Excessive idle CPU usage on linux + pressure sensitivity detection issue

[cestarian]

Not sure if this is the same on windows or not, but just by running paintstorm and keeping it open passively it picks one of my cpu cores and runs it at 100%, on my i7-4790k that is a passive 12%+ cpu usage. (for comparison, Krita uses less than 1% when idle)

Additionally I've noticed an issue where pressure sensitivity in wacom drivers is usually not detected when the program is opened. It is sometimes, but usually to get pressure sensitivity I will have to open the program, then go do other things on the system for a while, and return to it to hopefully get that pressure sensitivity working.

GPU Driver: Nvidia proprietary
GPU: gtx 980-Ti
Distro: Manjaro (The stable default instlalation; Manjaro is a rolling release distro so shit is up to date)
Desktop Environment: XFCE
Installation method: Arch User Repository (AUR) Package

I will check to see if I can replicate the issues on my laptop in a few days probably.

[Blendie]

Not sure if this might help with pressure etc, but, when I tried Manjaro a while ago, I had to do this fix:
kernel was 4.14.48-2 ... sudo pacman -S linux414-headers ... then was able to add digimend drivers hadn't been able to install.
NO idea if this fix is relevant to wacom/xfce etc, but it worked.

[cestarian]

Not sure if this might help with pressure etc, but, when I tried Manjaro a while ago, I had to do this fix:
kernel was 4.14.48-2 ... sudo pacman -S linux414-headers ... then was able to add digimend drivers hadn't been able to install.
NO idea if this fix is relevant to wacom/xfce etc, but it worked.

Haha of course I have the linux headers installed, i think they should be installed as part of the base-devel meta package for AUR, there are too many packages that need it to compile. It is not relevant to this issue btw, the issue is some bug in paintstorm, probably. The linux headers are literally .h (header) files for c/c++ to use the include function; e.g. to include kernel functions for use in the code.

It sounds like you're a bit new to linux, how long you been using it? need any pointers?

[Blendie]

Lol, it was worth a try. And thanks for offer. I've been on Linux since May 2017, and was on Mint Mate/Cinnamon, but am very settled with Neptune KDE since July this year. Thankfully straightforward to use, but I'm good at copy and paste for the basics shall we say. Unfortunately PSS doesn't install on KDE, and there wasn't pressure when I was using Mint, but it works a treat on the ipad. Luckily, for Neptune, it's straightforward to install the digimend deb to ensure pressure ... I use PSS more (ipad) but Krita is there too for some things, so it's cool that the Ugee works fine.

My system took a right huff with Manjaro (KDE); lots of problems. Briefly tried SolydK EE this year, before settling with Neptune, and the kernel they use didn't have the DKMS fix (Digimend) ... https://github.com/DIGImend/digimend-ke ... stallation. Nicholas was great on IRC; maybe he'd know something useful about the issues with Manjaro? I wonder if the Linux PSS version was built for one main distro eg Ubuntu, so any different distros/desktops etc have various issues?

[cestarian]

Yeah I had a few KDE periods myself, but this time I'm on manjaro XFCE for 2 reasons, 1: it probably gets more testing than manjaro KDE. 2: It just works, KDE never did that for me somehow there was always something wrong with it, usually compositor related. And I suppose I could add in a 3rd reason, it's lightweight and I like lightweight as much as the next guy (I had periods where I used LXDE, XFCE and Openbox before as well, but my favorite DE would be Enlightnement (version 17 or later), the only reason I'm not using it is because it's not entirely stable)

I could probably get PSS set up on your distro but I'd have to be there, I remember setting it up manually on arch a while back, I had to make a few symlinks to get it to run, the AUR has a package however so on arch or manjaro now all you have to do is install that.

I think Linux PSS was probably compiled for ubuntu, the thing about packages made for one distro run on another is usually just dependencies not being the same version, not to mention, you need to actually install the dependencies and I don't think paintstorm had a dependency list available so you might in fact not have them installed at all. (Dependencies are freeglut, ftgl, glew, gtk2 and libcurl-gnutls on AUR, the symlinks I had to do when I installed manually was symlinking the glew library files to the version used by paintstorm (I had a newer version))

However on arch, gentoo, and other rolling release distros, you will usually not run into the problem of outdated dependencies because well, they are usually with newer versions than everybody else, therefore normally it will work on those distros.

Although it's not impossible at all that problems can crop up when you run something compiled for one distro on another, it's actually not likely as long as the issues with dependencies are resolved and you have all the required dependencies. At least in my experience the kind of issue I have here is most likely across all distros. But there may be some caveat, for example I have a 4th gen intel cpu and the related kernel drivers and microcode, maybe if I had a newer or older intel cpu, or just an amd cpu this might not be happening.

For example, on my laptop (i7-4720HQ cpu) i still have fairly high cpu usage at idle with around 4-5%, but that's completely tame compared to what I described on my desktop. Especially since my desktop has a much more powerful CPU in the first place so 12%+ of that is much more than 12% of my laptop cpu would be.

I guess it was a good thing I decided to test it on my laptop, because it might just mean that the issue on my desktop is a corner case, the other issue where I noticed pressure sensitivity in wacom drivers not being detected when the program is opened sometimes, is probably even related.

The biggest difference between my laptop and desktop is that I have a tablet (huion Q11K) installed and it required custom drivers to work (not just digimend either), whereas on my laptop I only have input-xf86-wacom installed and no tablet is even currently plugged in. So the problem might be some kind of issue because I have a huion tablet set up to use the wacom driver and paintstorm might somehow be glitching out as a weird side effect. I also have nvidia modesetting and force full composition pipeline enabled on my desktop which (it's a long shot) might be causing something.

(That's just my guess though, I could easily be wrong, for example maybe the reason it works better on my laptop is simply because my laptop runs it via optimus/primusrun but my desktop doesn't need that stuff)

[Blendie]

Yes, I'd been really surprised how unstable the Manjaro KDE was; being someone who cannot fix breakages/issues, unless there's a simple copy/paste or something, I had to drop it. The only compositor issue I have with Neptune (Debian Stretch/5.12 plasma) is if I run quite an old game via wine, desktop icons/widgets rearrange or resolution switches down. The only updates issue I've had is with the recent 4.18 kernel update, plus seeing other distros having similar issues; a few reboots were needed after graphics seized up, plus had to remove and reinstall digimend (and ptxconf) to get pressure sensitivity back (and dual screen pressure working). I've read people saying the graphics drivers were regressed in some way, and they're surprised.

Thank you for kind offer but I don't think pressure sensitivity for Ugee 2150 would work anyway; unfortunately didn't on Mint.

I agree that a dependency list would be great, especially if added to the download page. E.g. an appimage would work really well too, especially if different devices had pressure sensitivity issue resolved within that also.

I'm not sure about driver conflicts/technical things, as I just install the digimend deb for the Ugee 2150, but yes maximum horsepower for hardware, and a clear out and reinstall of drivers, sounds right.

[cestarian]

Actually the Ugee 2150 does work, the trick owuld be getting it to work with paintstorm because paintstorm (still) only supports the wacom driver. It might be possible to trick the wacom driver into using it like I do with my huion q11k though, but I'm not sure if that method works for all devices.

Although if it does work, it would look something like this in a xorg conf file:

Code: Select all

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Ugee class"
    MatchProduct "TABLET"
    MatchIsTablet "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "wacom"
EndSection

Also would require you to have the wacom drivers installed (digimend normally uses evdev rather than the wacom driver)

[Blendie]

Sounds a little too complicated for me, and I daren't mess around with drivers/system, but thanks for explanation. Hopefully there'll be a PSS release covering other devices at some point.

[cestarian]

Sounds a little too complicated for me, and I daren't mess around with drivers/system, but thanks for explanation. Hopefully there'll be a PSS release covering other devices at some point.

Well, it should have been ages ago, all he really needs is to add evdev and libinput support; I can't imagine it'd be hard. But dev's been lazy about updating the linux port. It works pretty well on linux in general though already, just missing this.

I think maybe he hasn't gotten around to fully testing the linux port yet.

[Blendie]

Yes, hopefully there can be progress. In the meantime, may I just ask what the dependencies are, so I can check them on my system and try again to see if I can install PSS. Even without pressure sensitivity, it would be good to use in various other ways.