How can I fix screen scrolling slowness in Ubuntu/Linux/Gnome?
November 17, 2006 3:52 AM Subscribe
How can I fix my screen scrolling slowness in Ubuntu/Linux/Gnome?
So I finally made the big switch, ditching WinXP for Linux (Ubuntu 6.10). Everything's going great so far (I've learned what sudo is, how to apt-get new packages, and installed and configured AMP), but I have yet to figure out what's causing my scrolling problem.
Whenever I scroll a window using the mousewheel, arrow keys or arrows at the top and bottom of a scroll bar, the refresh rate is godawful; I can actually see the window redrawing itself, and it probably takes a good quarter of a second to finish redrawing. However, when I use the PgUp/PgDn keys or click within the scroll bar (to jump a whole page at once), the redraw is instantaneous. I could probably work around it if I had to, but I'd prefer not to, and there are instances where the slow redraw is forced on me (for example, in FF when a popup is blocked and the bar appears at the top of the browser window, forcing me to sit through about five redraws as the bar appears).
The problem seems not to be isolated to any particular application; I've seen it happen in both Firefox and OO. If it matters, my video is the GeForce 6100 on-board controller, and I'm pretty sure I managed to successfully install the latest Nvidia drivers yesterday (didn't help).
How can I fix it so that incremental scrolling occurs more quickly?
So I finally made the big switch, ditching WinXP for Linux (Ubuntu 6.10). Everything's going great so far (I've learned what sudo is, how to apt-get new packages, and installed and configured AMP), but I have yet to figure out what's causing my scrolling problem.
Whenever I scroll a window using the mousewheel, arrow keys or arrows at the top and bottom of a scroll bar, the refresh rate is godawful; I can actually see the window redrawing itself, and it probably takes a good quarter of a second to finish redrawing. However, when I use the PgUp/PgDn keys or click within the scroll bar (to jump a whole page at once), the redraw is instantaneous. I could probably work around it if I had to, but I'd prefer not to, and there are instances where the slow redraw is forced on me (for example, in FF when a popup is blocked and the bar appears at the top of the browser window, forcing me to sit through about five redraws as the bar appears).
The problem seems not to be isolated to any particular application; I've seen it happen in both Firefox and OO. If it matters, my video is the GeForce 6100 on-board controller, and I'm pretty sure I managed to successfully install the latest Nvidia drivers yesterday (didn't help).
How can I fix it so that incremental scrolling occurs more quickly?
Make sure that in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, Section "Module" has the lines Load "dri" and Load "glx". Make sure Section "Device" has Driver "nvidia". Look up on the web the horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates for your monitor; in Section "Monitor", update HorizSync and VertRefresh appropriately.
Several people have had this complaint in the Ubuntu Forums; I haven't seen a definitive answer.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 8:53 AM on November 17, 2006
Several people have had this complaint in the Ubuntu Forums; I haven't seen a definitive answer.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 8:53 AM on November 17, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
Make sure that acceleration is enabled in your xorg.conf. I can't remember whether DRI is still around or if they renamed it to DRM.
posted by Xoder at 6:39 AM on November 17, 2006