I just spent the day researching this only to discover it's an ongoing bug which is several years old.
I outline my results here: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ubuntu-19-10 -gnome-shell-memory-leak/153376 To summarize that post, simply moving windows and toggling workspaces causes gnome-shell to jump from 200mb to 1.2G of ram use in a matter of minutes (several hours if I'm not intentionally trying to open apps and move windows around). This bug is affecting me on Ubuntu 19.10 running on an Aorus Master X570 with a 3950X and 64G of memory. The machine is only a few weeks old. It's a clean install. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-shell in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1856516 Title: Excessive memory usage by gnome-shell in 19.10 Status in gnome-shell package in Ubuntu: Incomplete Bug description: The gnome-shell process on my system is currently at 5473M VIRT 1224M RSS 566M SHR; this seems a bit excessive. This session has been up for >4 days with a number of suspend/resume cycles in there, so this might be a slow leak? ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10 Package: gnome-shell 3.34.1+git20191024-1ubuntu1~19.10.1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0+bcachefs.git20191120.71cdaa7a-1-generic 5.3.10 Uname: Linux 5.3.0+bcachefs.git20191120.71cdaa7a-1-generic x86_64 NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu8.2 Architecture: amd64 CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME Date: Mon Dec 16 16:50:10 2019 DisplayManager: gdm3 ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-shell InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-08-29 (109 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.10 bcachefs (20190828) ProcEnviron: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=en_AU:en PATH=(custom, user) SHELL=/usr/bin/fish XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set> RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 3.34.1+git20191107-1ubuntu1~19.10.1 SourcePackage: gnome-shell UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bug/1856516/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
