome, instead of Unity which has been put out to pasture for whatever reason.

PS:
Core2duo is an old architecture that might actually prefer Ubuntu 16.04. My Core2duo system runs great on it.
Once Ubuntu hits the 18.04.1 milestone I'll try an upgrade on my Core2duo system. Let me know if you're interested in my findings.

Sure, post your findings.

 

[Eug]

Just to be sure, I downloaded the release version of 18.04, and the behaviour is exactly the same.

 

[stAbb]

Thank you for posting. Now you're helping me!
I've only upgraded two newer systems to 18.04 for testing and like it so much that I'm sticking with it.

If you still have 18.04 installed, this is the easiest way to report a problem if you haven't already:
https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/report-ubuntu-bug.html

Remember, stable and unstable aren't binary.
I don't think there was anything wrong with trying a beta after feature freeze.
Ubuntu goes from beta to stable in 18.04. Which was another great time to try it.

It then goes from stable to deemed safe to upgrade from the previous LTS releases at point release 18.04.1.
They've had time to fix most of the issues that people reported in the meantime.
Upgrading near end of life of 17.10 should land you there.

I will then try an upgrade on a couple of systems around that time, from Pentium M to core2duo and AMD Athlon/Phenom processors.
I'll post my impressions here and If it runs well on those old systems, I will switch from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 as my default.

With kind regards,
stAbb

 

[EXCellR8]

Working on setting up a post-beta VM now... though I think my issue was purely related to the working disk.

I'll post my own findings a bit later.

 

[stAbb]

Updated an old machine (C2D) to Ubuntu 18.04. Boot might be a bit slower but everything works fine.

I'd like to give another shout out to Ubuntu Mate. Coworkers figured out the GUI within minutes.
It certainly isn't the prettiest GUI to look at but it doesn't insist on wasting our time.
I'm looking at you, Microsoft.

With kind regards,
stAbb

 

[Charlie22911]

I am dual booting W10 and Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 on my Aero15x, I had some pretty bad issues with slowness along with horrid issues with the intel wifi card. Updating the kernel to the latest solved all those issues. I also had these same issues with vanilla ubuntu by the way.

What kind of drive are you booting from?

 

[Eug]

Same issue with official 18.04.1 release. Takes one minute to load system settings. Very weird. Basically, the little round progress icon/pointer just hangs for 1 minute.

Was running an Intel 330 SSD before, and now a Kingston V+100 SSD. The latter is a very slow SSD, but the slowness in Ubuntu's settings loading was exactly the same with the Intel 330 SSD (which has OK 4K read/write performance).

I may just have to deal with it, since 17.10 is now officially eol'd.

Everything else works just fine. Firefox for example loads in just a few seconds, even on first launch.

 

[EXCellR8]

I wonder if you can install an older DE and have it work better? Pity that it's still present after all these months...