Mouse Right Click context menu delay in browser in Mint 17.3 KDE

Recently I noticed that when I tried to right click on  something and use the pop up  menu some odd things were happening.

1 - The menu would not appear until I moved the mouse cursor into the area where the menu should appear.
2 - Once the menu did appear, some menu items did not show the hover selector as the mouse was moved over them
3 - If I held the Right mouse button and moved the mouse, a coloured line (green) was drawn a couple of inches away from the position of the cursor.

But it did not happen all the time.  There seemed to be a random element to it.

I tried a few Google searches using different combinations of words, but got all sorts of other things that were nothing to do with the problem.  Then I realised it was only happening in my Slimjet and some other Chrome based browsers  but not in Firefox or Cyberfox.

I looked at the settings in my computers and found that on one of them I had a setting configured in two browsers that was not configured in the other computer.

In my Slimjet browser I opened Settings then scrolled almost to the bottom and found System.
There are two 'Checkbox' items there.  The second one is 'Use hardware acceleration when available'.
It was not checked on the computer that was behaving well, but it was checked on the problem computer.
I unchecked it, restarted the browser and everything is now perfect.

I have no idea how or why I had enabled hardware acceleration in a browser - but I am writing it here so when I do something that dumb again I will find it easily using Google  :-)

Chromium was fixed more or less the same way and I suppose this should work for most Chrome based browsers.

It is nice to have a fully working context menu again with no lag.  It is possible turning on Hardware Acceleration on some graphics card setting could cause a similar problem, but this fixed the browser menu problem and the whole browser is responding better.

Slimjet Browser won't run - Segmentation Fault

The two web browsers I use most are FlashPeak-Slimjet http://www.slimjet.com/en/dlpage.php  (based on Chromium)
and Cyberfox (based on Mozilla).

I use those because they are much faster and better featured for my purposes than Chrome or Firefox, but once in a while they can do strange things,  Like many things in Linux though, the solution is sometimes very simple.

Today Slimjet refused to boot,  When I tried opening it from a terminal it came back with a 'segmentation fault'.  That usually means a corruption in the configuration, and as it happened, the last thing I did before it died was write some weird changes to the program.  But it can happen sometimes when you just change the wrong thing in settings.

The fix in this case was just to rename the 'slimjet' folder in the hidden '.config' folder in my home directory.  I called it 'slimjet-old'  then I tried starting slimjet again.  It ran, and when it ran, it created a new folder in /.config called 'slimjet'.

I opened the 'slimjet' folder and the 'slimjet-old' folder, then copied the folder called 'Default' from the 'slimjet-old' folder to the new 'slimjet' one.

Doing that restored things like my speed dial and bookmarks.

Gigabyte Brix BACE-3150 and Mint KDE

I work my computers pretty hard and after about three years I usually find something is dying. If it isn't the hard disk or DVD drive it's generally something else that has finally worn out. My current Compaq 1040 is more than four years old and has been a problem for quite a while. I'm not well off any more and the budget limits me to between $300 - $400 Aussie dollars. I also find having a laptop on the desk and trying to use it with a dual monitor setup is a real pain – so when I could not put the inevitable off any more, I bought a low end Brix.

The first thing I noticed about the Gigabyte Brix BACE-3150 was that it felt heavier than I expected for such a small computer. The second thing was that, well, it is a small computer. At not much more than 100mm by 100mm square and about 50mm high it can be placed just about anywhere on a desk or a shelf.  It also comes with a bracket and screw to allow it to be mounted on the back of most LED television sets.

There are lots of unboxing videos and various reviews about the Brix on Youtube and on Google. They all give details about the number and type of ports and the specs of the processor. But my needs are specific.

I always buy low end processors. I don't play computer games. I browse the web, play music and music videos, write simple programs (usually BASH scripts), and do a lot of photo editing and a little video editing. Much of the last two are either from the command line or using scripts I have customised for my own requirements. And of course there's the usual hack work. I design some web sites for businesses and maintain some blogs and do the usual word processing and spreadsheeting. I also only buy cheap computers.

One of the first things I need in a computer is that it will easily run Linux. Currently for my distribution of choice I've returned to Mint KDE, so I unpacked the Brix, plugged in the power adapter, a HDMI TV and a USB stick with a bootable Mint 17.3 KDE, plus my wireless mouse and keyboard.

I turned it on and a few moments later I had a working copy of Mint KDE on my screen. I entered the password for the on board Wireless to connect to my Internet and everything worked. So I double clicked the install icon and manually partitioned the hard drive the way I like it.

It was about this time I remembered reading somewhere that a reviewer of one model of the Brix had some dramas getting the UEFI stuff in BIOS sorted. Sadly I didn;t have the chance to explore the BIOS and UEFI stuff. The Brix BACE-3150 just accepted Mint KDE and everything worked.

The only drivers I had to install were for my collection of Brother printers. Fortunately Brother has a special section for Linux drivers on their web site which is kept up to date. Mint KDE just found everything else. I had to install a few programs and extras that asre not in the standard installation but for most users even that would not be needed.

The Brix was replacing a Compaq 1040 with an AMD E-350 1.6GHz dual core processor with a 500GB hard drive and 4GB RAM. The Brix BACE 3150 has a quad core Celeron processor that idles at 1.6GHz but automatically runs up to 2.08GHz on demand. Mine was ordered with a 500GB hard drive but I ordered 8GB RAM because I noticed on the AMD 64 bit processor I was very often pushing the system into the top of the available 4GB and flowing over into swap.

With the Brix, the quad core seems to prevent that somehow. I have no idea why, but running the same tasks on the same OS distro and version I haven't even got above the first 4GB RAM.

Something that stands out immediately is video performance however, The AMD system has a far better graphics benchmark score than the Intel system in the Brix. But that is on paper. In reality running the high performance tests on the jellyfish video at various bitrates using both Smplayer and VLC the Brix was still playing smoothly when the AMD started the stop start motion thing.

Streaming HD movies in full screen on a 50 inch TV was perfect on the Brix in KODI and I would recommend KODI and a few add-ons for regular video sessions. Teaming the USB 3 ports on the Brix with USB 3 hard drives and memory sticks worked great too.

Youtube video always depends largely on how heavy the Internet traffic is at that time, but again running the Brix and the Compaq at the same time left the Brix ahead in this area too. I must admit I was using Flashpeak Slimjet as my browser on both computers and a wired connection to the router on the compaq, while the Brix had the advantage of its internal wireless to connect to the router.

In summing up. The Gigabyte Brix was on ebay for $364 including delivery from pclivecomputers in Oakleigh, Vic. They will sell you the basic barebones Brix so you can choose the processor you need and add the bits you want, or you can simply choose an option to suit your budget as I did.

I ordered on a weekend, there was a public holiday on the Monday, and I still got mine up here in Central Queensland on the following Monday. I suspect had I ordered it Monday morning it might have arrived by Friday.

A couple of weeks into living with the BRIX and there was one annoying problem. The thing doesn't shutdown. When choosing to shutdown, everything seems fine, then it simply reboots. It was not happening initially but after a Linux kernel update it started happening. A bit of googling shows it is not only me with this issue, although it is not clear if it is happening with all processor variations. At any rate, with the Brix BACE-3150 it is happening. Fdor now, the only solution is to be sure to hit the main power switch (at the adapter) as soon as everything seems to have shut off. Otherwise, the light on the Brix comes back on and it reboots.

It is not a huge issue, but it is annoying to have to remember. I have no idea if this happens on any Brix with Windows installed. I can live with it though because everything else so far about the Brix has been a positive experience.

!!!!   N O T E   !!!!    After a couple of Linux updates the shutdown problem seems to have taken a holiday.  Now when it is turned off, the Brix stays off.

Something I will mention on closing is that KODI under Linux Mint suffers the same shutdown problem as KODI under Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi.  If you choose exit, instead of dropping back to Linux, it just hangs the system, often at a black screen.  Choosing Exit often does the same.  So I find the best what to get out of KODI is to choose a reboot, then either work in Linux, or shutdown from Linux.

The other option is to go into KODI System > System and choose to run in Windowed mode, then close the KODI window.

Be sure though to swap KODI back into Full Screen mode while you are running video or it will not play smoothly.

KDE Plasma 4 Memory Problems

E D I T *  January 2018
I have now discovered that the memory hogging problem in KDE4 and Plasma 5 is apparently at its worst whenever either a desktop Wallpaper is running in 'Slideshow' mode, or one (or more) of those little Media Frame widgets that can sit on the desktop is running in slideshow mode.
Changing wallpaper back to a single image on each desktop or activity, and removing any desktop frame widgets that display slides, removes most, but not all of the problem.
/ EDIT *


Yesterday I wrote that after using Elementary OS Freya for quite a long time I finally decided to move back to Mint.  Now, my desktop of choice is obviously KDE.  And as I mentioned I installed KDE on top of the Mint 17.3 iso I had burned.  And all seemed to work beautifully, long enough to write my blog entry.

Later in the day though I felt the system loading up and checked resources.  This computer only has 4GB of RAM, and Mint with KDE installed was chewing up over 3.5GB!

To top that off, plasma-desktop was hogging around 900MB of that even after all open programs were closed.  A quick restart of plasma without actually logging out brought plasma's memory use back to a bit over 130MB.

Over the next few hours plasma-desktop kept creeping up and up and the system got slower and slower.  A quick restart of plasma and it all began again.

A bit of Googling showed this has been an on-going problem with plasma for years and it is still an issue with the new Plasma 5.  So I did a little thinking on it.  I had this problem in the past with Kubuntu.  And I had it previously when I installed KDE on top of Mint MATE or Cinnamon.

I tried all sorts of tweaks and settings and config file mods.  I even played with proprietary drivers and turned off all desktop effects and killed things like Docky.  Installed lighter weight browsers, because the thing that trigger the freezing was saving a web page as a PDF from any of the browsers.  But nothing worked.

Anyway, this morning I decided to download and install Mint 17.3 KDE version and try it.

The results are startling so far.  The memory leak is still there to some extent and RAM still creeps up, but over a whole day and with everything running, including two monitors with multiple desktops with separate wallpaper on every desktop on both monitors (that's 8 separate wallpapers) some of which are images, some are slideshows and one is a video wallpaper showing through an oval port hole on the secondary screen.

And as well as normal programs I had Openshot rendering a video.  Plasma-desktop RAM use got way up to 167MB for a while and is now back to 148MB.

And on the next day...
I added an Activity (that's like adding an extra computer within my computer, complete with all the virtual desktops etc). and now there are two screens with two activities, each with 4 virtual desktops per activity.  So KDE is coping nicely with 16 virtual desktops across two monitors.

plasma-desktop is averaging 150MB to 180MB of RAM use and total memory use is staying around 1.1GB to 1.6GB.

Seems that if you install a KDE desktop, you should NOT install any other desktops (Don;t install Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE ets and switch between them at login).

And if you install any GNOME based distro and add other desktops, DON'T add KDE.

You can add most, but not all, GNOME programs to KDE, but even then, if there's a KDE version of the program that will do the job, it is better to use it.
If for example you install Nautilus or NEMO in KDE, you run the risk of breaking KDE.

Elementary OS or Mint 17.3 KDE

I switched from Mint KDE and Kubuntu (dual boot) to ElementaryOS Freya and for a long time I was very happy with Elementary.  But despite all the things I like about Elementary I found a few shortcomings.  And the biggest showed up when I decided to change from 32 bit Linux to 64 bit. 

I always have a dual boot system, so I left 32 bit Elementary on my main computer and installed the 64 bit version in the spare partition.  Then everything went sideways.  Too many 64 bit programs simply did not work in Elementary OS Freya and some wouldn't even install properly.

So I burned the most recent Mint 17 (17.3 at the time), but this time in 54 bit so I could use a few programs like Viber for Linux.  And because I am used to the responsiveness of Elementary I installed Mint Mate.  Bad move.  Like stepping back in time.  So boosted it to Cinnamon, which was also a horrible experience.  Now, when I say horrible, I mean from 'MY' point of view.  Thousands of people love those Mint flavours.  But I like to tweak stuff and like the flexibility I used to have in KDE.

So I installed the KDE Plasma 4 package.  And it picked up all my tweaks from the last time I had KDE running.  All my 64 bit software worked as I installed it, and despite my earlier experiences, Mint KDE was mostly pretty smooth and snappy in its performance.

It wasn't all great though.  There's a neat part of KDE desktop that few people use called Activities.  I used them all the time.  It allows me to not only have multiple desktops, but I can set each activity to be just like a separate computer and switch instantly between them.  

So for example I used to have one Activity set specifically for Normal computer day to day stuff, another dedicated to Graphics, and a separate Activity for Video Editing.  And each of my multiple desktops in the separate activities was uniquely designed to put everything where I wanted it.

But with Mint 17.3 KDE Activities were simply not available.  A bit of Googling showed this has been a problem in other distros for some time, so it is not a Mint problem. 

Installing a few packages as suggested in various forums gave me back my Activities, but killed my KDE.  It took days to get the system more or less stable again and eventually I will have to reinstall and then reinstall all my programs and tweaks again.

But most of it is working again and working very, very nicely.  

Mint 17.3 with KDE is slower to boot up than Elementary OS, but this latest version of Mint KDE seems just as fast, as long as you don;t try to get Activites working (assuming on yours it is not).  And I now have my HD video wallpaper working more easily again.  I had been so used to having to write special routines and script files to do things on Elementary that are just dead easy on other Linux distros.

Elementary OS is great for new users, but for long term Linux users there's just not enough flexibility for applying your own tweaks.