I recently installed Xubuntu and was playing Warframe using Proton when something strange happened: my frame rate dropped dramatically. I quickly switched to an open terminal with htop running and noticed that my memory and swap were completely maxed out. I tried to close some applications, but my mouse and keyboard became unresponsive, forcing me to shut down my PC completely. This isn't the first time I've encountered this issue, and even if I leave it for a while, it stays frozen indefinitely. I've tested this for up to an hour. I'm not new to Linux, having used it for a while, and I've also used Xubuntu on two other laptops and my main PC, all experiencing similar problems. Should I consider switching to a different distribution?
2 Answers
What are your hardware specifications? It might help to know which version of Xubuntu you're using too.
Considering you're using XFCE already, which is pretty lightweight, you could also try a pure Debian-based distro for possibly better performance. What does `btop` show regarding your RAM and CPU utilization?
I have 16GB RAM, but I restarted it so I can't provide specific numbers now. Before the restart, all my RAM was utilized and my swap was at 4GB. CPU usage was normal, barely active. Right now, the CPU is at 0% (Ryzen 5 5500) with 79% RAM free and 12% cached.
I have a Ryzen 5500, 16GB DDR4 RAM, and a Radeon 6600. It should handle it just fine. I'm running Xubuntu 25.04, just installed fresh with the latest installer.