I upgraded one computer to Q4.3 and it seems to be much (much) slower all around. Booting takes longer, each Qube takes longer to open, context menus and applications take longer to open, etc. Even on old qubes running the old templates.
This is subjective and hard to test. But does anyone else have a similar experience?
16GB i7 computer. And it was very smooth and comfortable under Q4.2. Did something change?
I experienced this slowness on R4.3 too, and hoped it is caused by the lack of many optimization tricks I applied to 4.2 over the time. The hardware I used to test is identical with my R4.2.4 machine (i7-8650U, 32Gb).
For example, even after removing the preloaded disposables, and with only sys-net (combined with USB), sys-firewall, and sys-whonix running, starting a disposable Tor browser takes ~60% more time than on R4.2!
Yeah that sounds like my experience. I am trying to figure out what I might have done to optimize. Maybe one thinf is fan speed (and therefore heat of CPU etc.) as I did not import my old dom0. I never do, because if it was compromised I want a lcean one.
I’ll run some tests over the weekend (hopefully), beginning with xenpm get-cpufreq-para comparison between R4.2 and R4.3 . I hope it’s something simple like “turbo mode not enabled”.
Same. Even using the optimizations from 4.2 I notice this.
I stopped preloading disposables because of the performance hit, and I
use a lot of disposables.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
Oh. And I was hoping for some easy fix… 
Sluggish and, on my laptop, prone to weird freezes where the mouse pointer still moves but nothing else happens.
I can’t really compare to 4.2, but I have a huge delay time after clicking sys-net’s network connection. the password prompt taking like 15 seconds for me to show up. But it seems to be a known bug
It’s the same as 4.2 for me on 3 different hardware.
Had same issue with low performance CPU, gen 13, U model. Solved for me by reduce CPU count of any sys-* qube from 2 to 1 (exclude sys-whonix).
Well I am happy I brought this up! I guess it was not just me.
For me on my mobile daily driver machine (AlderLake, 64GB RAM) it’s at least on par, many things are more snappy. Some system scripts run faster (I guess due to elimination of the rpc-multiplexer), preloaded disposables speed up external viewing, the gtk-dependant libreoffice packages run way faster (when scrolling through large documents) etc.
Alas, it seems that some platforms suffer(ed) from changes in xen scaling driver (4.17 to 4.19), so it’s impossible to make general assumptions.
IvyBridge example:
I have the (subjective) impression that Qubes 4.3.0 runs a bit slower than 4.2.4.
But that could be misleading.
On my system, starting the Tor Browser via whonix-workstation-18-dvm takes about 7 seconds for the DispVM to start, and then another roughly 4 seconds until the Tor Browser window is fully up.
I’d be very interested to know how this looks on your systems.
Disposable qubes disabled
Firewall replaced with Miranda Firewall
No apparent changes in execution speed (possibly a 500-800 ms delay in executing base Xfce templates, but it’s negligible)
Subjectively speaking, I tolerate any minor imperfections because the graphical interface has been improved, making it a bit more comfortable for me than having any unnecessary delays due to some system component. I don’t see any significant changes in the nesting of qubes like in Windows 7 or Windows 10.
Regards
qvm-clone and qvm-create are for me noticeably faster in 4.3 vs 4.2 and those were the slowest common tasks I perform. VM startup feels about the same as 4.2. I haven’t experimented with preloaded disposables yet as I’m often RAM constrained.
You might try:
[user@dom0 ~]$ qvm-service --disable sys-net minimal-netvm
To see if that speeds it up for you. Re-enable this way:
[user@dom0 ~]$ qvm-service --enable sys-net minimal-netvm
I have the same problem since the 4.3 release
I had two freeze on a Ryzen platform with AMD GPU in 2 hours… It used to work well, it’s impossible to reproduce as it happened randomly, I’ll have a hard time figuring why this happens…
I have reported a couple of issues related to the 4.3 release, but I did not experience anything you explained.
Moreover, Qubes 4.3 runs smoother than any previous release - at least on my Lenovo P52
I’m having freezes (and sometimes full system crashes) on Ryzen gen 3 since 4.1, now on 4.3 and same issues continue. For me it is almost reproduceable with tor browser or mullvad browser in whonix or kicksecure, but it can rarely freeze when neither of these is opened. I have no idea how to debug this?
Apart from this, R4.3 feels quite a bit snappier for me.
Is this on laptop? If yes, then search in BIOS for igfx power savings/turbo/scaling and disable it.