September 01, 2011 Gnome 2.30.2 Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid) Kernel: 2.6.32-33-generic GCC Version: 4.4.3 (i486-linux-gnu) Memory Total: 1949 MB, 70% Free Swap --- total: 4004 MB, 100 % free Storage: 2 SCSI devices Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) K8 Athlon64/Opteron NVIDIA Model GeForce 6150 LE, 256 MB Video RAM Dell C521 Dimension Computer Memory: 1.9 GB

Applications running slower and slower with Ubuntu almost halting.
File OPEN and SAVE functions, in particular seeming to take Minutes, instead of millisecs!

On checking the installed Gnome System Monitor (GSM), I found that it was taking as much as 44% of the CPU.

NO other applications were continuously showing Active, showing Sleeping, most of the time, even the one which was open, and stalling. Using the Control-Alt-Delete was dead slow.

Regardless of selecting either the work application, an HTML editor I have used for 10 years, or, the GSM, and raising or lowering, a lot, the Priority of one or the other at a time, there was NO operational change. Most of the time, these changes were NOT retained when I reopened the Display, even though they had been changed with a Password, and, Ubuntu had NOT been restarted.

I REMOVED the GSM, by way of the Synaptic Package Manager, and, my working application ran again with NO hesitations or delays. I installed slmon from SPM, and checked Sysinfo 0.7 from the Applications Menu, Submenu: Utilities .. to confirm the above noted specs.

I re-installed the GSM and checked the Default Preference Settings.
At the Processes tab, the default for "Update in seconds, was 3.00. I raised it to the max of 100.0
At the Resources tab, the default for "Graphs: Update interval in seconds, was 3.00. I raised it to 100.0
At the FileSystems tab, the default for "Update Interval in seconds, was 5.00. I raised it to 100.0
All 7 of the Information Fields checkboxes were selected by default. I left them unchanged.
I retested using my HTML coding program with the NEW settings and detected no problem.

This was NOT a problem until after 2011-08-10 and in the latter days of August it quickly escalated to becoming almost unusable. As the problem disappeared with the removal of the GSM, there is a good indication that the GSM was revised recently, and contains a bug which results in a high drain on CPU resources. Or, a version of the Linux image or Ubuntu version was revised recently, which is now in conflict with the GSM, resulting in possible incomplete instruction operation and looping CPU usage. Of course, could be something else with either or more than one of the 3 packages. My WORK application is NOT the problem as it works excellent, with this Ubuntu and Linux image, without the GSM.

I can only hope that this post saves others the frustration and much time I lost, and, encourages developers to TEST more thoroughly before releasing new versions, with bugs, that make Linux/Ubuntu operate more like older Windows OS. If your applications are suddenly almost halting to OPEN, or SAVE a file, try removing the GSM, or, changing the Preference Settings much higher than the Default.

It could be a Significant Benefit to Ubuntu supporters if when updates are provided a description of which other Applications are NOT supported by the changes, was offered for viewing BEFORE one agrees to the update. If DEFAULT settings are widely altered between versions, it would also be most helpful to notify the supporter of these changes and remind the user of the original defaults such that these could be reinstated, if desired. I do not have the original default settings on earlier version of GSM that I had so have no way of determing if changes were made in this area. Doing a Major administrative check ever 3 seconds seems a little like overkill.