Bug 457370

I probably should've also said I have 12+ accounts (previously & eventually 16) in Thunderbird Mail, and 100+ Mozilla/Pale_Moon tabs, which is a lot, as is my HexChat IRC and especially Pan NNTP usage but none of these programs on their own (after file & writing utilities) were ever enough to cause halt on their own or even just two of these... always had to be some number more than 10 programs including web browsers and usually IM/P2P, but it's more opening speed than definite number (except maybe if I was using long-term/stable/user OS release weeks/months with no kernel upgrade so didn't reboot then ran out of RAM from memory leaks which are still a thing) but I use current/development/testing OS and upgrade kernel & reboot every some days/weeks.

So it wasn't since Slackware 14.2 I could test running for weeks/months seeing if medium-to-high workloads halted (from memory leaks) and as for FreeBSD I generally use stable so may not be able to test case anymore of trying to have as much uptime you can while running sometimes 30+ programs (in such case I occasionally also edit many large files in GIMP & InkScape until I almost run out of RAM, wish I had 256+GB.)

Unfortunately generic performance comments are inactionable as a bug report.

To narrow this down somewhat can you confirm that removing the task manager completely from the panel and opening through other mechanisms does not freeze?

Confirmed: more parts (than taskbar) or KDE in general: following test script soon apparently (waited maybe one-half hour) permanently halted KDE (within few minutes no I/O despite barely 10% or fewer CPU (water-cooled overclocked) resources used entire time--not enough parallel processing(!)--and only a few programs placed windows) but worked so perfectly/quickly in XFCE (so clearly optimization/parallelism rather than hardware problem) I use there to save great deal time/effort starting daily programs.  I was able to <CTRL><TAB><F1> out of KDE but not <CTRL><TAB><F11> back in except only to see KDE's terminal output/errors: KDE couldn't even redraw (in at least two separate tests).  I would've put it before rest of my comment in code block section but don't see you have formatting/mark(up|down) documented here.

I'm willing to test more soon/eventually (maybe today) but was enthusiastic about KDE3 as were most KDE user scientists/programmers, whom almost all preferred older KDEB,1,2,3 (when I only knew twm) and whom most I know haven't used it maybe 15 years... it's bugs like this (and other crash/major/grave/criticals even 15 years back untested then falsely marked 'intentional') made me lose all enthusiasm and now most trust/faith that power users/programmers will even be equally considered... I could go on about dozens/hundreds aspects but that'd be best for forum.kde.org .

#!/bin/sh
dolphin 1>/dev/null 2>&1& kate 1>/dev/null 2>&1& mcomix 1>/dev/null 2>&1& okular 1>/dev/null 2>&1& xmms 1>/dev/null 2>&1& birdtray 1>/dev/null 2>&1& pan 1>/dev/null 2>&1& hexchat 1>/dev/null 2>&1& pidgin 1>/dev/null 2>&1& palemoon-bin 1>/dev/null 2>&1& firefox 1>/dev/null 2>&1& chromium 1>/dev/null 2>&1& element 1>/dev/null 2>&1& discord 1>/dev/null 2>&1& slack 1>/dev/null 2>&1& skypeforlinux 1>/dev/null 2>&1& transmission 1>/dev/null 2>&1& nicotine 1>/dev/null 2>&1& eiskaltdcpp-qt 1/dev/null 2&1&

I meant 'power users, general/polymath scientists/programmers & Renaissance people'.  Obviously KDE is adequate for average users who only use one program at a time but even for some them I administer KDE Neon for in recent years (even since Kubuntu days) are telling me KDE is slow at times.  I can no longer recommend it to scientists/polymaths (whom do as much work in as many programs as me) and don't know how much longer for average & power users either.  More recent KDE Neon running only either more recent Firefox or Chromium (which has/had memory leaks, maybe some repaired) seem acceptably-fast for them though (now getting off-topic) some user theme material has disappeared & reappeared & disappeared in Neon so they may be switching back to Kubuntu... and they never ask/report online so it's either Neon tests all historical default KDE themes or I report it or users switch away.

Of course, I removed taskbars; should I remove anything else, and if I do is it going to erase all my settings/customization (as happened with taskbars)?

Of course, I removed task managers; should I remove anything else, and if I do is it going to erase all my settings/customization (as happened with task managers)?

Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least
15 days. Please provide the requested information as soon as
possible and set the bug status as REPORTED. Due to regular bug
tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDSINFO status with
no change in 30 days the bug will be closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the
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If you have already provided the requested information, please
mark the bug as REPORTED so that the KDE team knows that the bug is
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Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!

'Medium workload' in this case means even one program that does much, such as Pan NNTP newsreader loading almost 1,000 Usenet newsgroups, which causes zero slowdown in lighter X WM/DEs... but in KDE Plasma (KDE P) such usage of Pan alone lately causes immediate panel halt... I guess because panel updates with all activity (almost 1,000 newsgroups sometimes with hundreds posts & replies)... having panel update on all activity simply isn't feasible (reported in another bug) so unless panel updating on activity can be disabled, I can never recommend KDE (except up to KDE3/TDE) to programmers though users who don't do things this large (excludes many/most power users) might be okay using KDEP.

I think you need to help us narrow down the issue instead of lecturing with vague platitudes. Otherwise nothing will ever get dome here.

Can you use your polymath intelligence to do some troubleshooting:
- See if you're running out of RAM
- Simplify your system bit-by-bit to see if any specific element is causing the issue; remove widgets-one-by-one; remove external screens, disable virtual desktops and Activities, etc.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #9)

Okay

> - See if you're running out of RAM

The example command to launch 20 programs simultaneously (including resource-intensive) permanently halts KDE panel within 1sec (but works speedily in XFCE) so it's not a problem of running out of RAM (which I checked using 'free' RAM information on command-line never happens in that short time rather than a few days/weeks) rather than presumably a problem of CPU or graphics usage/thrashing probably of panel, which I suspect if programs like a Usenet newsreader or filesharing are doing millions updates (and they are) the panel lately tries to update/blink/etc. for each of multiple millions and gets overloaded...  If I start the 20 programs with a maybe minute between each, I often do okay until more than one are doing millions updates again.  Programs like top, btop, htop show high CPU activity when I start these 20, but it's not always 100%, just sometimes close, so it's a bit puzzling why the panel isn't using more a little more CPU resources if that could speed it up... if I turn off number-crunching on the other 24 threads, in fact CPU threads usage is overall rather low so it's possible it's not so much CPU as much as graphics not being able to do multiple millions updates (but I don't know a command to monitor graphics load).

> - Simplify your system bit-by-bit to see if any specific element is causing
> the issue; remove widgets-one-by-one; remove external screens, disable
> virtual desktops and Activities, etc.

I don't use virtual desktops nor activities, and only minimal and a couple extra basic widgets: menu, task manager, clock, launchers that change into task manager entries, weather forecast, and a cartoon/comic reader, which are usually idle.    It's probable the problem is the task manager in the panel trying to do multiple millions updates, but if I remove task manager, I may as well remove KDE.  Panels aren't normally visible on the other screens so probably are unrelated, but I can try again with temporarily unplugging those screens, and as such will leave this as 'waiting for info' until I get to that... if my report about the 'free' and (though might need more investigation) top/etc commands are enough, you can change it to 'reported.

Thanks. So when you remove the Task Manager widget from your panel (not permanently; just temporarily for testing purposes), the problem stops happening?

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #11)
> Thanks. So when you remove the Task Manager widget from your panel (not
> permanently; just temporarily for testing purposes), the problem stops
> happening?

I'm happy to report (also with unplugging of two screens for this test) it does (at least 18/20 launched at once, but I think something over 10 or at most 15 is close enough to the medium-to-large quite resource-intensive workload) so this is likely a duplicate of a specific bug report for the task manager (classic including text) in the panel I reported or commented on but hadn't heard any update on lately,   Two that didn't launch were discord (needed update, but not resource-intensive) and pan 2 NNTP newsreader which was one that does some of the most updates in task manager, but so do the filesharing, and they all launched, and I launched another resource-hungry web browser in short time, and three my web browsers currently have something from maybe 20+ to 70+ tabs so would've been more updates than usual, and hexchat has close to 150 channels now so also would've been many updates, so I think it's safe to say this is a task manager problem.  In this test, the almost 10 programs that minimized to the panel, and task switching with <ALT><TAB> was all super-fast like KDE3 and like newer when I didn't open as much too fast nor had as many task manager updates.  I would close this but don't know which other bug it is which should probably be marked duplicate.

Ok, so the issue in the Task Manager code somewhere.

Can you clarify what "doing millions updates again" means? Are any of these apps rapidly changing their window title or rapidly changing whether audio is played or not?

Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least
15 days. Please provide the requested information as soon as
possible and set the bug status as REPORTED. Due to regular bug
tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDSINFO status with
no change in 30 days the bug will be closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the
wiki located here:
https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging

If you have already provided the requested information, please
mark the bug as REPORTED so that the KDE team knows that the bug is
ready to be confirmed.

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!

This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least
30 days. The bug is now closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the
wiki located here:
https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #13)
> Ok, so the issue in the Task Manager code somewhere.
> 
> Can you clarify what "doing millions updates again" means? Are any of these
> apps rapidly changing their window title or rapidly changing whether audio
> is played or not?

Not those but other things that may have been causing the task manager to update/flash.... mostly/all text/file updates... many on status bars or elsewhere, but not title bar.

(In reply to David Chmelik from comment #16)
> (In reply to Nate Graham from comment #13)
> > Ok, so the issue in the Task Manager code somewhere.
> > 
> > Can you clarify what "doing millions updates again" means? Are any of these
> > apps rapidly changing their window title or rapidly changing whether audio
> > is played or not?
> 
> Not those but other things that may have been causing the task manager to
> update/flash.... mostly/all text/file updates... many on status bars or
> elsewhere, but not title bar.
What does that mean? What apps are you talking about? Can you describe *exactly* what those apps are doing that causes the Task Manager to update or flash? I ask because this does not seem like normal behavior.

A screen recording might help avoid a lot of bash-and-forth questions and answering. If you could attach one, it would be very helpful.

I can only theorize why KDE halts on opening 10 (maybe) or 15 (likely) or 20+ (definitely) programs.  Of course I can't screen record; all you'd see is shell command I use to launch programs--I 𝘥𝘪𝘥 state which (twice)--and before they do much/anything than open a window area, KDE apparently halts permanently (sometimes I even went to do something else and checked back an hour or two later): thus, there'd be no way to save the recording.  I guess I can learn video camera, but I doubt you'll see much useful from a video with one to few seconds activity.
        My description what slows task manager is only what I saw some programs updating and slowing but not always halting KDE, more than a year ago (so don't recall which other than mostly in my twice-given list).  I seem to recall at some time most programs (on any internal activity) caused task manager updates/flashes, but the task manager may have been reconfigured/recoded to not as much/anymore.  It probably wasn't programs that wait to do much/anything, though I opened quite a few of those (one is KATE I have 10 tabs in which change in titlebar but I don't know if opening a session changes those); some were dozens/hundreds tabs in chats (hexchat, pidgin, which both change titlebar on tab opening) & web browsers (some which change titlebar on tab opening though are also just sessions similar to KATE), pan (Usenet newsreader, with 1400+ subscriptions some doing 100,000+ updates in status bar) and eiskaltdcpp & nicotine & transmission which open hundreds thousands of files (though none in titlebar, 2/3 maybe status bars and opening the files causes temporary slowdown).  I'd have to go use KDE again and test these to see/record if they do that but don't know if they're actually the reason or if it's just starting 20 programs in something from a fraction of a second (launcher) to a minute or two (manually, which can have same effect) is too fast for the task manager for some other reason.  I'm willing to do this after trying to make a video of the halt but don't think any these on their own will halt KDE... even the chats, which I now realize do almost 200 titlebar updates, won't halt KDE on their own, and web browsers won't either, but it could be the case all these opened fast might do it which I can check later.
        I also know people who use significantly more programs than me on their PC, which is what I might call a high workload.  Mine was just medium-to-high and the report title no longer reflects that--it wasn't every time I opened all these but is increasing over time except when I only use X for a short while.

David, I'm trying to ask narrowly-focused questions so I can get narrowly-focused answers and we can move forward. When you write an essay in response every question, it's very difficult for me to find the information I need to continue troubleshooting. I don't think I can help you any more with this issue, sorry.

Good: no longer seems to be a problem, and is duplicate.