Gfilui

We recently acquired a Dell Inspiron 3567 with Ubuntu 16.04. It is very slow despite its 8GB and i5 CPU. It's not only about how long it boots, but also how slow it is for most actions (which mostly involve LibreOffice work and Chromium surfing). The CPU and RAM usage are fairly low, so, at first look, it's neither a hardware problem nor a software using a lot of resources.

Here what we tried and didn't change anything:

• disable the intel speed step feature in the bios as mentioned here. (96 comments of thanks in this link, I really thought it would save the day -- but no :( )


• Called DELL hotline: they say they won't help with Ubuntu, but I did the bios diagnostic with them: no error whatsoever.


• updated to the latest bios


• switch to Xfce for a lighter desktop


• there is no disk failure when opening GParted, like here.


• update cycle as mentionned here. Google Earth has never been installed.


• I wanted to see if there are issues with the drivers: but apparently intel GPU drivers are automatically managed in u16.04 and it works wonders with others. I am not sure how to double check that.

Here is inxi -b ouput:

System: Host: marion-Inspiron-15-3567 Kernel: 4.4.0-119-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
 Desktop: Unity 7.4.5 Distro: Ubuntu 16.04 xenial
Machine: System: Dell (portable) product: Inspiron 15-3567
 Mobo: Dell model: 05269N v: A00
 Bios: Dell v: 2.3.0 date: 02/06/2018
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i5-7200U (-HT-MCP-) speed/max: 691/3100 MHz
Graphics: Card: Intel Device 5916
 Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: radeon,amdgpu)
 Resolution: 1366x768@60.00hz
 GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 620 (Kaby Lake GT2)
 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 17.2.8
Network: Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros Device 0042 driver: ath10k_pci
 Card-2: Realtek RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller
 driver: r8169
 Card-3: Atheros
Drives: HDD Total Size: 1000.2GB (6.2% used)
Info: Processes: 207 Uptime: 17:01 Memory: 831.0/7853.8MB
 Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.35

And here's systemd-analyze blame output:

 8.612s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
 5.987s dev-sda3.device
 5.857s snapd.service
 5.753s accounts-daemon.service
 5.155s ModemManager.service
 4.107s lightdm.service
 3.938s NetworkManager.service
 3.545s irqbalance.service
 3.524s gpu-manager.service
 3.376s apport.service
 3.227s fwupd.service
 2.743s ondemand.service
 2.449s networking.service
 2.378s systemd-logind.service
 2.301s lm-sensors.service
 2.287s rsyslog.service
 2.193s grub-common.service
 1.883s home.mount
 1.827s polkitd.service
 1.790s thermald.service
 1.302s apparmor.service
 976ms keyboard-setup.service
 960ms colord.service
 850ms bluetooth.service
 779ms systemd-fsck@dev-disk-byx2duuid-CA2Ex2d0696.service
 629ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
 595ms console-setup.service
 572ms systemd-udevd.service
 551ms avahi-daemon.service
 531ms lvm2.service
 481ms pppd-dns.service
 464ms systemd-modules-load.service
 460ms systemd-journald.service
 450ms systemd-backlight@backlight:intel_backlight.service
 432ms iio-sensor-proxy.service
 394ms systemd-rfkill.service

side note: we previously had an old laptop that was slow to death on Win7 and ran OK on Ubuntu, that's why we decided to stick to Ubuntu for the new laptop, and picked a Dell to make sure there is no compatibility issues...