When installing Debian 10 (Buster) the desktop/GUI applications are slow. Opening applications (e.g. Firefox, Terminal,...) takes quite long and the system is not usable at all.
apt update && apt upgrade
did not help at all. Apparently it is a problem with either the CPU or the GPU driver. I installed Debian on an Intel i5 + Nvidia GTX build (not sure if the GPU is responsible here as well).
The only info I could find was this, but it did not solve the problem
I have solved same problem by removing 'xserver-xorg-video-intel' and installing 'firmware-misc-nonfree':
System Details:
root@hostname:/# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release: 10
Codename: buster
Solution Steps Details:
Add non-free repository entry to /etc/apt/sources.list:
root@hostname:/# cat <<EOT >> /etc/apt/sources.list
# Non-Free
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
EOT
Update/Download packages information from all configured sources:
root@hostname:/# apt update
install firmware-misc-nonfree:
root@hostname:/# apt install firmware-misc-nonfree
Erase xserver-xorg-video-intel:
root@hostname:/# apt purge xserver-xorg-video-intel
Reboot the system:
root@hostname:/# systemctl reboot
As stated in the above link, it is a driver issue. Yet, the steps above did not fully solve it. As shown here, 'xserver-xorg-video-intel' should be removed and 'firmware-misc-nonfree' should be installed. After rebooting, the problem was solved and the system is usable again
This was done on a fresh install of Debian 10!
After lots of problems with something similar to this and initially only booting to command line I thought I would add a guide to how I got this solved. - This is for newer systems where the nouveau driver does not work and probably most of the hardware like the network adapter does not work either.
If you have no GUI or a slow to non-responsive GUI type at the command line prompt:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
A list of links will populate the screen, edit and add the list entries to to look like the image found by clicking this link.
Run:
sudo apt update
Update the Kernel - you can check the backports repo for possible upgrades by installing aptitude (skip the next two if you don't want to check first) NOTE a comprehensive guide to this found at the link and suggested Comprehensive Guide - Upgrade Kernel
sudo apt install aptitude
and running:
aptitude search linux-image
To upgrade to the latest version run:
sudo apt -t buster-backports upgrade
Restart your machine.
If your machine was not loading a GUI, it most probably will now, but you may experience slow or unresponsive GUI interaction. You can check if you Kernel updated by running:
uname -r
Install Nvidia driver:
Open Konsole or your preferred terminal if GUI has loaded, else run from the command line of the loaded OS.
Run:
sudo apt install -t buster-backports nvidia-driver
There will be warnings if nouveau driver still installed - a reboot will sort this out.
You should be good to go, hopefully.
***** If you had an Nvidia driver already installed then it will need to be purged by running:
sudo apt remove --purge nvidia-driver
then do the steps to install the new driver.
I am sure there are things I have left out, so if anyone wants they are free to edit, but hopefully this will help get someone on the right path and save them the hours it took me.
Don't know if anyone is still having this problem, but I had it and fixed by updating my kernel and firmware from backports to Linux 5.7.