Windows 11 - 13th gen - Slowness with multiples virtual desktops

Framework Laptop 13
1

Hello !

I create this post as I couldn’t find any answer anywhere.

I use extensively multiple virtual desktops in windows 11 and the experience is a bit disappointing. Maybe some people here have faced the same and have been able to fix it.
I run windows on the 1340p, so there should be no performance issue. The laptop is not hot or running intensive tasks. Outside the mentioned problems, there is no issue

Win+Tab shortcut:

  1. With animations enabled → The animation is glitchy, slow and starts with a delay
  2. Without animations → No glitch, but a significant delay between the moment I type the shortcut and the task view of Windows.

Ctrl+win+ left / right arrow

  1. There is no animation, I have found here: Redirecting that it seems to be normal, but if there is any idea on how to set it back up, I am listening!

Drag and drop windows

  1. When drag and dropping bigger windows (eg chrome) the drag and drop is extremely slow and laggy and I wonder why. It does not happen to smaller applications.

Thank you for your help!

2

As I read your post, I was wanting to get more detail as this would help understand more about the HOST.

What is the total RAM on the laptop?

What virtualization software are you using - VMWare or VirtualBox?

3

RAM: 16GB
I have Windows 11 directly installed on my laptop with dual booting Fedora

EDIT: What I mean by virtual desktop

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4

I would state that 16 GB of RAM is going to be sluggish to run Windows and Linux.

Microsoft has a history of always stating that the minimum RAM requirements (as in the case of this version Windows 11) is 4 GB.

Depending on the number of application running on the system, this could probably hamper running a Linux desktop with its GUI (such as X Windows, etc).

To give some level of comparison, I have seen Linux distributions running the GUI software run slow. In those cases, I would set the Virtual Hardware RAM to 4 GB or 8 GB. As the Intel 12th Gen and 13th Gen have similar core counts, I would focus on what is running on the windows instance (in the background).

If I was attempting to run any Linux distribution using its graphical windows interface, I would want to have more RAM (8 GB or 16 GB).

16GB RAM on the laptop host, less 4 GB for the host OS will give you 12 GB of RAM to use for your virtual desktop. Everything graphical would be either using the CPU or the Iris Xe. If your virtual guest (Fedora) was running 8 GB of RAM, that gives 4 GB to be used for other windows application, etc.

For me a Linux graphical desktop running under 8 GB of RAM would be slow overall.

5

I don’t believe they’re actually virtualizing the OS - they’re running bare metal Windows or bare metal Fedora through dual booting. “Virtual desktop” here is referring to the Windows implementation of what most Linux desktop environments call workspaces.

I’m afraid I don’t have any potential solutions, just trying to help clarify what the problem seems to be.

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6

I have tried to replicate some of the issues that you’re noting here. Although I’m not replicating on my framework laptop which runs arch + kde, I have tried it on my desktop system running win11. The system is equipped with an i7-12700k, rtx 3080ti and 32GB of ram. the OS is run on a samsung 860 evo SATA SSD. I include the specs in case you were to have questions on the power of the machine running the tests.

  1. I did not run into significant delays, but the opening of virtual desktops seemed to be hit or miss in terms of smoothness. With both animations on and off there were multiple times where there would be a delay in the task switcher menu appearing using the shortcut. From my reading of it I would chalk it up as simply that it needs to be refined more as a feature in the OS then hardware dependent in my case.

  2. I too noticed that there isn’t an animation going between desktops which is a stupid omission imo. I wasn’t able to find anything either in my searches to re-enable the animations for it. It does appear that there are registry settings for the task view feature as it’s called but nothing for adding animations which is a shame.

  3. I did not notice any lag moving programs like chrome in between desktops so I’m unsure what the cause could be

7

Thanks a lot of all you for the help!

@NateTheGreat & @Nathan_Ross yes that’s right I am using bare metal windows. Sorry for the confusion, wasn’t sure anymore what to call it :sweat_smile:

In reply to Nathan Ross, first thanks for that check it’s really helpful as it means it’s not hardware related nor FW related.

For point 3, interestingly enough I cannot reproduce it right now. I need to check deepeer.
For other points, happy to hear thoughts if there is any fix, meanwhile it’s not a huge problem, it is a bit frustrating.

Thanks again!

8

As you discovered, that animation was disabled (when using the win + arrow key combinations) in a pre-production build of Win11. Apparently they found that it was buggy and problematic, and rather than fixing it, they simply disabled it. SMH

Here’s the interesting bit: the animation still works for 3 finger swipe gestures on the touchpad. There are little utilities out there that will let you map a key combination that will then emulate the gestures and give you back something that feels normal, although the muscle memory of “win + arrow” will still be broken. :slight_smile:

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