gnome-shell idling at around 17% usage right now, here's an strace for around 15 seconds:
strace: Process 963 attached ^Cstrace: Process 963 detached % time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- 28,65 0,167283 0 242195 173541 recvmsg 21,44 0,125202 0 161286 poll 19,44 0,113499 7 15141 274 futex 10,32 0,060288 2 28487 ioctl 10,01 0,058442 1 55063 writev 2,89 0,016898 0 24103 getpid 0,93 0,005429 1 3620 mmap 0,90 0,005257 0 7155 close 0,90 0,005229 1 3553 memfd_create 0,87 0,005066 1 3571 munmap 0,83 0,004830 0 7112 lseek 0,77 0,004507 1 3553 sendmsg 0,59 0,003440 0 3554 recvfrom 0,58 0,003374 0 3553 ftruncate 0,43 0,002504 0 3334 mprotect 0,27 0,001554 0 1932 write 0,16 0,000936 0 1107 read 0,02 0,000115 1 61 12 openat 0,01 0,000030 0 92 fstat 0,00 0,000018 0 43 fcntl 0,00 0,000004 0 6 getrusage 0,00 0,000004 4 1 restart_syscall ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- 100.00 0,583909 568522 173827 total -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-shell in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1773959 Title: High CPU usage by gnome-shell when only running gnome-terminal Status in gnome-shell package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Even when doing nothing but displaying a terminal screen with top running gnome-shell uses 10% of a CPU. That seems excessive. I disabled all extensions to try and make the test fair. Enabling the system monitor extension increases the load to 13-14%. It seems that the gnome-shell screen painting is highly CPU consuming even if screen updates are infrequent (1 a second for all these cases). ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04 Package: gnome-shell 3.28.1-0ubuntu2 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-20.21-generic 4.15.17 Uname: Linux 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7 Architecture: amd64 CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME Date: Tue May 29 11:38:05 2018 DisplayManager: gdm3 InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-10-27 (578 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160719) SourcePackage: gnome-shell UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-05-19 (9 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1773959/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
