Recent versions of calibre run like a dog on my laptop

[Cactus Chef]

I've had Calibre running on the same Linux laptop since 2019 or so...but recent versions have started to make it chug just by virtue of being open. I can't recall exactly when it started, because I rarely spend much time in the app beyond pulling in two or three newly-purchased books and cleaning up the metadata, but it feels like around the time of the last major release? Either that or whenever the new bookshelf view was added (even though I don't use it).

I'm afraid I don't have much to show by way of performance except this screenshot of htop running. We can see calibre is at 100% cpu (pegging one of my cores I assume), despite my having just opened the app and let it sit there for about two minutes w/o doing anything.

The laptop was rebooted recently, so it's not causing a huge drain at the moment, but on a previous occasion the memory usage was also quite high when doing basic operations within the GUI, to the point that it soft-locked my laptop more than once until the systemd-oom killer kicked in. Trying to shut the app down in low-memory states was also a fool's errand: it would simply hang there for minutes on end until I issued a `killall calibre` command in the terminal.

Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot this? I really don't feel like it used to be this bad.

[gbm]

Need to know your favor of Linux and how old your laptop is.

bernie

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I've had Calibre running on the same Linux laptop since 2019 or so...but recent versions have started to make it chug just by virtue of being open. I can't recall exactly when it started, because I rarely spend much time in the app beyond pulling in two or three newly-purchased books and cleaning up the metadata, but it feels like around the time of the last major release? Either that or whenever the new bookshelf view was added (even though I don't use it).

I'm afraid I don't have much to show by way of performance except this screenshot of htop running. We can see calibre is at 100% cpu (pegging one of my cores I assume), despite my having just opened the app and let it sit there for about two minutes w/o doing anything.

The laptop was rebooted recently, so it's not causing a huge drain at the moment, but on a previous occasion the memory usage was also quite high when doing basic operations within the GUI, to the point that it soft-locked my laptop more than once until the systemd-oom killer kicked in. Trying to shut the app down in low-memory states was also a fool's errand: it would simply hang there for minutes on end until I issued a `killall calibre` command in the terminal.

Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot this? I really don't feel like it used to be this bad.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by gbm

Need to know your favor of Linux and how old your laptop is.

bernie

• Dell XPS 13 9343 - i7, 8GB RAM
• Fedora 42
• Cinnamon DE
• Flatpak installation of Calibre

[gbm]

Ok close calibre and run in calibre debug mode** open an ebook then post the debug log.

bernie
** Open a terminal type in:
calibre-debug --gui

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

• Dell XPS 13 9343 - i7, 8GB RAM
• Fedora 42
• Cinnamon DE
• Flatpak installation of Calibre

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

• Dell XPS 13 9343 - i7, 8GB RAM
• Fedora 42
• Cinnamon DE
• Flatpak installation of Calibre

You should try the actual release version of calibre from the official website to see if it works. There is no way to know otherwise if the Flatpak release is at fault.

[theducks]

In addition: 9.x (first time) may be building the (dataages) changes needed for shelf view until that is completed. That depends on how big your Library was.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

In addition: 9.x (first time) may be building the (dataages) changes needed for shelf view until that is completed. That depends on how big your Library was.

On a 5th gen i7 with 8GB ram, that could be rather slow. Also, 9.x has the GPU turned off by default. It can be turned back on in Preferences in Tweaks.

[kovidgoyal]

Thats page counting. Let it run for a few hours it will finish counting the existing books in your library. Once it does you wonthave any perf issues.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

On a 5th gen i7 with 8GB ram, that could be rather slow. Also, 9.x has the GPU turned off by default. It can be turned back on in Preferences in Tweaks.

Well I am on a Intel Core i7-4790 , and it is not bad. OTOH I do have 32G RAM

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

Well I am on a Intel Core i7-4790 , and it is not bad. OTOH I do have 32G RAM

Also, chances are that a laptop with a 5th gen i7 is using a mechanical hard drive.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Also, chances are that a laptop with a 5th gen i7 is using a mechanical hard drive.

No, all versions of the 9343 shipped with SSDs. I didn't mention it because I thought that was a given. It had a 512GB SSD.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Thats page counting. Let it run for a few hours it will finish counting the existing books in your library. Once it does you wonthave any perf issues.

Okay, I opened calibre and let it sit overnight, and at least as of this morning, I'm not seeing the `calibre --parallel` process constantly hovering at the top of htop output. I'll play with it a little more, as I have a few new books to pull in, but tentatively it looks like that resolved it. Thank-you!

[un_pogaz]

Yeah, probaly the page counting. You can see the current pending queue in Preference->Lokk & Feel->Bookshelf. The button for recounting the library also include a info of the pending queue if their it.

[gbm]

Part of the problem is that your I7 is an I7 in name only:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...fications.html

Total Cores 2
Total Threads 4
Max Turbo Frequency 3.00 GHz
Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 Frequency‡ 3.00 GHz
Processor Base Frequency 2.40 GHz
Cache 4 MB
Bus Speed 5 GT/s
TDP 15 W
Configurable TDP-down Base Frequency 600 MHz
Configurable TDP-down 7.5 W

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare...-Intel-i5-6500

You should use:

fwupdmgr

to check your firmware for updates.

https://commandmasters.com/commands/fwupdmgr-linux/

bernie

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

No, all versions of the 9343 shipped with SSDs. I didn't mention it because I thought that was a given. It had a 512GB SSD.





Okay, I opened calibre and let it sit overnight, and at least as of this morning, I'm not seeing the `calibre --parallel` process constantly hovering at the top of htop output. I'll play with it a little more, as I have a few new books to pull in, but tentatively it looks like that resolved it. Thank-you!