https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=395374
Bug ID: 395374
Summary: Dolphin temporarily freezes while opening directories
with large amounts of files
Product: dolphin
Version: 18.04.0
Platform: Other
OS: Linux
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: NOR
Component: general
Assignee: dolphin-bugs-n...@kde.org
Reporter: sonichedgehog_hyperblas...@yahoo.com
CC: elvis.angelac...@kde.org
Target Milestone: ---
The Dolphin process will temporarily freeze and become fully unresponsive when
opening large directories with huge amounts of files. For instance: Whenever
entering a folder with about 100.000 images, Dolphin stops working for roughly
8 seconds. This time is even longer when accessing the directory for the first
time after the machine has booted, likely due to the kernel also having to
generate its page caches.
While not a major issue, this is an annoyance and looks very bad to the end
user. The desired functionality is for the user to remain able to use the
menus, or resize the window without the desktop compositor leaving ugly trails
inside (since the window is not redrawn either while busy). Ideally there
should be a spinning circle somewhere in the interface, indicating that the
contents of the directory are being loaded in the background.
This effect is most likely caused by the Dolphin process going into disk sleep
mode (I/O scheduling) while reading the data of the directory. As such this may
require deeper changes to how Linux accesses partitions and works with files in
order to properly solve.
One thing KDE can and should do in the meantime, is separating the process
responsible for reading files from the process of the application itself: From
what I remember this should already be the case with some software, which lets
a process called file.so (or another process with a similar name) handle the
drive I/O for it then send the data once ready. Does KDE use a similar
approach, and if not could and should it?
Note that this issue may affect multiple pieces of KDE software, particularly
those that work with large quantities of files from the hard drive... for
instance Gwenview when it accesses large amounts of images at once. As Dolphin
is what I'm most consistently and reliably noticing this problem with, I
reported this as a Dolphin issue.
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