i3 - some apps take 25 seconds to launch

528491

I'm building a i3 setup lately and got the following problem:
When launching some apps, e.g. pavucontrol, nautilus, caja take 25 seconds to launch.

I did some research and found hints that it has something to do with D-Bus timeouts:
[SOLVED]GTK applications taking long to startup in i3 but not in Gnome
The proposed solution is to fix the ~.xinitrc file and start i3 from there. As there is no ~.xinitrc by default I copied the default one cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc and added exec i3 at the end.

Another proposed solution is to add
dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY XAUTHORITY
to the ~.xinitrc:
[Solved] i3wm GTK 25 seconds delay

Anyways, none of these helped and I was wondering if ~.xinitrc is the correct place to look further into this problem. Isn't the i3 session started from lightdm instead of ~.xinitrc? If so, how can I possibly get D-Bus running correctly?

h3o

are you logging into i3 from lightdm or tty?

528491

From lightdm with the standard i3.desktop

528491

528491
/usr/share/xsessions/i3.desktop which looks like that:

[Desktop Entry] Name=i3 Comment=improved dynamic tiling window manager Exec=i3-dbus TryExec=i3-dbus Type=Application X-LightDM-DesktopName=i3 DesktopNames=i3 Keywords=tiling;wm;windowmanager;window;manager;

528491

So, i just brutish removed lightdm sudo eopkg rm lightdm, created the ~/.xinitrc file with cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc, added dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY XAUTHORITY and exec i3 at the end.

Logged in from tty, issued startx and... it works! No delay for starting caja and pavucontrol anymore.

So it seems like dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY XAUTHORITY really does the trick. But I would really like to incorporate this into logging in with lightdm. Any ideas where to add this command?

EDIT: Not sure if it actually worked or my mind was going crazy, but it does NOT work anymore after I rebooted.

h3o

interesting, that dbus command should only be needed if not using a display manager like lightdm. lightdm should be handling dbus activation by default. can you check that you have 'xdg-desktop-portal' and/or xdg-desktop-portal-gtk' installed?

528491

Both xdg-desktop-portal and xdg-desktop-portal-gtk are installed.
Interestingly enough, the command called in i3.desktop reads i3-dbus.
I also tried startx with exec i3-dbus in ~/.xinitrc, but that also doesn't work.

528491

SOLVED

Alright, I found the solution!

Turns out i3 and mate-desktop and/or caja don't go well together.

After I removed both mate-desktop and caja, everything works fine now!

This explains why on Solus Mate Edition (that I used for testing) the problem is already there just after a fresh installation without configuring anything. So maybe this is interesting for the Mate maintainer.

528491

Very sporadically it still occurs, but rarely enough for me. Still something that may be worth looking into.

528491

What finally fixed it for me was removing xdg-desktop-portal-gtk

elfprince

I run JWM instead of Budgie, using .xinitrc and startx. I selected the multi-user environment instead of graphical. I have the same 25 second delay in starting up some applications. I wonder if removing xdg-desktop-portal-gtk will break the system, if I go back to graphical Budgie setup.

Staudey

elfprince As far as I can see it is a dependency of gnome-shell, but not of Budgie. So everything should work just fine (apart from issues with e.g. flatpaks, see other posts on this forum). In any case you can simply re-install it after switching back.

elfprince

Staudey Thank you, I will try that. 😃 Are you saying flatpacks will have an issue if I remove it? Just curious, I don't normally use flatpacks.

Staudey

elfprince There are issues with certain dialog windows (and maybe other menus) in flatpak apps when the desktop-portal package for the current DE is not installed, yes. Doesn't necessarily affect every app, but at least some of them.

528491

I had the same fear, but the flatpaks I use don't have issues so far.

elfprince

Removal of xdg-desktop-portal-gtk resulted in the prompt launch of the app when clicked on, no more delay. 😄

Staudey

elfprince Hmm, that is interesting, and concerning. Gonna put it on my ToDo list to investigate.

Edit: Oh boy, my ToDo list is getting CHONKY

528491

Staudey

Just issued a task to Update xdg-desktop-portal to 1.14.1

From the patchnotes:

Fix an issue in 1.14.0 where xdg-desktop-portal.service starting before graphical-session-pre.target would cause the GNOME session to deadlock by moving code to a new libexec binary which handles deleting or migrating .desktop files (and icons) from the dynamic launcher portal for apps which have been uninstalled or renamed.