Why is minecraft running so slow?

Question

I'm using a MacBook Pro with Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit. According to Ubuntu's "about this computer" the configuration is:

• 3.8Gig of RAM
• Intel Core i5--2435M CPU @ 2.40GHz × 4 Processor
• Intel® Sandybridge Mobile Graphics card

Minecraft worked pretty smoothly on my Mac OS X but now it's all slow and low fps.

I'm just wondering what I can do to to optimise the game. Maybe find out what I can do to optimise all games that I play?

Solution

Minecraft on Linux may require a few tweaks before running optimaly.

1. Minecraft recommends Oracle Java vs open alternatives. You should only need the Java Runtime Environment (JRE).
2. Documentation for Java provided by Ubuntu.
3. Minecraft ships with an outdated version of lwjgl. (This is no longer true on newer versions of Minecraft)
4. Give Minecraft additional memory on runtime
5. Adjust -Xmx1024M -Xms512M when running Minecraft to higher values. Stick with powers of two (ie: How you'd buy RAM)
6. Use OpenGL.
7. Add -Dsun.java3d.opengl=true to the command to run Minecraft
8. Try Optifine. Notch gave these guys capes, it's such a good mod. It will optimize Minecraft for your computer.
9. Try better/newer graphics drivers.
10. Do some research on your graphics card and see if there are better drivers.
11. Minecraft does not rely too heavily on graphics, so this should be your last effort.

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As of Minecraft 1.12.2, you'll want Java 8 JRE (preferred) or Java 7 JRE. Newer versions of Java may cause issues.