Performance logging software?

What is good Linux performance logging software?

When I google search, I get an overwhelming number of hits for all the tools that show performance as it happens in formats that don’t seem to be practical to redirect to files.

I really need fairly light weight sample and record to be examined later, not show me now.

BTW, search in this forum for the same thing got even less relevant results.

I actually need this for Ubuntu, but I expect that doesn’t make much difference vs. Fedora and I’d like to try the tools first on my own Fedora system before driving to where I want to use the tools.

Any other good suggestions for identifying the following performance problem would also be appreciated.

A few years ago one of my sons rebuilt an arcade DDR machine, and also replaced its internal computer with an already very old computer that a friend installed Ubuntu on for him. For years, it ran fine, then suddenly was too slow. I would wild guess some Ubuntu update did that, but I’m not sure. He wants to buy parts and build an entirely new Windows computer to replace that. But I convinced him to start by buying just an SSD. Unlike motherboard, CPU, ram, gpu, etc., the same SSD can easily be chosen to try as an upgrade to an old computer and still be correct if it is instead used as one of the parts in a new build. The old hard drive might be the problem, or the speedup from hard drive to SSD might balance out the slowdown from some other possible problems. So he might not need a complete new build.

But when I drive there to help him transfer everything over, I’d also like to diagnose the actual problem.

I will need to check what Nvidia card he is using and whether that is Nouveau vs. closed source. I know how to do that. But if it is Nouveau, I DON’T know any good method of estimating whether the closed source driver would be better.

I’d like to sample/log CPU use % user vs. kernel vs. idle. (Long ago I used tools for logging, rather than displaying, that; But long since forgotten how).

Similarly disk access counting would be nice.

Something about the load on the gpu would be very helpful; But I know so little about gpu use that I don’t even know the questions to ask.

Start by giving details on hardware, which software is used and what means “too slow”. Slow video? Stuttering video? Missing sound?

A big part of what I was looking for was something like this:
http://sebastien.godard.pagesperso-orange.fr/tutorial.html
I’m a bit surprised that didn’t appear in the first few attempts I made at google searches for linux performance logging.

The documentation and tutorial I’ve found so far for that is (like most Linux command line tool documentation) disorganized detail, lacking overview and concepts. So it will take me a while to figure out how to make effective use of it. But it does seem to support:

I still am entirely in the dark regarding the gpu part of the performance logging question.

“Stuttering game” is the only description I have so far. The game is fundamentally about perfect user tempo in response to precisely coupled display and music. So if the video or audio stutter and even worse if one stutters relative to the other, the whole thing is a failure.

I’m finally visiting there in the evening tomorrow Mar 6. So I’ll know more then, but I’m hoping to fix things then, so suggestions beforehand (even less informed suggestions) are better than more informed answers after I’m back home again.

I also don’t know whether the software is this:
https://icculus.org/pyddr/download.php
or some other software very similar in behavior (but not necessarily in implementation).