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High CPU load and much flickering on Linux

High CPU load and much flickering on Linux

The spotify-client package installs fine on Debian Jessie, and in some environments spotify run fine (I've had it running in a virtual machine, without issues), but not on this one :-( Spotify starts, but it only displays content in parts of its window, and at the bottom of the window someting is redrawn so often that it's basically just flicker. Playing works, as long as I'm satisfied with playing whatever was selected last time I had spotify running somewhere. I've made a lilttle video of my desktop, with me starting spotify, starting play and pausing play. In addition to the spotify window showing the flickering, there's a terminal window with a top running at the top left in which you can see that spotify uses a lot of CPU power (and causes X to use more than usual). The small window is just where I had recordmydesktop running. The forum won't let me attach it, so I've uploaded it to http://en.file-upload.net/download-9226807/out-5.ogv.html The status messages spotify prints in the terminal where I start it doesn't look interesting, but I can capture them if somebody wants them. I can re-encode the video to a different format if that's needed, but I don't want to spend that time if nobody cares. .Henrik
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Although it seems as nobody really cares: I've upgraded to version 1:0.9.11.27.g2b1a638.81-1, and nothing has changed. BTW: I've read the thread about load problems on OS X, and tried the things (disabling local sources and hardware acceleration) that worked for some people there, and it didn't change anything. I'm glad I've never paid anything to spotify. .Henrik

If you start Spotify from a terminal, do any errors get printed out?

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As I said in the original message, "The status messages spotify prints in the terminal where I start it doesn't look interesting, but I can capture them if somebody wants them". I.e. I do start it from a terminal (for all the testing related to this - if it starts working, I'll probably start it from dmenu), and I have looked at it, and seen nothing that looked like an error, but now I've captured it, and attached it. .Henrik

I can't get the attach feature to work, so I've put the output at http://pastebin.com/Vn015vuA. .Henrik

I got virtualbox working again, so I can do more tests (or at least easier). In a virtualbox with a fairly plain Debian Jessie the problem is present when I use i3 as window manager, but not when using xfce. So I guess this is caused by spotify depending on something that typically runs with more complex desktop environments, but that I'm perfectly able to do without.

I'm in the same boat as you -- on i3, the Spotify client flickers and just eats CPU. It used to work fine with i3; it was an update about a month ago which caused the issues for me.

 

I have no idea what spotify-client could be dependant on which isn't available in an i3 session.

With your isse of flickering, I've had the same problem. It seems with a recent update, Spotify doesn't play well with being tiled, if you change it to floating, the flickering stops.

 

Spotify 0.9.11.27

i3 on Archlinux x64

You're right making the window floating instead of tiling, stops the flickering and ridiculous CPU usage. It will make spotify useable, but it's not a good solution. But it's very good to know I'm not the only one with the problem. Now we need someone from spotify to acknowledge that it's a bug, a fix would be a good thing too. .Henrik

Exactly the same issue here. Arch Linux with dwm window manager. Issues disappear when starting in floating mode.

I have exactly the same issue, using Debian Wheezy and i3 version 4.2.

Starting spotify using primusrun gets me just black screen. Using optirun i get the flickering.

Also tried running Spotify with "--disable-accelerated-layers --disable-accelerated-fixed-root-background", but no use either.

When you switch to floating mode (Mod+Shift+Space by default) Spotify runs just fine.

I am using an nVidia laptop. Today i installed the bumblebee-nvidia package and it solved the graphical glitches completely.

I had this terrible flickering. It went away using hlwm. Changing to floating mode made it work, but that sucks, mainly because Spotify wanted to be the size of my entire monitor, and would not allow hlwm to resize it. I found a fix though. This is what I did:

 

  1. Switch to tiled mode.
  2. Use the resize handle that Spotify draws in the bottom right.
  3. Shrink the window to smaller than the smallest size you'll want to tile it to.
  4. Put it back to tiled mode.
  5. No flickers, as long as you stay above that minimum size.

This setup seems to work for me, but *NOT* with "Enable 3D Acceleration".  In VirtualBox (5.0.26) on Windows 7, if I "Enable 3D Acceleration", launching Spotify on Debian Jessie immediately crashes the VM.

 

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