I installed Kinoite and for most of the time I just love it. I do get regular updates, both system and program updates but that is to be expected so short after the release.
Something which bothers me is the CPU fan which spins at a too high rate. I started searching for a program which used CPU (too) much and I found kwin_wayand.
Top says a score of around 70%, probably 70% of 1 of the 16 cores my CPU has, KDE system monitor says around 4%. Total CPU usage when this happens is around 12-13% which raises the temperature to around 70°C and so the fan kicks in. This happened also when I started writing this message, at the moment the fan is quiet with kwin_wayland using around 18% of 1 core.
I restarted a Youtube video in another browser tab and the percentage went up again. What exactly does kwin_wayland do and does it need to use so much CPU?
The PC specs are in the picture below. Apart from the AMD graphics processor I also have an Nvidia RTX 3060 which I use with the latest driver. The system is fully updated.
I have done a comparison with the regular F40 KDE spin and there kwin_wayland uses much less CPU. Where in Kinoite the process uses around 4% when a video is playing full screen and around 1% now while wrting this, in the KDE spin it uses around 0,4% when the video is playing.
What is the difference between the 2 variants? It is both Fedora, it is both KDE and still something is different.
I am seriously thinking about returning to the KDE spin and forget about Kinoite, although I don’t like doing that. But watching videos with a lot of fan noise is also not appealing.
Who can explain the difference and tell me if there is a solution so I can keep using Kinoite?
Thanks.
Thank you for your answer, but reading this I do need more help. As they say: this raises more questions than answers, at least for me.
You write: his should be more stable than installing the drivers manually on Fedora KDE
Does this mean I don’t need to install the drivers manually, or do I install them and then perform these 2 lines which will take care the drivers are working properly?
What exactly do these lines do?
Sorry for these questions but I have no idea what will happen when I use what you wrote.
From the picture you provided, I don’t see that the Nvidia GPU is present. The picture indicates a Your AMD CPU and a AMD GPU. . . Are you sure you have the latest Nvidia driver properly installed ?
Hello hammerhead, yes I know I did have the latest Nvidia driver installed. I used the one with cuda because it includes the nvidia-smi program. I use that to get the correct info about my card and driver in a conky.
I use passed tense cause I re-installed it all. I want to try the commands boredsquirrel gave me. I just wish I knew if I have to install the driver first and then perform the lines of code ge gave me, or that it is just those lines of code which I have to use.
You wrote me to use: dnf list installed *nvidia*. I am under the impression Kinoite doesn’t use dnf. Plus, at the moment, I don’t have the Nvidia driver installed, so the output (if any) is of no use.
Thank you for the link. I store it so I can use it when necessary.
At the moment, after doing the fresh install, I am just using the built-in AMD GPU and the laptop is very quiet. CPU usage is 1% at the moment, and when watching a Youtube video it goes up to around 5%. kwin-wayland uses less then 1 % of that.
I think I will keep using the AMD GPU for now until I see something which doesn’t work (well enough), then I will install the Nvidia driver and start using it.
I think system76 has some switcher program to select the external or integrated GPU for tasks.
Not using the dGPU is not a good solution.
But as Fedora cannot ship the NVIDIA drivers in the atomic images, you need to manually do the changes on your system. This will likely need a karg that you can add with rpm-ostree, see how uBlue does it.
This defeats parts of the reason to use atomic images, so I recommend using uBlue instead, where they do the changes and you dont touch anything.
This will keep the benefits like having reproducible bugs and faster updates.
Hello again, I did do what you wrote in your first answer to this thread. I am still using the AMD integrated GPU. I do however think that the Nvidia driver is installed as well. When I just reboot I am using the AMD GPU with 1% CPU usage and no fan noise.
When I copy a file called environment to /etc and reboot again CPU usage is 5% and the fan spins louder. In my conky I then see no GPU name, where before copying the file I saw AMD Radeon Graphics as output for the instruction: glxinfo|grep -E “OpenGL renderer”
The content of the file environment is this:
QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=“wayland;xcb”
GBM_BACKEND=nvidia-drm
__GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia
ENABLE_VKBASALT=1
LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia
WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1
I have used this in the regular Fedora KDE spin as well as before in Kinoite, don’t remember where I got it but it always just worked.
Is by using your two lines of code the Nvidia driver installed and if so, how can I start using it? Even though after copying the environment file, something has changed, I am still using the AMD GPU. I can see that in the way my external monitor reacts. With Nvidia the monitor stays dark for a while before I see my desktop after boot. This is probably caused by changing the settings for the monitor.
What do I do now to make it all work? Can you help me with this please?
You wrote in your second post: Not using the dGPU is not a good solution.
Why is that, what is wrong with using the integrated GPU?
So, this would mean the Nvidia driver is installed and it is only being used when needed. That works for me, I never had that but I guess it’s the best of both worlds: low power usage on one side and a powerful GPU when needed.
Two things I would like to change:
I have the Nvidia driver, not the Nvidia-cuda driver with the smi package to supply data about the driver to Conky. How do I now install that one? Is it still the same as it was before I started using ublue?
In the line starting with API: I see the word nouveau. To me it looks like it is not blocked. How do i do that.
When these two items are solved then I stop this thread and start using the PC for my normal stuff.
Thanks again Hammerhead, your help is much appreciated.
Yeah, so way back in Fedora 2x the Nvidia driver was fixed to not have to do the whole “BumbleBee” or “PRIME” swtcheroo. You can explicitly tell the the software to use either GPU now.
The smi package to supply data about the driver to Conky. How do I now install that one?
I really can’t provide much assitance there, since I am using a non-traditional repo which packages the driver differently.
In the line starting with API: I see the word nouveau. To me it looks like it is not blocked.
2. This is a mangled explanation, the nouveau driver is blacklisted, but there pieces the Nvidia driver needs to work?! Bad explanation but . . .Oh well.
Again thank you very much. I have learned several things now, one of them being I switched back to the regular Fedora KDE spin instead of using Kinoite. I have the Nvidia driver installed, but it is only working when I need it. At the moment it is at 0% GPU usage with 3% CPU usage and a CPU temp of 39ÂşC. In other words: no fan noise.
Maybe after a while I will return to Kinoite because I do like it and it is most likely the future of Linux distro’s. But for now I want to have some me-time, doing other things with the laptop than installing and configuring.
Keep in mind, these manual fixes may break with a next release and are fundanentally weakening the immutable/atomic model. Ublue already does all that and it works out of the box.
I have ublue Aurora installed in a VM and am looking what is different with Fedora Kinoite. Shame I can’t use the Nvidia driver here. But as I said, I will return to an immutable desktop someday and will most likely install Aurora first to see if and how it works.
You mean I can use the Nvidia driver in a KVM/QEMU virtual machine? I was always under the impression this is not possible. Well, if it’s true what you say, and I don’t argue that, then I will see if I can get the driver installed.
Bad explanation but . . .Oh well.