Ubuntu is running slow

Greetings,

I'm running Windows 10 with the Windows Desktop environment. I've been running Kali inside a VM—specifically using an Alienware m15 equipped with 8GB of RAM. To compensate, I bumped my swapfile up to 16GB. Everything was running smoothly at first, but after a while, the system speed just cratered—both the host and the guest. It’s this sudden lag in response to inputs; everything feels like it's trailing by a few milliseconds, which is driving me absolutely insane. I'd appreciate some insight from the experts here. I'm no pro, but could this potentially be tied to the GPU drivers?

Does the host machine actually slow down when you aren't running a VM? What kind of drives are we talking about here—standard HDDs or an SSD? How much RAM did you allocate to the virtual machine? When things start dragging, what does System Monitor show? Which specific processes are hogging the resources? Are you using VMware, VirtualBox, or something else entirely? Also, how much VRAM did you assign, and how many CPU cores are dedicated to the VM? Does the slowdown happen immediately, or does it build up after running the VM for a while?

That should be enough to get us started. Once I have those details, I might actually be able to make sense of this.

Sent from my GM1913 using Reddit

The thing is, the machine was already sluggish—until I bumped up the swap file. Since then, it’s been running smoothly. That is, until I started running a VM. It has an SSD, and I assigned the memory based on what I assumed was the "RAM" setting (under the Motherboard tab)—which in this case was 2GB. Using VMware. VRAM 128MB, 2/8 Cores, CPU Limit 100%.

Don't mention it. 🙂

Sent from my GM1913 via Reddit

It’s sluggish regardless of whether it’s running in a VM or not. Do you actually think a full reinstall would be worth the effort?

Look, there are a hundred different things that could be causing this. If you’ve got everything backed up, honestly, a fresh reinstall doesn't hurt. I'd suggest trying it with the default settings first—don't go installing any extra drivers unless they're absolutely essential.

Let me know how it goes.

Sent from my GM1913 via Reddit

Jack Jones3 said:It’s sluggish regardless of whether it’s running in a VM or not. Do you actually think a full reinstall would be worth the effort?

Honestly, I’d rather just ditch that clunky version of Ubuntu and move to something else entirely. I jump between openSUSE, Fedora, and MX Linux, and my laptop with 8 GB of RAM and no swap partition handles everything just fine.

driftingcanyon2 said:Honestly, I’d rather just ditch that clunky version of Ubuntu and move to something else entirely. I jump between openSUSE, Fedora, and MX Linux, and my laptop with 8 GB of RAM and no swap partition handles everything just fine.

I'm struggling to see why Mint is being labeled as junk, and more importantly, what does swap have to do with any of this?

Sent from my GM1913 using Reddit

Mint was originally pitched as an "improved" version of Ubuntu, though that sentiment really only held water until about 2010; since then, the quality has slipped so significantly that it’s arguably worse than Ubuntu itself. It’s fundamentally flawed because it relies entirely on someone else's foundation—specifically Debian and Ubuntu—meaning it's tethered to those two giants, where bugs aren't actually fixed for years but just get passed from one release to the next. I spent quite a long time using this distro back in the day, so I'm speaking from experience. At best, Mint is mediocre, while the Debian-based Mint is complete junk—unreliable and practically unusable. It's unfortunate that this mess is often "recommended" to beginners. As for swap, the OP keeps bringing it up, seemingly unaware that they don't even need swap with 8 GB of RAM.

So, I've got a question for the group: what should an average user look into as an alternative to Ubuntu? This is actually my first foray into Linux, and while I'm enjoying it, I’m really itching to branch out and try a different OS.

If you're just starting out, I'd suggest looking into MX Linux or PCLinuxOS; honestly, they both feel like a significant step up from Mint.

I installed openSUSE Leap. However, I've run into a boot issue. Instead of launching straight into the GUI, it hangs at the GRUB screen—where I have to type "exit," which then dumps me into a "boot..." menu where I manually select the boot device. Only after that does the actual openSUSE Leap selection screen finally show up. Also, one more thing: why am I being prompted for a password every single time I try to connect to Wi-Fi? It’s not asking for my Wi-Fi password, either; it’s some random credential from a digital wallet or something. I typed "free" into the terminal and it told me I have 2GB of swap. Should I just wipe the swap to speed things up?

To be honest, I wouldn't call openSUSE a beginner-friendly distro at all, mostly because it relies on so many niche tools like zypper and the Control Panel that you won't find anywhere else, and the installation process itself isn't exactly intuitive or straightforward. You have to navigate through the Control Panel to tweak your GRUB2 boot options, and as for swap, you can just set that up during the install—personally, I just manually created a single partition for my root filesystem without any swap at all and called it a day, though you'll probably want to disable the KDE Wallet service within the Control Panel service settings.

driftingcanyon2, any chance you could recommend a distro?

driftingcanyon2 said:Mint was originally pitched as an "improved" version of Ubuntu, though that sentiment really only held water until about 2010; since then, the quality has slipped so significantly that it’s arguably worse than Ubuntu itself. It’s fundamentally flawed because it relies entirely on someone else's foundation—specifically Debian and Ubuntu—meaning it's tethered to those two giants, where bugs aren't actually fixed for years but just get passed from one release to the next. I spent quite a long time using this distro back in the day, so I'm speaking from experience. At best, Mint is mediocre, while the Debian-based Mint is complete junk—unreliable and practically unusable. It's unfortunate that this mess is often "recommended" to beginners. As for swap, the OP keeps bringing it up, seemingly unaware that they don't even need swap with 8 GB of RAM.

When I previously mentioned on the Developers USA Relaxed forum that Mint tends to choke over time, I got absolutely torn apart. Apparently, it's impossible for that to happen on Linux because "it's not like Windows," according to the Gjuro Kladarić school of thought.
But in reality, it behaves exactly like Windows: after a certain amount of time, it slows down until it becomes unusable. To some people, reinstalling Linux just to fix performance issues is treated like heresy.

However, I have a question: why does this actually happen? Setting aside the debate over whether Mint is good or bad, is there a concrete technical reason behind this slowdown?

Jack Jones3 said:driftingcanyon2, any chance you could recommend a distro?

I’ve said this before: if you're just starting out, MX Linux is pretty much the gold standard. You could always go with PCLinuxOS, or maybe one of the Ubuntu flavors, but honestly, all of those options feel like a step up from the lackluster experience you get with Mint.

Jerry Murphy3 said:When I previously mentioned on the Developers USA Relaxed forum that Mint tends to choke over time, I got absolutely torn apart. Apparently, it's impossible for that to happen on Linux because "it's not like Windows," according to the Gjuro Kladarić school of thought.
But in reality, it behaves exactly like Windows: after a certain amount of time, it slows down until it becomes unusable. To some people, reinstalling Linux just to fix performance issues is treated like heresy.

However, I have a question: why does this actually happen? Setting aside the debate over whether Mint is good or bad, is there a concrete technical reason behind this slowdown?

It feels like we’re just watching a bunch of mediocre developers peddle recycled ideas, essentially stripping parts from Debian or Ubuntu because they lack anything original to offer. They slap on some half-baked "fixes," only to pass the same old bugs down to the next version, and then there's the nightmare of pushing updates with kernels that haven't been properly vetted—more stuff lifted straight from Debian or Ubuntu—leaving us with nothing but a broken mess of a Linux distro.

driftingcanyon2 said:I’ve said this before: if you're just starting out, MX Linux is pretty much the gold standard. You could always go with PCLinuxOS, or maybe one of the Ubuntu flavors, but honestly, all of those options feel like a step up from the lackluster experience you get with Mint.

It feels like we’re just watching a bunch of mediocre developers peddle recycled ideas, essentially stripping parts from Debian or Ubuntu because they lack anything original to offer. They slap on some half-baked "fixes," only to pass the same old bugs down to the next version, and then there's the nightmare of pushing updates with kernels that haven't been properly vetted—more stuff lifted straight from Debian or Ubuntu—leaving us with nothing but a broken mess of a Linux distro.

Oh, I’m aware. But what exactly causes the slowdown? Is it some kind of fragmentation? Or perhaps an overwhelming number of files being indexed? I'm mostly speculating here since I don't know the technical specifics, but it reminds me of how Windows behaves—the registry gets bloated, and background processes for every little thing start piling up until everything crawls...

It’s likely just some poorly implemented systemd services or background processes hogging all your CPU and RAM. You could probably track it down using a system monitor. I haven't used Ubuntu in quite a while; the last bits of this junk I messed with were just DVD live versions, and even those felt sluggish. Honestly, more than the bloat—which wasn't nearly as bad back then as it is now—it was the way they'd just ignore bugs from older releases only to have them pop up again in newer ones. It really rubbed me the wrong way because it's obvious from miles away that the OS isn't the high-quality tool it was back in 2009 when I actually enjoyed using it. Ultimately, all that led to the distro losing its popularity, since the way things are headed now, it doesn't really make much sense anymore.

driftingcanyon2 said:If you're just starting out, I'd suggest looking into MX Linux or PCLinuxOS; honestly, they both feel like a significant step up from Mint.

Thanks for the tip! MX looks solid on paper, but unfortunately, it won't recognize the wireless card in my HP laptop, so I'm stuck without Wi-Fi. I tried Googling a fix, but nothing simple popped up—there are tons of threads about this on their forums, but I haven't been able to nail down a solution yet. As for PCLinuxOS, I haven't really warmed up to it yet, though I plan to tinker with it a bit more.

Does anyone else have any other suggestions?

So, what's the plan?

Mint is just a clean, little system built for end users.

If you're looking to spin up virtual machines, then you aren't an end user—you're a developer, and honestly, that's a whole different breed of user entirely.

It’s kind of wild how none of those Linux experts bothered to point that out to you. I guess they've never actually dealt with regular end users before.

Maybe that's why they don't have any.