Whisker menu speed

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bjmh46
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Whisker menu speed

Post by bjmh46 »

Just an observation:

I don't exactly when, but recently the terrible lag when opening the menu for the first time after booting, has been vastly improved! I don't know what update did this, but thanks go out to the developers!

This delay was one of the "off-putting" items that kept me from upgrading from Mint 13 and 16 for a while. I finally upgraded anyway, about 6 months ago, and just decided to live with the delay. Got to love Mint!

Bob
Mint 17 XFCE 32 bit
HP G60 laptop
2.4ghz dual core, 4 gb ram
richyrich

Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by richyrich »

Yeah, it's the search feature that is built into the menu. If one has multiple drives, and/or network attached drives, it worked extremely slow as it seemed to pre-search each time the menu was used. Now it only seems to be slow on first use of the menu in a session.
BlackVeils

Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by BlackVeils »

i created a startup item for this...

i do not remember the command used for the whisker menu, look in your keyboard shortcuts for it. this is what i did, add startup program and call it something like Prep menu, use a command like this:

Code: Select all

sh -c "sleep 4; MENU-COMMAND; MENU-COMMAND-AGAIN"
you may want to play around with the sleep command a bit, for different timing (in seconds), or add another sleep between menu launch and escape.
MtnDewManiac
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by MtnDewManiac »

richyrich wrote:Yeah, it's the search feature that is built into the menu. If one has multiple drives, and/or network attached drives, it worked extremely slow as it seemed to pre-search each time the menu was used. Now it only seems to be slow on first use of the menu in a session.
Any way to easily disable/break/uninstall/burn from the face of the planet this "search" miscreant that has been let into the menu? I, for one, don't need my DE menu data-mining (aka "searching") my hard drive. Why in the <BLEEP> should it be designed to have the capability to search anything other than its own menu entries, anyway? It's a menu, FFS, not Big Brother. As if "SE"Linux isn't enough of a window into our lives already....

Regards,
MDM
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
richyrich

Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by richyrich »

@MDM , only thing I can suggest is to delete the Whisker Menu and add to the panel the Xfce original Applications Menu.
chrisonmint

Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by chrisonmint »

richyrich wrote:Yeah, it's the search feature that is built into the menu. If one has multiple drives, and/or network attached drives, it worked extremely slow as it seemed to pre-search each time the menu was used. Now it only seems to be slow on first use of the menu in a session.
FWIW, i found the whisker Xfce combo to be more responsive than the equivalent in MATE. That was much slower to respond.
cyttorak
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by cyttorak »

is there any news about this topic? I have the same problem with the Whisker menu speed.
bjmh46
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by bjmh46 »

Since I originally posted this back in Apr 2015, I have switched my laptop to a SSD, and the lag is gone. On other computers running Mint 17 with spinning hard drives (even fast ones!) the lag is still there. Yes, it's a pain, but the rest of the Mint 17 XFCE distro is so good and reliable, I've learned to live with it! I've got one hdd for my laptop with Mint 18 XFCE on it, and the lag is, if anything, worse than 17. Only difference is, it doesn't show you the little spinning "busy" icon while you wait. Still, I love the distro!

Bob
chrisonmint

Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by chrisonmint »

cyttorak wrote:is there any news about this topic? I have the same problem with the Whisker menu speed.
Interestingly, there is no lag in Cinnamon menu. I switched to that DE for other reasons, but the menu is more responsive. Slower to log in to a session though, takes more RAM, but suits me better once I am there.
cyttorak
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by cyttorak »

cyttorak
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by cyttorak »

chrisonmint wrote:Interestingly, there is no lag in Cinnamon menu. I switched to that DE for other reasons, but the menu is more responsive. Slower to log in to a session though, takes more RAM, but suits me better once I am there.
Hi. I used Cinnamon. I had no any complaints, but I decided to switch to xfce to save resources just because "why spend ram etc in the DE if I can have something equally useful but more lightweight?". But in day to day, I am not sure I notice performance improvement, so I am asking me if really there is a real diferencie in resources spent, or lightweight DE are not so lightweight as in the past, or not-lightweight DE are not so not-lightweight as in the past, and this kind of things are no as clear as it looked.
pdhunter1987

Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by pdhunter1987 »

bjmh46 wrote:Only difference is, it doesn't show you the little spinning "busy" icon while you wait. Still, I love the distro!
Lol, do you know why there is no "busy" mouse thing?
Because Xfce is that fast, it doesn't cause you to wait! :lol:

This isn't KDE... if you miss that busy animation, go to KDE, you will be seeing it often.
Cinnamon has it too, it is actually pretty cool though I know what you mean. :lol:
MtnDewManiac
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by MtnDewManiac »

I only notice a delay upon opening the Whisker menu for the first time (per session) - and after having done something that used most of my computer's RAM. That tells me that Xfce loads the menu information on an "as needed" basis, and that it doesn't consider that information to be either protected or prioritized.

I think this is just part of the whole "lightweight DE" thing.

The developers of Xfce could protect and prioritize this information. They could cause it to be pre-loaded on every login. They could cause it to remain in RAM even when circumstances cause that RAM to be needed elsewhere. But I am glad that they have done neither of these things. I get to my desktop faster (and, often, do not use the Whisper menu, so that - for ME - is time saved). And - assuming that I have used the Whisper menu (and, therefore, have loaded that information into memory) - I am happy that its information is considered less important than, say, my desktop background and other settings. When I use most of my RAM, something is going to be overwritten, and I am glad that it is a thing that I may not even use (let alone need) for the remainder of the session anyway.

Those are just my thoughts. Like most of them, I do not expect them to change anyone's way of thinking. But perhaps they will help show why the developers of Xfce (may have) set things up the way they did - and why, for many, this way might actually be a GOOD thing.

Regards,
MDM
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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mingle
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by mingle »

Well, it looks like the latest release (1.7.0) seems to have fixed the delay issue for me - on both my VM LM18.1 install and also on my 'real' hardware.

Excellent!

Mike.
bjmh46
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by bjmh46 »

mingle wrote:Well, it looks like the latest release (1.7.0) seems to have fixed the delay issue for me - on both my VM LM18.1 install and also on my 'real' hardware.

Excellent!

Mike.
I can happily report that Mike is dead on! Spinning hard drives running mint 17 XFCE, both 32 and 64 bit, and 18.1 XFCE 64 bit, all have said goodbye to the lag with version 1.7.0 from the Graeme Gott ppa. Great work and thanks Graeme, also thanks to Mike for pointing this out!

Bob
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cipricus
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Re: Whisker menu speed

Post by cipricus »

In Mint Xfce 19.2, RAM 4GB.

I had this problem where a few minutes after last use, Whisker Menu had a lag of about 2 seconds when shortcut was pressed. That annoyed me so much that have adopted Synapse as an alternative (not to mention the fact it has greater capabilities, showing files through Zeitgeist, and searching them with locate).

Then, I found this post: "Whisker Menu Slow to Load on Startup If Using Custom Icon Photo" (https://www.reddit.com/r/GalliumOS/comm ... _if_using/). It may be different from the above, but after reverting to default icon the lag simply disappeared.
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