I created App Qubes based on Kicksecure 18 / Debian 13 XFCE and have been using them only for web browsing and email.
Recently, Chromium in one particular App Qube became unusually slow. Since the behavior seemed strange, I restarted some of my other App Qubes, and after restarting them, they also became similarly slow. Until recently, all of these Qubes had been running smoothly and responsively.
To troubleshoot the issue, I installed a fresh debian-13-minimal template and created a new App Qube from it. After completing only the minimum setup necessary to launch a browser and browse the web, the new App Qube was fast and responsive, just as my Qubes had been before.
However, while I was continuing to configure the new TemplateVM—for example, installing Japanese fonts and setting up Japanese input—I launched the Fcitx5 configuration tool. Around that point, I noticed that the system had become sluggish again.
I then restarted the newly created App Qube, which had previously been running very smoothly. After the restart, it too became extremely slow, similar to the other App Qubes.
Since this happened while I was setting up a completely new TemplateVM, I am wondering whether this could be a Qubes OS, Debian 13, Fcitx5, or graphics/display-related issue rather than something specific to my existing Qubes.
Has anyone else experienced similar behavior recently, especially with Debian 13 / Kicksecure 18 App Qubes?
In particular, I am seeing a pattern where an App Qube initially runs normally, but after a restart it becomes significantly slower and less responsive.