Slow mouse responsiveness in X, is this normal?
 

Im pretty new to Linux, about a week old, but mind you I'm doing my homework and reading the docs and online books on how to use Linux and get around it. I just have one question, is it normal for the responsiveness to be slow during an X session? What i mean is that: When I click in lets say Gnome, or KDE, or WindowMaker (i tried them 3) and lets say I wanna click and move a window or click and doodle on Gimp, the mouse doesnt respond as fast as I do. It doesnt acknowledge where I clicked on that position, but instead it finally gets it a few milliseconds later.

The result in Gimp is that the initial spot where I wanna click in doesnt get painted in.

The result in any of the window managers is that it makes me seem like a blind man and I seem to miss the area I wanted to click to which is for example, the Window Title area, if I wanted to move the window or shade it.

I heard something about starting a program with root permissions so that it runs fast, is that really how it works? Cuz if it is, then i might as well be running root all the time (even though I read at Linux.org not to) because I want the response to be fast and instantaneous.

don't use your computer as root user unless you're changing something that requires root privileges.

no, this isn't supposed to happen, to answer your question. what video card are you using? have you installed the drivers for it? when it's going slow post the result of "procinfo" and "ps aux" here, so we can see what's slowing it down.

no it's not normal for the mouse to be behind you
and no it doesn't help performance to run as root
i keep seeing performance problems posted about xorg
switch to xorg is new ....... ?????? so all will work out in time
and the newer kernels/x combo do seem to be a little harder to setup the mouse properly
and even sometimes have some odd mouse bugs
but beyond that
lots of linux distributions are very very bloated (and that's an understatement)
absolutely everything that exits is running by default
if you don't have any configuration errors
(study the logs and system monitor output to see if anything is weird)
you will have to learn to slim things down so not so much stuff is running

also the newer kernels are alot better about always responding to the usr interface
many stock kernels come ready to run every peice of hardware in the known universe.
which slows them down.
and some stock kernel configurations are set to spit out extra debugging info.
also standard distribtions come with lots of debugging information compiled into everything and
the code is all compiled to run on the very oldest machines.. so it is not using the features of your modern processor..and all the debugging symbols choke the pipes.

you just have to take controll and with Linux user controll is strictly incouraged

so what about the command called "nice"? i read that you should start some programs with that command to run it with root credentials so that it has a higher priority. i've never used it yet, have you?

anyway, i do have the latest drivers for my video card, i even recompiled my nvidia drivers with the optimizations i want, and so my 3d accel works. i also use slackware 10, and upgraded my kernel to 2.6.8.1. Everything works great actually, its just that mouse thing, although I can work with it by slowing myself down, that wouldn't be a very good thing for me to do to myself.

load averages? "ps aux" output? is anything else slow or is it just the mouse?

we need to know what processes are running and how much of the system resources they are using - maybe there's something running that's slowing everything down, including the cursor.

ps aux
 

Alright, here is the output:

http://orgeem0nster.net/auxout.txt

do you have a lot of mozilla windows open or something? looks like its sort of eating up some resources. what were you doing in mozila right as you used ps aux?

it's only 10% of cpu usage, but still, might as well check it out.

i had a quite similar problem, and i discovered that the DMA of my disc was disabled. you should try this command (as root):

# hdparm -d /dev/hda (if hda is the drive where you have linux installed)

just have a look at the output, if it sounds like this:

/dev/hda:
using_dma = 1 (off)

the problem if that your DMA isnt turned on. in this case i'll tell you how to turn it on. otherwise i don't know other solutions....

have you tried to install graphic drivers? if you have a grafica card...

Matteo

@Sether:

I have nothing open except 1 mozilla window where I am writing the post above, and 1 terminal window where I did a ps aux command. I didnt understand that either why it had alot of mozilla on my process list. But even if Mozilla wasnt on, i'd still get that lag on my mouse regardless what windowing system I used.

@MrRosati:

I know youre just trying to be helpful, but if you read my earlier posts, its not the harddrive thats having problems and I have properly installed my drivers already. Thanks though.

maybe try recompiling your kernel and leaving out things you dont use.

I did already awhile back, from slackware default 2.4.26 to kernel 2.6.81. I took out a bunch of stuff actually. Anyway right now im about to try upgrading the X server to a newer version to see if that changes anything. I hope it does :|

Same problem!!
 

Orgee,
I'm having exact same problem! I'm running Mandrake 10 w/ KDE and latest Nvidia drivers. I've been working with Cadega to run Warcraft III, and when I click to select some peons/units it doesnt respond right away! I end up selecting half the units I originally wanted. (Same problem with KDE desktop and moving windows around). I can slow myself down too, but why should I when I don't need to in WindowsXP? If you find an answer, be sure to post it back here....It's the only thing stopping me from switching to Linux.
Seffius

Seffius, mind telling me what your system specs are? Maybe we have some similarities that might be causing it. Anyway I just got rid of my Windows XP partition and reinstalled Slackware Linux so now I have a clean machine. It still does it though.. I gotta try upgrading X still, and one thing that I havent tried doing is running X as root. Ill try that in a moment.

I have an Asus K8V SE Athlon 64 motherboard, Gefore TI4400 graphics card, running a Microsoft USB optical mouse, Gateway VX900 monitor, and 1 gig of RAM. I've tried Slackware, Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, and Fedora, and they've all given me the slight delay. I'm no expert at Linux, but I've tried enough distros that I thought at least one of them would work. Maybe it's the USB mouse?
Seffius

hey we got one similarity which is the usb mouse. Mine is a wireless mx700 and thats the only mouse I have so im gonna have to go find a ps/2 mouse to see if it changes anything.