This used to be a problem with early Unity (v5/v6?) doing I/O bound operations in threads used for rendering. Which is obviously bad. Maybe we haven't fully solved that yet or regressed.
Also, the choice of filesystem formats used on the USB drive could be a factor. In Ubuntu/Gnome/Nautilus I think the formats NTFS and ExFAT for example are handled in userspace via GVFS [1]. So try some USB drives that are ext2/ext3/ext4/FAT32 to compare. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GVfs Either way, there's no excuse for this bug. If it was fast in 14.04 then it should be at least as fast in 16.04. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1581651 Title: Xenial desktop unusable under simple I/O through USB To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1581651/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
