Ubuntu GNOME 20.04 screen/mouse keeps freezing/stuttering

Question

Ubuntu GNOME 20.04, i7 6700, gtx 1660s, recently set to UEFI, 2-3 monitors (2 and a tv across the room for videos), proprietary nvidia driver.

For no reason I can find, my screen freezes for about .1 seconds at roughly 1 second intervals, regularly. It is most noticeable with a mouse, since it makes it really jerky, but exists for video, windows, typing, etc. Audio is smooth, anything non-graphical is smooth, mouse movements are smooth under it but look jerky due to freezing.

Still exists with no windows open, still exists unplugging/disabling other monitors, still exists swapping to noveau. top shows xorg using ~20-30% cpu, system monitor app shows 3-5%. System monitor extension is not installed going by gnome tweaks menu, I've heard of similar issues with it. I've been messing with boot stuff recently (putting ubuntu server on a 1,1 mac pro, which is...hard), but changed nothing I can think of in this install.

Solution 1

I solved my problem by applying the solution described here. Just for the record:

dconf reset -f /

After that, the stuttering was gone. Hope this helps someone!

Solution 2

NVIDIA Driver is the problem. You will have to rollback each time. I think 330 works.

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

Solution 3

https://dragoshmocrii.com/ubuntu-20-04-stuttering-animations-video/

Stuttering for my system was caused by the indicator-multiload extension.

Enter this command on terminal:

sudo apt-get remove --auto-remove indicator-multiload

Solution 4

Same problem on Ubuntu 20.04.

I just tried to disable memory swapping and it's gone.

sudo swapoff -a

To make it persistent, comment swap in /etc/fstab.

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Comments

[lrkwz]

looks like shooting a nuclear bomb against a mosquito :-D the problem here is that we do not know what is the mosquito like

[Charles Henrique]

It worked for me, but like @lrkwz said, it is a bomb to kill a mosquito... all my settings and visual styles were reverted back as my first installation (wallpaper, menus, font size, terminal etc,.. but the mouse works again, so, worth it.

[Maxim Akristiniy]

if change "System monitor update interval" for example to 1000 ms, in indicator-multiload- freezing gone