this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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23
Bad issues with system load on Mint Desktop (beehaw.org)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hi!. Currently running Linux Mint 22.1, but i suspect it's not strictly a distro issue. This laptop was running VERY well but was outdated, running Mint 19.3, some things were unable to be installed because the system libraries were old (didn't expect Calibre to be one of them, figures), so i updated all the way to that moment's current version which was Mint 21.3. All of a sudden it felt like the laptop got downgraded two whole computer tech generations. As soon as i ask it to do something mildly complicated that made it break no sweat on Mint 19, it gets VERY slow, all the cores start running at max, system load increases, until it finishes doing whatever it was doing several minutes later, something between a couple of minutes when lucky, to 20 or more. Typically what triggers the issue is something on the browser (what i use the most on the computer is browser tabs and lots of terminals) but not exclusively. Thought it was the browser but replicated it on an empty Firefox profile, and has triggered with simpler stuff like the Discord client. Been trying to find the issue for a while trying to avoid a full reinstall, no luck so far.

If i were to describe how it feels, it's like there was a bottleneck on tasks being done by the system, as soon as you ask it to do something mildly complex it chokes on it and tasks accumulate. No idea if it's some kind of kernel misconfiguration, if it's some hardware incompatibility, or something else entirely, checking the changelogs of Mint all the way between 19.3 and 21.3 showed nothing i could pin this onto (or at least nothing i could notice).

The nuclear option would be a brand new blank install but I'd MUCH rather avoid that if possible, made the comfortable but now unwise choice of a single partition for everything (instead of a separate /home and whatnot as i used to do) so reinstallation would wipe it completely, if i must then i must but much rather not.

Would welcome VERY much ideas on stuff to check or try.

Edit: It's got an NVME drive, which seems to be healthy as far as i can see

Edit: When it happens it doesn't seem to matter how much RAM is free, seen it happen with only 8 of the 32Gb of RAM in use and zero swap

Edit: Found a great way to describe how it feels like: Have you done heavy video encoding on a computer that's adequate for the task but not more than that, and noticed how everything in it stalls heavily, even if there's plenty of RAM free and the computer feels like it's giving everything to that task only? Pretty much that, but for nearly everything even moderately heavy

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Upgrading between major versions is not a trivial task. Did you adhere to the instructions/tutorials found on this page?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Always, this laptop was initially installed with i think Mint 15 and had been upgraded several times

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Ι'd suggest you try another kernel. This sounds like a kernel/driver issue, since the ssd seems to be healthy. Mint lets you pick from newer kernels, from within the update app. This might solve your issue, or you might want to upgrade to 22.1 too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Really long freezes, while it could be something else, are often caused by the RAM being full, this is called thrashing.

Big memory hogs like the browser or discord could trigger thrashing behaviour if you're already low on RAM. Since this happened after an update, the most likely cause is a bug in any one of the many processes that are running on your computer. That kind of bug is called a memory leak, where a process is requesting memory for something, but then fails to give it back when no longer needed.

You should monitor memory usage to see if it is that, and to find out what process it is.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Nope, that's what i suspected but no, half of the 32Gb of RAM and zero or very little swap are in use when it happens, very good part of why i'm stumped

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Ok that's weird. My first guess would be something kernel-related, so maybe try booting the old kernel if you still have it, or just try a different kernel.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Aside from checking the kernel log (sudo dmesg) and system log (sudo journalctl -xe) for any interesting messages, I might suggest simply watching for any processes which are abnormally high while the system is running slow. My initial approach would be to use htop (disable "Hide Kernel Threads" and enable "Detailed CPU Time"), and seeing which processes, if any, are eating up your CPU time. The colored core utilization bars at the top show how much CPU time is being spent on what: gray for disk wait, red for kernel, green for regular user process, etc. That information will be a good starting point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Will try those htop settings, kinda had forgotten it even had any settings 😅

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Try isolating anything unique to your installation by booting from a live USB of Mint 22.1 or 21.3 and go about your workflow. If it gives the same symptoms, boot from a live USB of Mint 19.3. Hopefully nothing bad happened to your hardware during the update.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

what kinda storage ya runnin?

if its a spinning rust drive, it could be failing. ive seen behavior like this after a big data change (like an OS install) on a drive thats on its way out. its spinning its wheels re-reading data.

prolly not the issue if its an SSD

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Ah shit, forgot to mention that, will add it to the post. Yes, it's SSD.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm guessing you've already turned it off and on again. If not, seriously, do that. It works more time than it doesn't for random weirdness.

Run 'htop' and sort by CPU (it's a friendlier and better version of 'top'. That'll show you what processes are using the most CPU

Whilst you're in there, check the free memory. If that's low, or swap usage is high, then use htop to sort by memory usage to find what's using the most.

If you see processes you don't recognise, hit google and find out why. It's very unlikely they're malicious, but it's far less common on linux than Windows to have random processes doing unknown stuff. If it's using a lot of cpu or memory, there'll be a reason. It might be a dumb reason, but you will be able to find it out.

And then when you know what the guilty process is, if it is that, and it's not critical - you can stop it with systemctl and narrow down what's afoot.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's happening with whatever is the heaviest process at the moment and has happened for months, MANY reboots since then. Usually the heaviest process is the browser, but not always

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Ok - and what sort of cpu load do they have?

htop will also show the cpu bars and the breakdown of that - whether it's pure cpu or iowait, which is when the cpu can't do anything because it's waiting on disk or network.

And how's your memory usage looking?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

When this happens, open a TTY by hitting ALT+F2, login, then run top to get a listing of what's running on your machine. It should should what's hitting the CPU at the top of the list.

It would also be good to get an idea of your memory situation, so also run free -m.

Start there and report back.