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Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux)

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On 12/06/2025 6:05 pm, Alan K. wrote:
> On 6/12/25 10:17 AM, Tumbleweed wrote:
>> On 12/06/2025 08:30, aRubes wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I used to like Thunderbird very much as a central place for my calendar,
>>> news and feeds but it's so slow now and I don't know what else I should
>>> try. It freezes quite a lot during work to the point that it's now
>>> barely usable. I can use other software but rather not give up just yet
>>> because I'm so used to it.
>>>
>>> Can you help me figure this out by suggesting more ways to speed it up
>>> or give it more resources, or find out what's slowing it down?
>>>
>>> The computer is an ASUS Vivo book laptop running openSUSE Tumbleweed
>>> with KDE Plasma 6, and I usually run a Wayland session (more details
>>> below(. everything is quite fast except for Thunderbird, which can
>>> somehow seems to me to even freeze when idle or just when moving between
>>> folders ! examples:
>>>
>>> Message Editor:
>>> - As I'm sitting now in front of this draft of the post and pausing the
>>> typing to observe the text cursor, I can see it sometimes just stops
>>> blinking for 2 seconds without me doing anything, then resumes.
>>> - There's a noticeable delay sometimes between typing and the text
>>> appearing. sometimes almost half of a second!
>>> - opening a menu entry such as "Tools" and "Options" when inside the
>>> message editing area initially freezes up TB entirely for 3 seconds, but
>>> after that first submenu opens up and moving between menu entries is
>>> quick again
>>>
>>> Main Window:
>>> - 2-3 seconds delay when switching accounts using the mouse or switching
>>> between folders / groups that are not synced (sometimes)
>>> - Using The scroll bar in the folder pane results in a temporary freeze
>>> for 2 seconds.
>>>
>>> Monitoring the behaviour:
>>>
>>> currently I have only one Gmail account and two NNTP accounts with a few
>>> subscriptions. This is after I deleted entirely the Proton mail account.
>>>
>>> I tried:
>>> - deleted the other account (I thought it might be a connection problem
>>> that arises from the Proton Mail bridge)
>>> - deleted the feeds account just to eliminate something that I have
>>> configured on RSSGuard anyway
>>> - compacting
>>> - "dis-syncing" the big folders that I had synced before so now I have
>>> only Inbox and Starred and Drafts synced.
>>> - archiving by month instead of one folder for everything (although I'm
>>> not sure the way Gmail set their folders / labels that it would help me
>>> in any way.
>>> - observing system memory and CPU while doing all sorts of things in
>>> Thunderbird.
>>>
>>>
>>> The open windows are:
>>> - - windows: the main one with just the default tab
>>> - - the activity manager window (which shows the occasional successful
>>> sync or that some drafts were deleted (presumably drafts of this 
>>> message?)
>>> - - the window of this message's draft
>>> - - The occasional reminder window pops up
>>>
>>> In the background:
>>> With nothing but the system processes and services and the desktop and
>>> its couple of widgets running in the background, I didn't find anything
>>> too suspicious by myself. The Activity Manager recently completed
>>> indexing ~6000 messages (I think this is due to me changing the
>>> archiving to by month under a Label in Gmail. The indexing was of
>>> '[Gmail]/All Mail' folder)
>>>
>>> memory keeps between 7.2-8.1 Gb out of a total of 15.3 and the disk is
>>> very far from being full. CPU is on 1-3% percent most of time when idle
>>> constantly and occasionally when TB is deleting a draft or popping up a
>>> reminder or fetching messages it spikes a bit, up to 8%.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Computer / OS / Session info:
>>> ```
>>> ~
>>> ❯ neofetch --off
>>>
>>> ----------------
>>> OS: openSUSE Tumbleweed x86_64
>>> Host: VivoBook_ASUSLaptop X513
>>> Kernel: 6.15.0-1-default
>>> Uptime: 1 day, 12 hours, 33 mins
>>> Packages: 94 (pip), 3884 (rpm), 38 (flatpak-system), 8 (flatpak-user)
>>> Shell: zsh 5.9
>>> Editor: micro 2.0.13
>>> Resolution: 1920x1080, 2560x1440
>>> DE: Plasma 6.3.5 [KF 6.14.0] [Qt 6.9.0] (wayland)
>>> WM: kwin_wayland_wr
>>> Theme: Adwaita-dark [GTK2/3]
>>> Icons: breeze-dark [GTK2/3]
>>> Cursor: Colloid-Dracula-cursors-dark [GTK2/3]
>>> Terminal: konsole
>>> CPU: 11th Gen Intel i5-1135G7 (8) @ 4.2GHz
>>> GPU: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]
>>> Memory: 9.38 GiB / 15.32 GiB (61%)
>>> Network: Wifi6
>>> ```
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>
>>
>> Have you tried creating a new profile to see if it also behaves the same
>> way? Somebody can tell you how to create a new Thunderbird profile in
>> Linux. I don't use Linux here.
>>
>> When you create a new profile, don't install any extensions because you
>> want to test if it is Thunderbird or something else.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> from the terminal type:    thunderbird -P &
> follow the directions.
> to go back to the first profile again, just type the 'thunderbird -P &' 
> thing and pick the other profile in the list.
> 
> 
I managed to get TB working a lot faster than before and I think that 
was a big part of it. Thank you, both. I have no idea why that worked, I 
didn;t have add-ons enabled in the old profiles and all of the initial 
configuration was done exactly the same, save for a difference in 
offline folder configuration. I'm certain this played a part because 
even before all of that configuration it operated more smoothly.

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Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) aRubes <aRubes@pm.me> - 2025-06-12 10:30 +0300
  Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) aRubes <aRubes@pm.me> - 2025-06-12 10:35 +0300
  Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> - 2025-06-12 09:00 +0100
    Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) aRubes <aRubes@pm.me> - 2025-06-12 15:08 +0300
      Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> - 2025-06-12 13:45 +0100
  Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-06-12 10:42 +0200
    Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "aRubes@pm.me" <aRubes@pm.me> - 2025-06-13 00:15 +0300
  Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "Alan K." <alan@invalid.com> - 2025-06-12 07:28 -0400
  Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) Tumbleweed <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2025-06-12 14:17 +0000
    Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "Alan K." <alan@invalid.com> - 2025-06-12 11:05 -0400
      Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "aRubes@pm.me" <aRubes@pm.me> - 2025-06-13 00:21 +0300
        Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) Wayne <wayne@nospam.com> - 2025-06-13 06:19 -0400
          Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "aRubes@pm.me" <aRubes@pm.me> - 2025-06-14 18:34 +0300
        Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-06-13 12:26 +0200
  Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) Wayne <wayne@nospam.com> - 2025-06-12 11:10 -0400
    Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-06-12 15:53 -0400
    Re: Thunderbird 128 esr (64-bit) exceptionally slow; suggest ways to speed it up (on Linux) "aRubes@pm.me" <aRubes@pm.me> - 2025-06-13 00:49 +0300

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