KiCad (6 & 7) : window resizing is slow on Linux/Wayland

[Asterix]

Hi, with a very few exceptions, resizing KiCad windows is pretty slow. The exceptions are the bitmap editor and calculator tools. Almost all other windows are very slow to resize.

I’m on Linux/KDE plasma 5/Wayland here, if that makes a difference. I haven’t tried KiCad on Windows in a while, so I don’t know if it’s affected or not. I don’t recall that it was.

Is anyone else experiencing the same?

[thebigg]

What KiCad version? What linux version? Is your graphics driver up to date?

[Asterix]

Same behavior on KiCad 6.0.11 and 7.0.7. The common point between them though is that both are built with wxWidgets 3.2.2. I suspect this is a problem related to how KiCad updates the content of (some of) its windows while they are being resized. It may be linked to a particular issue with wxWidgets on Wayland (as it’s the only environment I’m using it on at the moment) - would be interesting to see if others have noticed the same. I have heard of similar issues with other apps using wxWidgets in the past.

Yes sure everything is absolutely up-to-date otherwise (using an AMD GPU here) and I have no such issue with any other app that I use (most of which being based on GTK or Qt rather than wxWidgets though.)
And, using Arch Linux here, so otherwise everything is pretty much the latest version that’s available.

It’s not a huge annoyance, as I don’t resize KiCad’s windows all the time, but still something to be improved, if others are affected.

[m852]

Known issue … As a workaround, it was suggested to switch to a closed-source driver

[paulvdh]

I am having a similar / same issue.
When resizing a KiCad window, at first it works normally, but when I stop moving the mouse and pauze for a second or two, then resizing freezes briefly and starts to stutter. But it is hard to see on a screen capture when you are not operating the mouse yourself.

I have an AMD Ryzen 5600G and I assume my graphics drivers are somewhat current, but I just do the system updates once or twice a month and don’t know very much about driver stuff.

Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 7.0.7-7.0.7~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Libraries:
	wxWidgets 3.2.1
	FreeType 2.10.1
	HarfBuzz 6.0.0
	FontConfig 2.13.1
	libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Linux Mint 20.3, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, xfce, x11

Build Info:
	Date: Aug 13 2023 23:14:53
	wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
	Boost: 1.71.0
	OCC: 7.5.2
	Curl: 7.88.1
	ngspice: 38
	Compiler: GCC 9.4.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
	KICAD_SPICE=ON

[Asterix]

Yes, I’m pretty sure this comes from the same root issue.

The effect will depend to some degree on the window manager you’re using and whether you’re on Wayland or X11. In your case, you’re on X11 and XFCE, and while the window frame itself resizes normally with no lag, its content gets updated with a lot of lag. In my case, on Wayland/Plasma (kwin), the window frame gets resized with the same lag as its content.

Seeing your video, I’m pretty sure it is something that could be improved in KiCad and/or wxWidgets, and has little to nothing to do with graphics drivers.