Zoom performance steadily deteriorates on Linux Ubuntu

[brownfr]

I am running Zoom 5.8 on Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS.  Recently  I started experiencing behavior where Zoom runs fine at first.  Then after 30-45 minutes the video starts to freeze up for varying amounts of time that slowly increases.  The audio comes through fine but the user interface also freezes up.  When I run System Monitor I see that one of the four cpu cores is pegged at 100% while the video is frozen.  When the core comes unpegged the video briefly unfreezes until one of the cores again pegs at 100%.  The other three cores are running around 40-60% at the same time.  This same system used to run fine on previous Zoom releases.   Anyone have any suggestions?

[Rupert]

Hi @brownfr 

Are you using captioning or live transcriptions? 

[brownfr]

The meetings are using live transcriptions.  I have not had problems in other meetings without live transcriptions, but those meetings also have at most about ten participants and I spend most of the time in a breakout room with only two other people.

[brownfr]

Also, it does not seem to matter whether I turn off the captioning display or not.

[dwbotsch]

Hi. I'm also seeing this problem on linux. It seems to be directly related to if the live captioning is enabled for a meeting.

and once captioning is enabled, you are screwed unless you want to restart zoom every so often.

If the person stops speaking (and there's no captions being generated), the interface will free up until more captions.

I'm noting the cpu pegging as well, again directly related.

So far, zoom claims they can't reproduce the issue. Which is strange... I've been on meetings with folk using all manner of linux distros/versions/x11/wayland, and each and every person had the problem if captions were turned on.

Does not affect windows/mac.

I'm able to reproduce this on Fedora/X11 and RHEL8/Wayland, myself, personally.

Thanks.

[Vince_Pf]

I have the same exact issue on my openSUSE Leap and Linux Mint. Running "top" shows the reserved memory of the app growing and growing. Once it reaches 1.4GiB it's pretty much unresponsive. I have submitted a number of bug reports. Is there anything we can do to help Zoom debug this issue?

[brownfr]

I never resolved the problem but think it was related to the video card.  I have bought a new system and do not have the problem.

[Vince_Pf]

So far, for the one meeting since I've used it, with no hardware changes,  the version 5.9.6 seems fixed-or at least vastly improved. The memory usage is still quite a bit, but it never became unresponsive.

[Kristian]

I am seeing the same problem on OpenSuse Tumbleweed with zoom 5.10.0 . It does look like this only happens in webinars with live captions. This is a Wayland based system.

[adykstra]

I'm experiencing this issue as well with 5.10.6 on Pop!_Os 20.04, which is based on Ubuntu 20.04. It seems directly related to whether or not live captioning is enabled by the host. Works fine for a good stretch, but slowly deteriorates over time to eventually be unusable.

[Philip2]

Same problem here on OpenSuse Tumbleweed with KDE. Just experienced it while presenting at a conference, which made it really awkward. Everything was previously fine with Kubuntu 20.04; I switched to OpenSuse last week, keeping the same hardware. The conference had captions and recording switched on. I don't know if that caused it; I can't really tell the organisers to switch it off... The Zoom version is 5.11.1 (3595). One CPU core goes up to 100% and stays there. Memory usage goes up to 1.7 GB and stays there. The audio seems fine, but the video keeps freezing for several seconds at a time, at all times.

[funfactor]

same problem for me:

Opensuse Tumbleweed, latest patches, Nvidia GPU with propiertary NVIDIA drivers installed.

When somebody starts live transcription in a meeting it takes about 40-60 minutes till the system becomes unresponsible.

top shows zoom at the beginning with a load about 30-40, but at the end zoom shows a load of 130-150.

Tried now since weeks with different Zoom versions, not working.

I really need a solution for this, otherwise zoom is not usable under Linux.

[nelg]

Same problem here, on multiple Linux computers.   seems worse in larger meetings. Arch Linux + latest zoom.

[Vince_Pf]

The issue has been fixed for me since 5.9.6 on Debian and Mint. I haven't tried openSUSE since then.

[LS650V]

Debian 11 + XFCE.  Zoom deb version 5.12.6 (173).  Attended a zoom webinar yesterday where the host had live transcriptions enabled.  This problem still exists for me.  I am forced to use Windows 10 when attending zoom webinars because this issue still has not been resolved.

[GlenOgilvie]

Why is this issue being ignored Zoom developers?

[poltpolt]

same for me on ubuntu

[drbdrb]

I used to teach on zoom for hours without issues a couple years ago on this same machine, and now it's almost unusable and I can't even get a 45min window of full functioning. Captioning is not enabled, I suspect the issue is the sound, because if I mute things calm down and then get bad again when I'm talking. My video, other's sound and video, don't seem effected until all 4 cores are maxed out and then the video is choppy to.

Ubuntu 20.04.6

Kernel 5.15.0-105

Zoom 6.0.2.4680

At this point I may just give up on zoom

[drbdrb]

Can anyone advise if this is working better on 6.1.5?

I had been using a chromebook as a backup, but that does not support E2EE, so even that won't work in all conditions. I'm left with three machines (Android tablet, Linux desktop, Chromebook) that all can install zoom, but not a single one is fully functional.

[jm6226]

I run htop sorted by MEM% constantly to monitor memory usage for various apps, and zoom will sit below all browsers until a zoom meeting.  Nothing fancy, no screen sharing, no captioning, just a plain zoom meeting after which zoom will start to climb the memory rankings.  Exit the app and start it again after every meeting seems to be required.

This has been the same on Ubuntu 22 and 24.

Running on a DELL 7420 laptop

[danieljoan123]

I understand how frustrating this issue is. Since it seems related to live captioning, you might try disabling that feature during meetings to see if it helps. Also, make sure you're using the latest version of Zoom and check if your graphics drivers are up to date. If the problem persists, consider reporting it to Zoom, as it seems like a common issue on Linux. Let us know if you find a solution!

[jm6226]

This occurs even after a plain zoom session:

"Nothing fancy, no screen sharing, no captioning, just a plain zoom meeting after which zoom will start to climb the memory rankings."

Zoom is 6.1.11.  I was about to say also kept up to date.  Looks like 6.2.3 dropped recently. Will update and see if it makes a difference.  Would be nice to be able to get zoom via a repo.

I do keep everything updated on a daily basis. (requirement of the job)

[drbdrb]

I just did a 1hr session with zoom 6.2.3 and while it worked great for 30-40mins, the issue persists and my audio and video ended up being broken and all 4 cores maxing out (380% CPU). For the first 20ish mins CPU usage was from 50% to 120%, but regularly under 100%.