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[Error] Heavy GUI Apps freeze

Open robertosw opened this issue 4 months ago • 3 comments

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Describe the bug Running complex apps like IntelliJ IDEA which use multiple windows from inside a container will cause them to stutter. If large portions of the displayed area change (large amount of pixels), my entire desktop freezes for some amount of time (1-5s). I can still click or type while my desktop is frozen, but I will only see the results after it "thawed".

To Reproduce

  1. Build a distrobox with these settings:
[box1]
image=debian:13
home=~/distrobox/box1
start_now=true
hostname=box1
init=false  # this bug also happens for init=true
root=false
  1. Download IntelliJ toolbox on their website, unpack it and run the executable
  2. Download idea and open some folder on your system
  3. Click around to open windows or popups (e.g. settings)
  4. Freeze right as the new window or popup opens

Expected behavior No freezing

Logs I am not to sure if the logs of IntelliJ Idea or podman would be useful here.

Desktop:

  • podman 5.6.2
  • distrobox 1.8.1.2
  • Operating System: Bazzite 42
  • KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.5
  • KDE Frameworks Version: 6.18.0
  • Qt Version: 6.9.2
  • Kernel Version: 6.16.4-115.bazzite.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
  • Graphics Platform: Wayland
  • Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 7700 8-Core Processor
  • Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.9 GiB usable)
  • Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT
  • How did you install distrobox: It is packaged with bazzite

Additional information This does not happen when running the same programs natively.

robertosw avatar Oct 15 '25 13:10 robertosw

I've tried it with the same container config on a nixos host, everything works fine on here. This seems to be an issue of bazzite itself. Maybe the apps from inside the container are unable to properly set the gpu power state.

robertosw avatar Oct 15 '25 13:10 robertosw

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a0836a92-5159-44fb-a276-8d3a856ef065

This is what it looks like. The lags & freezes are not errors in the recording of this screen capture, thats how it actually looks. The terminal at the end is just a proof that this does not happen to all apps = is not a general problem of my hardware or software stack.

robertosw avatar Oct 15 '25 13:10 robertosw

Maybe something with the host distro itself? Since it doesn't happen with Nix it's very weird to understand what's happening there :/

dottorblaster avatar Nov 17 '25 13:11 dottorblaster