GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 699285
Uneven, jerky mouse movement
Last modified: 2013-11-26 05:41:44 UTC
openSUSE v12.3 linux v3.7.10-1.1-desktop x86_64 gnome 3.6.2 nouveau video driver nVidia gt470 graphics adapter AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor Ever since gnome version 3.2 the mouse movement becomes more uneven as the logon time increases. Initially the movement is smooth and even as expected. As the session time increases the movement shows regular pauses (every 1 - 2 seconds) for some fraction of a second, then "catches up" to where it would have been had it not paused. As the session time increases, so does the jerkiness, i.e., the pauses increase in length. This is annoying. It is exaggerated in a VirtualBox VM, guest type os/2, where tje issue is quite pronounced. Given enough time, though, even native apps show the jerkiness. It is related somehow to the build up of CPU usage. Initially the idle time usage is about 4% with a browser, email agent and a VM. As time goes by the idle usage increases to about 15% where the mouse action is so uneven that it is no longer tolerable. The problem has worsened with later versions since 3.2; the jerkiness increases after only several hours rather than days. It has gotten so bad that I have gone to KDE where there is no such issue. It occurs for two different mice, a wired unit and a wireless one. I am currently using a Logitech MX300 mouse. Dis-/re-connecting the mice made no difference. The only solution so far is to log out and in again, or more recently, use KDE. Other systems here do not have this problem. The primary difference is that this system has a nVidia graphics adapter; all the other systems have ATI adapters of some sort.
See the "top" results below. Note that gnome-shell starts at about 7% CPU usage, 11 hours later it has risen to 18%. I really prefer Gnome over KDE. It is sad that this issue has made it unusable. Here a section of "top" when Gnome first starts after login. top - 11:55:44 up 11 days, 13:27, 3 users, load average: 4.14, 4.24, 4.30 Tasks: 240 total, 1 running, 238 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie %Cpu(s): 2.4 us, 2.6 sy, 0.0 ni, 95.0 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem: 8192128 total, 7930368 used, 261760 free, 158984 buffers KiB Swap: 2104476 total, 80392 used, 2024084 free, 5654784 cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 14487 jmoe 20 0 2916m 1.0g 982m S 8.0 12.8 5:47.24 VirtualBox 14430 jmoe 20 0 1937m 178m 49m S 7.0 2.2 6:00.63 gnome-shell 14125 root 20 0 342m 93m 25m S 2.3 1.2 3:20.56 Xorg 15310 jmoe 20 0 1878m 248m 45m S 1.7 3.1 6:13.28 thunderbird-bin 16267 jmoe 20 0 340m 17m 12m S 0.7 0.2 0:28.97 gkrellm 14445 jmoe 20 0 1099m 30m 19m S 0.3 0.4 0:06.15 nautilus 18756 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:01.58 kworker/2:2 19684 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:01.08 kworker/1:2 21537 jmoe 20 0 19392 1736 1124 R 0.3 0.0 0:00.25 top 1 root 20 0 48376 6428 1588 S 0.0 0.1 0:04.41 systemd Here a section of "top" after Gnome has run for 11 hours. top - 23:02:54 up 12 days, 33 min, 6 users, load average: 2.51, 2.56, 2.26 Tasks: 238 total, 1 running, 236 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie %Cpu(s): 3.6 us, 9.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 87.0 id, 0.1 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.2 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem: 8192128 total, 7861724 used, 330404 free, 222484 buffers KiB Swap: 2104476 total, 84064 used, 2020412 free, 5327096 cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 14430 jmoe 20 0 1973m 209m 45m S 18.2 2.6 80:11.73 gnome-shell 22624 jmoe 20 0 2926m 1.0g 1.0g S 8.9 13.1 35:06.52 VirtualBox 14125 root 20 0 366m 118m 26m S 3.0 1.5 30:18.57 Xorg 16393 jmoe 20 0 1245m 248m 51m S 1.7 3.1 9:07.27 firefox 24200 jmoe 20 0 1879m 307m 47m S 1.7 3.8 12:00.58 thunderbird-bin 14959 jmoe 20 0 705m 24m 14m S 1.0 0.3 1:15.76 gnome-terminal 16267 jmoe 20 0 340m 17m 12m S 0.7 0.2 6:16.21 gkrellm 23162 jmoe 20 0 19392 1732 1124 R 0.7 0.0 0:00.03 top
Sounds like a bug in nouveau. Have you filed one?
No, I have not filed one for nouveau. Since this issue affects only Gnome 3.x (no such problem in KDE Plasma), I am not clear how reporting to the nouveau group would help.
opensuse v13.1 linux v3.11.6-4-desktop x86_64 gnome 3.10.1 nouveau video driver 1.0.9 After upgrading to opensuse 13.1 the issue is longer a evident.