Mate desktop icons and picture loading time lag

Support & Help Requests
#1

Hi,

Last weekend I did a project that involved making two huge wav files in the my documents folder as I stripped them from a video, nothing complicated and the system filled up the SSD and said low memory etc. This got deleted and all was well in regards to that project.

The following day however the computer has loaded up the icons and picture on the desktop about 20 seconds after boot up and entering the desktop environment. The icon and desktop image load up time was usually 1 second flat. I have uninstalled and reinstalled MATE to no difference. Entering Ubuntu 20.04 which was installed a fresh with no upgrade in its original form via gnome shows the desktop load time as normal i.e. 1 second flat. I have done the commands for removing and reinstalling the swap file as well as running bleachbit. I have also tested the SSD using the Disks program extended disk check feature, it shows its ok.

I run the memory test no the startup for the RAM and it stopped on the vert first test within seconds of it starting at 47%
However upon testing each stick separately they all passed with no errors. I put the ram back in where they were and it errors at 47% again. I tried shuffling the sticks to find on another it stopped at 58% and then I worked out with just one stick left, luckily 4gb, I could see it pass the first test without an issue. So, kinda strange, its obviously not the ram causing the MATE issue but for some reason they suddenly don't like being with each other.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

#2

Hi and welcome to this community,

Ram issues can do nasty stuff to your user experience. I had a MATE install literally destroyed because of a faulty stick. And with 4 sticks it was quite painful to test with Memtest.

If each stick was tested alone in both slots you usually use without errors, I assume there might be some problem regarding memory timings in your bios, you might want to loosen them a bit if your bios allows you to do so. This might not be the origin of your MATE problem, but memory errors could result in data corruption so be careful if you're working on something important.

When you said you uninstalled and reinstalled MATE to no avail while the Ubuntu proper was a fresh install, what did you do ? Removed and reinstalled ubuntu-mate-desktop ? Reinstalled Ubuntu MATE without formatting ?

I assume a clean Ubuntu MATE install would solve your problems. Should you want to do so, make sure to backup whatever config files you would like to keep in ~/.config in order to waste less time. Regular system backups with utilities such as Clonezilla can help a lot when things go awry.

#3

Hi Utsuro,

Thank you for your response. I have experienced not issues lately with my computer that I would have expected poor ram to cause eg freezes. I have done a lot of work lately that involved a lot of ram usage ie several GBs worth so I don't think its bad. With regards to uninstall and reinstall, the Ubuntu system was not a MATE one it was normal focal fossa released last year in April. I used the following commands to remove and reinstall.

$ sudo apt-get autoremove mate-desktop
$ sudo tasksel install ubuntu-mate-desktop

Edit I even tried change the default theme in the appearance section.

#4

It's your call. If Memtest fails, just be aware the overall stability of your system may be affected when stressing the memory.

If it only happened after filling the SSD and triggering warning messages, maybe it affected your config files that weren't deleted when performing those commands.

I would perform a clean install from Ubuntu MATE 20.04 LTS if you want to stick with a MATE LTS release, using multiple desktop environments on a same install can be painful sometimes.

#5

i find it strange it persists yet not an issue for gnome

#6

Because you were not using Gnome when the problem occurred. I assume your MATE config files got corrupted since it persists when you reinstall MATE.

#7

How i[quote="Utsuro, post:6, topic:23479"]
I assume your MATE config files got corrupted since it persists when you reinstall MATE.
[/quote]

How is this possible then? Why can I not simply reinstall mates settings entirely?

#8

I don't know where all the MATE config files are located. I assume you would need new ones to get rid of your problem.

#9

Well xcfe works fine, if I don't get any fix suggested in two weeks I'll uninstall mate. Just a shame they pratted about doing up gnome interface a few years back because that had a simple user interface that didn't require much precessing power. A lot of people moaned about that, God only knows why they didn't give us an option to keep it classic.