Kwin_wayland always around 20-30% CPU and crashes

-Really new Linux user here, sorry if I missed some steps reporting my issues-

I have installed Fedora 40 with KDE one week ago.

I have issues with crashes (Windows stay open but the desktop disappears entirely), black screens after login, flickers while gaming… The worst is I can’t pinpoint when this would happen. But my usual Linux experience is basically 4, 5, reboots a day.

One consistent point however is kwin_wayland being always using around 20-30% CPU; That is a given: you start the PC, log, 27% and it stays around this value.
I have a AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (16) @ 5.050GHz , I am pretty sure it should run an idle Plasma 6.2 without having to dedicate 25% of its power to that.

When I installed Fedora, I updated the NVIDIA drivers straight away.
I have a RTX4090 and I had to drop the Nouveau drivers because they didn’t support my 49" Odyssey OLED G9, they offered only half normal resolution.
I installed the NVIDIA drivers following instructions I found in this forum from here.

modinfo -m nvidia
filename: /lib/modules/6.11.3-200.fc40.x86_64/extra/nvidia/nvidia.ko.xz
alias: char-major-195-*
version: 555.58.02
supported: external
license: NVIDIA
firmware: nvidia/555.58.02/gsp_tu10x.bin
firmware: nvidia/555.58.02/gsp_ga10x.bin
srcversion: 7CC59AD55E0DD69F0C28592
alias: pci:v000010DEdsvsdbc06sc80i00
alias: pci:v000010DEdsvsdbc03sc02i00
alias: pci:v000010DEdsvsdbc03sc00i00
depends:
retpoline: Y
name: nvidia
vermagic: 6.11.3-200.fc40.x86_64 SMP preempt mod_unload
sig_id: PKCS#7
signer: fedora-3953794071

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I note that you appear to have installed the drivers from the rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver repo which only has the 555 version.
I suggest that you perform the following steps to be able to upgrade to the 560 driver version from rpmfusion.

  1. first enable the additional rpmfusion repos as shown at Configuration - RPM Fusion
  2. sudo dnf upgrade akmod-nvidia --disablerepo rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver --enablerepo rpmfusion-nonfree

Once this is completed a reboot should now have the 560.35.03 driver version loaded.

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Thank you so much for your answer!
I did that but now I am having my CPU at 30-40%…

modinfo -m nvidia
filename: /lib/modules/6.11.3-200.fc40.x86_64/extra/nvidia/nvidia.ko.xz
alias: char-major-195-*
version: 560.35.03
supported: external
license: NVIDIA
firmware: nvidia/560.35.03/gsp_tu10x.bin
firmware: nvidia/560.35.03/gsp_ga10x.bin
srcversion: 73D9C383254E4CB4BF2CDFA
alias: pci:v000010DEdsvsdbc06sc80i00
alias: pci:v000010DEdsvsdbc03sc02i00
alias: pci:v000010DEdsvsdbc03sc00i00
depends:
retpoline: Y
name: nvidia
vermagic: 6.11.3-200.fc40.x86_64 SMP preempt mod_unload
sig_id: PKCS#7
signer: fedora-3953794071

A second reboot did it. Maybe?

Plasma-systemmonitor and kwin_wayland are nice and sweet going from 0.1 to 0.3% …

Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

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Hi and welcome,
I also face crashes, black screen, frozen mouse regularly in my Kinoite setup. This weekend I have re-installed Kinoite from an ISO file which is a few months old, hoping I would no longer have these problems. Reason is, I suspect KDE Plasma 6.2. But no, today I had disappearing windows again.
You write you use Nvidia, I deliberately did not install the drivers, simply use my AMD GPU which is good enough for what I am doing with the laptop. But as said, programs crashed again.
For me CPU use is very low, Kwin-wayland takes around 0.4%, have to see what it does when something goes wrong. No idea yet what causes it.

Hello,
I am certainly no expert but since I did the update Jeff V suggested I am having a very responsive system with no strange behavior at all. I can even let the system lock itself when I am away without me being afraid to return to a back screen or a flickering disco dance floor. Maybe you should explore the possibility of using your discrete GPU?

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It is certain that for the newer GPUs it is also wise to use the newer drivers so that the gpu is properly supported. That was my premise with you having the RTX 4090 but only the 555 driver.

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This seems to be an issue were the 555 driver doesn’t load on the newest kernel you are basically running your whole desktop in software rendering thats why your cpu usage is so high(and the desktop lags like crazy) the 560 driver works fine with the new kernel (ignoring its other issues like beeing unable to play some java games nativly) also for some reason the fedora 40 rpmfusion repo still has the 555 driver even trough i am pretty sure it used to have the 560 driver at some point (i did a clean reinstall like a week ago and definitly had 560 before that.

For fedora 40 the 555 driver is in rpmfusion-nonfree-nvidia-driver and the 560 driver is in rpmfusion-nonfree-updates.