For the last several years, performance is always a pain in a neck with Ubuntu users, especially who are working on Laptop environment. I’ve tried multiple things to make my Dell Latitude 7490 run smoother, increase memory to 32GB, (even considered to replace the SSD). I tried every tweeks thermald to reduce CPU throttling, cpufreq monitor … But it seem the system is always lag, unresponsive even for simple task (Facebook browsing :D).
Yesterday I took a brave decision to upgrade from 20.04 LTS to 21.04. The upgrade took more than 1 hour (because I need to upgrade to 20.10 first). Then I found out that Ubuntu 21.04 has Power Mode which can control the CPU and Performance of the system. Which is an interface of https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/power-profiles-daemon
CPU Performance
It would replace TLP and other power management systems. So that I removed all others (thermald, powertop, cpufreq, ltp, laptop-mode, auto-cpufreq …)
I keep choosing X11 over Wayland.
And then everything swipes right… No more lagging, unresponsive, delay, everything seem so fast :D. Although sometime the heat is over 75 Celsius, but I just need my computer to run fast.
GPU Hardware acceleration
Another good news is that Chrome 88 support GPU Hardware Accceleration already (no more Chromium without Google API sync.)
https://www.linuxuprising.com/2021/01/how-to-enable-hardware-accelerated.html
It would work well on X11.
One more thing that I also enable GPU Rasterization https://mtit.blog/2019/03/06/maximize-google-chrome-gpu-performance-on-windows-10/
And enable UseOzonePlatform.
/usr/bin/google-chrome --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder --ignore-gpu-blocklist --enable-gpu-rasterization --enable-zero-copy --disable-gpu-driver-bug-workarounds --enable-accelerated-video-decode --use-gl=desktop --enable-crashpad --flag-switches-begin --enable-gpu-rasterization --enable-quic --enable-zero-copy --ignore-gpu-blocklist --enable-smooth-scrolling --enable-features=VaapiVideoDecoder,ParallelDownloading,ScrollableTabStrip:minTabWidth/54,UseOzonePlatform --flag-switches-end --origin-trial-disabled-features=SecurePaymentConfirmation
You can check whether the GPU is enable by visit chrome://media-internals while playing video
Keyboard delay
I felt some delay when enter a key in gnome (which won’t happen in TTY mode), you can prevent it by change Repeat keys configuration and reduce delay time
say Linux! 