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I use NoMachine on every PC in my home (5) as well as my Android phone. All but 1 of my machines runs Linux. 1 Windows laptop in my son’s room, 2 machines run on Arch, one on Pop! OS and one on MX Linux. The machine running on MX Linux is so slow when connected through NX that it is unusable. I ran Linux Mint very recently on the same machine as well as Ubuntu and Arch on the same machine previously and never had this issue. I have checked system resources and they are very low in use, I have run speed tests and I am getting normal speeds on this machine. When I am streaming from this machine using Plex, or transferring files to and from using SSH, speeds are all normal. The slowness is only when connected through NX. I like to distro hop and use this machine for testing out distros and streaming Plex/NAS. When I first installed MX Linux on this machine, I installed NoMachine the same way I usually do, and everything was fine for about two weeks. In the last couple days the slowness started and rebooting the machine does not fix it, it is extremely slow right after booting in when connected through NX. I am at a loss here as to why this is happening, I have searched for this issue online and found a couple posts about it specifically with MX Linux and there was no resolution found that I could tell. Any help is appreciated.
MX Linux XFCE (host)
NoMachine free 8.13.1
Connected to a physical display
All clients are up to date on all machines
The problem arises when connecting from any of the client machines: Arch Linux (Gnome, desktop) Arch Linux (XFCE4, laptop) Pop!OS (Gnome, desktop) (Windows 10, laptop) as well as when connecting with my Galaxy S23 phone.
I have checked system resources and they are very low in use, I have run speed tests and I am getting normal speeds on this machine.
What do system resources actually show when you have a NoMachine session connected to the MX Linux host? What applications do you have running there when you connect? Can you try rebooting, opening no applications, and then connecting with nomachine? Leave the session open and observe what happens.
When I first installed MX Linux on this machine, I installed NoMachine the same way I usually do, and everything was fine for about two weeks.
So NoMachine was working. Do you remember updating anything or altering anything in the configuration before the slowness started?
Is the MX Linux host headless? If it is, does attaching a monitor make any difference? (see the following article for how to use NoMachine with headless hosts https://kb.nomachine.com/AR03P00973).
Disabling HW encoding on the server may help. It’s worth trying. To disable it, go to the server settings on the MX Linux host > Performance > untick the box for “User hardware encoding”.
Please see the link for a screenshot of htop I made while connected remotely using NX to the machine.
https://freeimage.host/i/dcXTuRI
The only applications really running are Deluge and Hexchat…besides the Plex server services. As you can see, resource usage is very low and when interfacing directly with the machine it is entirely normal and snappy.
I have tried rebooting and connecting without any applications running and get the same result. I opened up htop of the machine locally and then connected using NX to watch the system processes, nothing surging or spiking to explain the slowness over about 20 minutes, but the performance is still the same.
I update my machine every couple days through the package manager, and I update No Machine when the client tells me there’s an update available.
The Linux host is not headless, it has a physical display attached as stated in my original post. I use this display sometimes with a the attached keyboard and mouse but I largely rely on remote connection for most of this systems usage.
Very strange. The slowness is what we would typically associate with not having a monitor attached. And XFCE is generally a well-supported desktop environment and is less resource-intensive (it also adapts well to headless machines). Also strange is that you said it was working well and then all of a sudden, sessions became slow.
Can you confirm, please, that you did indeed disable the HW encoding option the MX Linux host? Do that, restart the server, and then connect again, open the menu > Display > Change settings and take a screen.
As you can see, resource usage is very low and when interfacing directly with the machine it is entirely normal and snappy.
Just to make sure I understand, is local activity on the machine normal also when a NoMachine connection is active?
What happens if you connect from the MX linux as a client to one of your other NoMachine hosts?
Please see the attached image, everything is disabled and I still have the exact same problem.
https://freeimage.host/i/dlru2at
Local activity on the machine is completely normal. It is an old machine with an i5 3570k and 16GB of DDR3 but that is plenty for what I use it for, and performance is snappy. It boots and runs from a SATA SSD and has several mechanical drives for storage. I am using the integrated graphics because I do not need a GPU, and it has served my purpose adequately for years now and on every other distribution I have used. I installed Arch on an external SSD and loaded up NoMachine and do not have this issue. So I am convinced at this point it is either something in MX Linux or NoMachine that is not playing nice with the other.
Connecting to another machine through NX from this machine is totally normal like any other machine. Performance is as expected.
Are you using the default packages of MX Linux or did you apply all the updates?
Logs would be useful. Everything was fine and suddenly it wasn’t suggests that maybe some update broke something, maybe some drivers. To get NoMachine logs from the MX Linux installation, enable debug, reproduce the slowness and then zip up the logs. You can extract them using the instructions here: https://kb.nomachine.com/DT07S00243
Send them to forum[at]nomachine[dot]com. Please use the title of this topic as the subject of your email. Thanks!
Thanks, sorry it took me a while to reply. The problem seems to have gone away. No idea why, but it is performing normally now. To be clear, I have not updated that machine since I discovered this problem. This machine does not see daily use, it is running all the time but I only interface with it once in a while. I downloaded the nomachine package from the nomachine website and installed it with dpkg. I made sure it was up to date and running the same version as all the other machines in my house are running, and I only used packages in the MX Linux repos outside of NoMachine. So I am still lost on what was causing this and why it seems to be remedied now. However, I have a new problem, on a different machine, that seems to be stemming from switching to KDE Plasma 6 w/ Wayland. So I guess I will post about that if I cannot find a solution that works.
We don’t know either. We tested MX Linux (having applied all the updates) and left the session running for most of the day and no slowing down was observed. If it comes back, next time, grab the logs.
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