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I included Shutter on my Startup Applications list upon installing the app. For the second time in two days, my laptop would suddenly freeze heavily for a few seconds that I can't even move the mouse pointer immediately. I had checked my system monitory --> processes, and to my surprise Shutter was using a big chunk of my memory 2.1GB out of my 3.8GB total memory so I had to end the app. Kindly note I was not using Shutter at the time of the freeze.

It seems like including it on my startup applications list is a factor in this problem. Is there a way to solve this without having to give it up on startup apps list?

I'm using 12.04 64-bit on my ThinkPad R61i. (if this would help)

onvas
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2 Answers2

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Since the title of this question is about shutter memory usage, I'll add my 2¢:

I use shutter heavily. After noticing huge memory usage, like 4GB or more, I tried restarting, but the usage always came back.

Then I noticed that it has the notion of a session -- you may need to periodically click File -> Close All, then restart (e.g. File -> Quit, reopen), to clear up the memory usage.

Maybe this is obvious to some, but the other screencap programs I've used don't have the notion of a persistent session, so this caught me off guard.

Jeff Ward
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You could try starting Shutter with a delay.

  1. Go the the startup applications dialog, choose Shutter and hit Edit.
  2. Put sleep 8s && before the value in the Command field.
  3. Hit Save.

Using ScreenCloud in this example, as I stopped using Shutter

I'm using ScreenCloud in this example because I don't have Shutter in my startup applications.

RobinJ
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  • Thank you, I was using "shutter --min_at_startup" as the command, but hopefully the delay would work better. I'll get back to this post in two days' time and see if I get big memory usage again or not. – onvas Jun 24 '12 at 14:22
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    Thank you for this. I haven't experienced the lagging since I used the command. – onvas Jun 28 '12 at 05:36
  • Why would this affect memory usage? I would like to understand the logic behind it. Thanks – Elijah Lynn Apr 11 '13 at 21:13
  • @ElijahLynn Because when you log into your system, all applications are starting at the same time and using lots of memory. By first letting all the necessary applications like Unity and Nautilus start, and only when those have been started start launching applications like Shutter, the memory usage is divided ~eavenly. Look at it as 5 people who want to get through a door. They can either smash into each other trying to get through the door all at once, or form a line and walk through one by one. – RobinJ Apr 12 '13 at 20:02
  • Thanks RobinJ, that seems very inefficient. Does Linux really work like that? – Elijah Lynn Apr 14 '13 at 22:33
  • @ElijahLynn Every OS does. It's not inefficient as long as developers optimise their applications properly :-) – RobinJ Apr 15 '13 at 13:50