1293268 - Very slow and unresponsive on recent Linux kernels (>=4.6.1) and Intel integrated graphics

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1279309

(Core :: Graphics, defect, P3)

Description

[u572369]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Dist upgrade from Fedora 23 - running the latest Firefox package - to Fedora 24 (Firefox version 48.0-5.fc24). 

Of course I don't expect the issue to be associated to the Fedora version per se, but something must have changed in the whole set of packages Firefox depends upon.


Actual results:

Firefox on the upgraded system is very slow and unrensposive to the point of being unusable (I am writing this on Chrome).


Expected results:

No performance change should have been noted.

Comment 1

[u572369]

--safe-mode and refreshing Firefox as described at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1121351 does not change the situation.

Comment 2

[u572369]

More info: I've realised that after upgrading I was using version 48.x that is very new, so I have tried both:

a) downgrading to 47.x using the Fedora packages, and
b) installing 48.x binaries from the Firefox website

Neither solved the issue.

Comment 3

[u572369]

Here's a new finding that will likely be revealing. Firefox is slow if I use my preferred window manager i3wm (https://i3wm.org/) but not if I use Gnome. 

So, to recap, after upgrading from Fedora 23 to Fedora 24, Firefox 47.x and 48.x performance is substantially slower when running i3wm rather than other window managers such as Gnome.

Comment 4

[u572369]

Loic's updates have reminded me that I've recently found out more about my original issue. What I described originally is likely a side effect of a bigger issue with recent Linux kernels (>=4.6.1) and Intel integrated graphics, that affects Firefox in particular, but also Sublime Text for example.

Apparently the Intel DDX is interfering with Firefox's rendering (see https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/4oqhv5/fullscreen_video_stops_when_mouse_is_not_moving/ ). This causes the issue I described but also some full screen video playback issues, e.g. in YouTube.

The issue appears to be related to i3wm just because i3wm does not use a compositing video manager by default, and compositing video managers such as xcompmgr have been proven to be a workaround (however, not always, see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=213533 ). Gnome runs a compositing video manager by default, hence Firefox does not show the issue in Gnome. 

I changed this bug's title according to these findings and put it back in the "General" category. Hope it's useful.

Comment 5

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

Closing this as resolved:incomplete since it is an old issue that had no activity in the past 5 years. The firefox version was continuously updated since, so were the integrated graphics drivers and other factors that could've caused this.