In openSUSE we shipped 4.4. series with "parallel start" patch from bug#4312, which made the start really fast! Thanks :) But I updated the packages in distribution to 4.6.0 release and the start is even slower than it was in 4.4 before patching. According to the ChangeLog 4.6 is starting applications in parallel and the code is reworked a lot. I also received a bug report from one user: > I'm having to wait about 2 minutes for loading Xfce (with a "blinking mouse"). > The 4.4 Xfce version, this "mouse-splash-screen" disappears in some seconds, > very fast. > Today my machine freezes in "mouse-splash-screen" with a lot hard disk > activity. I need to reset and login with Gnome desktop to use my computer. Do you notice this issue too?
When I removed ~/.cache/sessions, started Xfce, saved the session and logged out, the next start was very quick. There was probably some problem with the old Xfce 4.4 session.
Please attach the old sessions file... hopefully you didn't just trash it, sigh.
I'm the user that reported this error to Pavol. I follow the tip to remove session directory and it works. Now Xfce was starting very fast again. Brian, sorry but I've deleted entire session directory with "rm -rf" as root user on init 3 mode before I read your comment here. I did a mistake.... I should "tgziped" this folder before delete it.
Brian: I removed it also, but this could be easily reproduced on my machine. Here's how I did it: 1) remove Xfce 4.6.0, removed ~/.cache/sessions 2) install Xfce 4.4.3 3) start Xfce 4.4.3 4) place 3 Terminals on desktops 1,2,3 5) logout from Xfce while saving session 6) tar cf sessions-44.tar ~/.cache/sessions (attached) 7) start Xfce to check how long it starts (about 2-4 seconds - good) 8) exit Xfce 9) update Xfce to Xfce 4.4.6 10) start Xfce 4.6.0 - it takes around 50 seconds - bad :(( 11) exit Xfce 12) remove ~/.cache/sessions 13) start Xfce 4.6.0 - almost instant 14) place 3 Terminals on desktops 1,2,3 15) logout from Xfce while saving session 16) tar cf sessions-46.tar ~/.cache/sessions (attached) 17) start Xfce 4.6.0 - now it takes again around 2-4 seconds
Created attachment 2215 ~/.cache/session after logout from Xfce 4.4.3
Created attachment 2216 ~/.cache/session after logout from Xfce 4.6.0
Thanks Pavol, that's great. I'll try to look into this over the weekend.
I am also suffering about this in Xubuntu. I upgraded to xfce 4.6 there.
Hmm when I start up using your session files, it comes up pretty quickly. Can you set XFSM_VERBOSE=1 and attach $HOME/.xfce4-session-verbose.log, and also capture any console output and attach that here too? The one oddity I see is that xfce4-settings-helper is failing to connect to the SM on its first try, which could in theory cause a delay, but in my case it isn't.
Created attachment 2235 add timestamps to verbose output Before that, can you apply this patch to xfce4-session and rebuild? It adds some timing information to the verbose output in the log. For me, xfce4-session's portion of the startup takes 8 seconds to complete, which seems pretty reasonable given that I'm running on slow hardware and I'm testing on :1 with another X session already running.
Actually no, I completely take that back. There's an 8 second gap in my ouput while one of the clients (xfce4-settings-helper) fails to connect and times out. If you're using a splash screen that takes up the whole screen, it'll be there until after the timeout. I don't really understand this failure to connect... clients both before and after it connect fine. But if you can get me verbose output and console output that would be helpful to see if you're seeing the same problem I am.
Hmm actually I have an idea -- can you start from scratch again with 4.6 (empty session)? First also delete $HOME/.config/autostart/xfce4-settings-helper-autostart.desktop if you have it. Then start xfce, do what you did before (add the Terminals), logout and save session. Then see if $HOME/.config/autostart/xfce4-settings-helper-autostart.desktop and attach that here as well.
I'm also experiencing slow starts, but not in the minute range. It takes about 10 seconds for xfce to start, which is slower than before with 4.4 I never save my sessions. I've removed my .cache directory, that didn't really make a difference. I've look at my xfce4-settings-helper-autostart.desktop as said in comment #12, but that file is "empty": [Desktop Entry] Hidden=false
I found this tip somewhere and it seems to help my me: Go to Xfc4 Settings Manager->Keyboard->Layout Click 'Use system defaults' And then xfce4 starts in about 3 seconds.
Ok, should be fixed now... at least the xfce4-settings-helper issue is fixed.