Xfce Forum

betemir556

Member

Registered: 2026-03-10

Posts: 1

Investigating random window freezes and script execution lag in XFCE?

Hi,
I’ve been using XFCE as my primary desktop environment for a while now because of its stability, but I’ve recently run into a bit of a strange performance hiccup that I can’t quite pin down. Lately, whenever I try to run specific automation scripts or external execution tools, my entire panel seems to hang for a few seconds, and sometimes the window manager just stops responding to keyboard shortcuts entirely. I’ve checked my CPU usage and it doesn't seem to be spiking, which makes me think it’s more of a library conflict or an issue with how the compositor is handling these background processes.

I was initially wondering if my recent delta download of some new execution components was causing a mismatch with the GTK versions I have installed, or if there's just a specific setting in the window tweaks that I've overlooked. It’s becoming a bit of a headache because it disrupts the whole workflow, especially when I’m trying to test scripts that require precise timing. Has anyone else here experienced these types of "micro-freezes" when running third-party execution layers on XFCE? I'm curious if I should be looking into changing my compositor settings or if there’s a known bug with how the environment handles external script injections lately. I’d really appreciate any tips on how to debug this without having to do a full fresh install of my desktop environment.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,501

Re: Investigating random window freezes and script execution lag in XFCE?

Hello and welcome.

Which distro and version of Xfce are you running?

I was initially wondering if my recent delta download of some new execution components was causing a mismatch

If you uninstall the delta download, do the scripts start to function properly again?

You can also look at your user (~/.xsession-errors) or system logs at the time of the hang (have them running via "tail -f" in separate terminal windows, to see if any error messages popup.

You can also run xfce4-panel in debug mode:

xfce4-panel -q
PANEL_DEBUG=1 xfce4-panel

...and see if it generates any messages at the time of the hang.

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