I've very happily used Krita for digital painting on another machine (also Ubuntu) for a few years now - a truly wonderful program!

I recently tried 3 appimages (3.2.0, 3.3.0, 3.3.2) on a new machine but found I couldn't work due to performance issues.

Whenever a canvas is open, the program becomes very slow, this includes not only painting but also simply clicking drop-down menus (which slowly "fade in" to visibility). Swapping to another program via alt-tab (or swapping back to Krita), takes a surprisingly long amount of time as well, but other programs are not performing poorly once they have focus, and swapping between other programs/desktop is normal.

Once all projects are closed (no paintable canvas onscreen), the program is fully responsive.

I am working in 8-bit color-space, and I'd normally expect to be able to work with 2k square image without trouble (I don't use many layers). I also tried 1.2k square image, but even something tiny like 300 x 300 suffers from the same problem.
When painting (with no smoothing), simple pixel brushes like the basic_circle brush with pressure opacity at 5px brush lags.
I am using a small wacom bamboo for input.

This seems to not be a memory issue? Clicking on dimension info shows - no swapping/etc happening at any point and memory usage is very low compared to the allotted amount for Krita.

Here is an example output of "free -m" during slow execution:

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 total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           3885        1885         406         110        1593        1613
Swap:          4027           0        4027


Here are my general CPU specs:

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Running (Vanilla) Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit
4G memory
Intel® Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz × 2
Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV370
Disk 1TB


From Krita - help->show system information for bug reports:

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Krita
  Version: 3.3.2

OS Information
  Build ABI: x86_64-little_endian-lp64
  Build CPU: x86_64
  CPU: x86_64
  Kernel Type: linux
  Kernel Version: 4.4.0-31-generic
  Pretty Productname: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
  Product Type: ubuntu
  Product Version: 16.04

OpenGL Info
  Vendor:  X.Org R300 Project
  Renderer:  "Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV370"
  Version:  "2.1 Mesa 11.2.0"
  Shading language:  1.20
  Requested format:  QSurfaceFormat(version 3.0, options QFlags(0x4), depthBufferSize 24, redBufferSize -1, greenBufferSize -1, blueBufferSize -1, alphaBufferSize -1, stencilBufferSize 8, samples -1, swapBehavior 2, swapInterval 0, profile  2)
  Current format:    QSurfaceFormat(version 2.1, options QFlags(0x4), depthBufferSize 24, redBufferSize 8, greenBufferSize 8, blueBufferSize 8, alphaBufferSize 0, stencilBufferSize 8, samples -1, swapBehavior 2, swapInterval 0, profile  0)
     Version: 2.1
     Supports deprecated functions true
     is OpenGL ES: false


I find the

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is OpenGL ES: false

strange (but I am admittedly out of my depth with this stuff), as this is the output of "glxinfo | grep OpenGl":

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OpenGL vendor string: X.Org R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV370
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16
OpenGL ES profile extensions:


Canvas graphics acceleration is on during these tests - the program becomes almost completely unresponsive when off and is hard to close without killing the process.
The "Renderer" section is "greyed out", since Krita doesn't seem to think the system is OpenGL able.

I tried different scaling modes, without improvement. I also tried disabling vector optimization and performance reporting. The problem seems more basic and deeper than simple performance tweaking, though...

For comparison - there are no issues (well, other than user experience! ) painting in GIMP - painting on a 2k square canvas with a hard round brush with pressure opacity dynamics does not produce noticable lag until the brush size is very large ~1000px. Also blender and inkscape are performing as expected, so there seems to be some mismatch with Krita at the moment.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my woes, and let me know if there is any other helpful information I can provide. I've tried to research potential causes for this but am coming up empty, although I suspect the OpenGL issue points at the root cause. I love Krita and am eager to find a way to get back to it!

I would have thought it would be an opengl matter, and that you'd need to install the proprietary drivers, but you say that with the cpu canvas performance is even worse.

So, no idea, really... On my 16.04 VM (and that's a VM!) the performance is fine. You could try building Krita yourself but you'll also need to either add some ppa's to get a modern Qt and Vc, or build those dependencies yourself.

Hi, I noticed your kernel, mesa and OpenGL have issues ... on Linux Mint 18.1 I use kernel 4.11-14, mesa 17.2.4, i7/radeon r9 255/16ram. Kernel and mesa updates could make a difference, so I'd try those. I use the x-swat ppa for mesa: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/ubuntu-now-has-a-more-official-ppa-to-get-mesa-updates.9393 and kernel options should be available in your update manager. I see you're using the LTS kernel ... I run 4.11-14 on top of the secure/stable 4.4 kernels. I'd avoid 4.13 for now, as I believe that's the kernel involved in the lenovo/ubuntu 17.10 issues. Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for the help - I don't think I would have found the mesa ppa on my own, or thought the LTS kernel could be causing problems!

I use kernel 4.11-14, mesa 17.2.4

I think I've switched to your recommended setup (but am not confident). My issues persist and OpenGL is still greyed out in display settings.

Here is the current story from Krita:

Krita
Version: 3.3.2

OS Information
Build ABI: x86_64-little_endian-lp64
Build CPU: x86_64
CPU: x86_64
Kernel Type: linux
Kernel Version: 4.11.0-14-generic
Pretty Productname: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS
Product Type: ubuntu
Product Version: 16.04

OpenGL Info
Vendor: X.Org R300 Project
Renderer: "ATI RV370"
Version: "2.1 Mesa 17.2.4"
Shading language: 1.20
Requested format: QSurfaceFormat(version 3.0, options QFlags(0x4), depthBufferSize 24, redBufferSize -1, greenBufferSize -1, blueBufferSize -1, alphaBufferSize -1, stencilBufferSize 8, samples -1, swapBehavior 2, swapInterval 0, profile 2)
Current format: QSurfaceFormat(version 2.1, options QFlags(0x4), depthBufferSize 24, redBufferSize 8, greenBufferSize 8, blueBufferSize 8, alphaBufferSize 0, stencilBufferSize 8, samples -1, swapBehavior 2, swapInterval 0, profile 0)
Version: 2.1
Supports deprecated functions true
is OpenGL ES: false

I'm don't know much about kernels (and am not so great with English) - so there was one thing in your reply that I wasn't quite able to parse:

I run 4.11-14 on top of the secure/stable 4.4 kernels.

As far as I know, I switched kernels entirely to 4.11-14. Does "on top" mean there is a way to be using both kernels (like primary 4.11 and secondary 4.4), or does it only mean that you use 4.11-14 instead 4.4?

I also don't know whether I am using the proprietary drivers for my video card or not, so I'll try to figure that out next - any advice there would also be appreciated, but I haven't searched the internet yet and don't know much about it. My previous system was really "plug and play" with Ubuntu, I guess.

After doing some research, I am concerned that my graphics card may not be well supported by the "radeon" driver and might need fglrx instead, which is not available anymore for 16.04. I'm not positive that this is the case, but I don't have any other leads at the moment, and I'd be happy to hear others if people have ideas. I'm suspicious of this idea because the issues seem very krita-specific (blender and gimp are working fine, apparently) but the "lack" of OpenGL support does lead me in this direction.

I'm planning to try live booting mint 17.3, which I think has fglrx support by default and see if I get any improvement. If that doesn't work, I think I may have to move away from Krita, which fills me with dread, but I have to keep working somehow

I think so too -- and don't think too much of "but application X works" -- since, by their nature, application X and appliction Y are not the same, it's not so strange that they do not work in a similar way under similar circumstances. Only when all lines of code are identical can we expect similar execution.

Hi null-painter, and thanks; glad to help, and don't worry about not knowing some things yet ... I don't know lots of technical stuff, just learn what's needed when needed and keep things as straightforward as possible.

Sorry, when I say about running the higher kernel on top of 4.4, I mean to not remove those base kernels; just leave them as they are ... your system will automatically pick up the highest kernel and run that, while keeping the base kernels intact (Mint has a 4.4 labelled 'most stable' and another 4.4 labelled 'most secure' ... both are already installed, and receive updates). I've just learnt myself that 4.11-14 isn't supported after February, but also read on the Mint forums that it shouldn't be an issue to keep running that, plus the stable/secure long term kernel bases are there underneath anyway (on 18.1).

My old radeon r9 255 won't go beyond OpenGL 3, which Krita needs, and I'd read about 17.3 having the extra resources while seeing if I could go to a higher OpenGL via mesa ... I hope 17.3 works for you. I'm not sure what blender and gimp's system requirements are, but the only other option would be a graphics card update at some point? ... easier said than done, I know, but fingers crossed the 17.3 live-try works.

I ended up trying mint 17.3 which did create a little bit of a performance boost right out of the box, which was a surprise! Krita still wasn't very usable and OpenGL was disabled. The main reason I tried was to be able to install fxlgr, which actually totally wrecked everything, as it disabled the whole canvas acceleration and rendered the program totally unusable.

You are probably right that I just need to get a new video card someday - mine is old and it seems like a bad brand for linux in general. This'll probably be the last ATI card I bother with - seems like nvidia is a better bet. For now, I've resigned myself from removing Krita from my tech stack, which really hurts, but I should be able to make do with gimp

Both of you - Thank you for all your help! Even though it was ultimately a failure, I did learn some stuff

null-painter wrote:I ended up trying mint 17.3 which did create a little bit of a performance boost right out of the box, which was a surprise! Krita still wasn't very usable and OpenGL was disabled. The main reason I tried was to be able to install fxlgr, which actually totally wrecked everything, as it disabled the whole canvas acceleration and rendered the program totally unusable.
You are probably right that I just need to get a new video card someday - mine is old and it seems like a bad brand for linux in general. This'll probably be the last ATI card I bother with - seems like nvidia is a better bet. For now, I've resigned myself from removing Krita from my tech stack, which really hurts, but I should be able to make do with gimp
Both of you - Thank you for all your help! Even though it was ultimately a failure, I did learn some stuff

Hi null-painter, sorry to hear the outcome, and good for you for trying 17.3. Yes, you'll need a better card at some point, but have you tried MyPaint in the meantime? I'm trying to find the system requirements, if it needs OpenGL 3 ... all I can find is that there isn't reference to it needing OpenGL. v1.2 is in Packages/easy to install (install the data-extras too). Editing within MyPaint is done outside the app, though, but if you want to freely paint and draw, it should run okay. If you're editing paintings etc, I can understand needing to use Gimp, and you may be able to choose Gimp to open a layer in, from within MyPaint.

There's the painter's pack Ramon created, which you can add in to Gimp ... http://download.cnet.com/GIMP-Paint-Studio-GPS/3000-2191_4-77670515.html has the GPS_2_0.tar.gz download (and irritating adverts, unfortunately ... I can't find the page I found before) ... double click so archive manager opens, extract, then copy over the extracted folders into your Home .gimp folder [view hidden files], then open Gimp and you'll see it's more 'painterly'.