Debian 10 (Buster) slow desktop/GUI

Question

When installing Debian 10 (Buster) the desktop/GUI applications are slow. Opening applications (e.g. Firefox, Terminal,...) takes quite long and the system is not usable at all.

apt update && apt upgrade

did not help at all. Apparently it is a problem with either the CPU or the GPU driver. I installed Debian on an Intel i5 + Nvidia GTX build (not sure if the GPU is responsible here as well).

The only info I could find was this, but it did not solve the problem

Answer 1

I have solved same problem by removing 'xserver-xorg-video-intel' and installing 'firmware-misc-nonfree':

System Details:

root@hostname:/# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release:    10
Codename:   buster

Solution Steps Details:

1. From terminal switch to root user.

2. Add non-free repository entry to /etc/apt/sources.list:

   root@hostname:/# cat <<EOT >> /etc/apt/sources.list
   # Non-Free
   deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
   EOT
   

3. Update/Download packages information from all configured sources:

   root@hostname:/# apt update
   

4. install firmware-misc-nonfree:

   root@hostname:/# apt install firmware-misc-nonfree
   

5. Erase xserver-xorg-video-intel:

   root@hostname:/# apt purge xserver-xorg-video-intel
   

6. Reboot the system:

   root@hostname:/# systemctl reboot
   

Answer 2

As stated in the above link, it is a driver issue. Yet, the steps above did not fully solve it. As shown here, 'xserver-xorg-video-intel' should be removed and 'firmware-misc-nonfree' should be installed. After rebooting, the problem was solved and the system is usable again