GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 669693
GNOME Shell overview search very slow and unresponsive
Last modified: 2012-10-29 20:08:12 UTC
Although few people will say that it works very fast, I am reporting this bug, because GNOME Shell gets unresponsive while trying to search. Steps to reproduce: 1. Open dash. Type something 2. Notice that the letters are not showing up instantly, but you have to wait. 3. While it loads, you cannot do anything. It seems that user interface and search are running in the same thread. While its easier to implement, this should never happen - in some cases long search may make system unresponsive. Search should be performed in another thread, showing result as they load, not all of them at once. This is a usability/look and feel problem.
Dupe of bug 655850?
Yes and no. Bug 655850 says it should load everything on startup. But still, even when it's loaded, rendering can take some time. Search should occur in another thread (background) and gradually show results. Just like Unity does it - newest 5.2 just feels a lot faster.
Tomasz: Which distro and gnome-shell version is your report about?
I've noticed it in Linux Mint Lisa (GNOME 3.2), Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha (GNOME 3.2) and Fedora 16 (I believe it's GNOME 3.2 too). To be understood correctly: search results appear in less than one second, sometimes it takes > 1 second. HDD led doesn't blink. The "feel" that is's slow is because I cannot type anything to search box until results come up. This doesn't affect productivity, just overall "feel" of GNOME.
Additional info: The best way to see the issue is to go to Dash and then click on "Programs". While programs are loading GNOME Shell is unresponsive. Takes ~1.5 second.
The "search is blocking when typing" part is fixed in 3.6. There's an initial delay the first time you start the overview mode from a cold start, but that's another issue.