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As i am new to Ubuntu and moved from windows I was wondering that my cpu use which was 2 to 3% in windows during ideal state is above 90%

I am using ubuntu with kde interface. Can be it is due to installation of kde?

I have installed kde-standard from the Ubuntu Software Center.

I have dell 15R with i3, 3gb ,320gb

I have dual boot as windows 7 as a host.

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    That is not normal behavior for any OS. My cpu is working at 0.7 % with bursts up to 4 %. Open a terminal and enter the command top, that will display system and process information, see what process is using your cpu.
    – Panther
    Dec 9, 2011 at 4:37
  • You can also use the system monitor (search for it with the dash) to get the same information if you prefer a graphical interface.
    – Javier Rivera
    Dec 9, 2011 at 7:46

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  • KDE is CPU/GFX heavy. Do you have installed native opengl drivers for your graphics card?
  • you can have problem with your CPU power management driver (the cpu could be on the lowest frequency (power state), thus heavy loaded even when idle). Does this happen when your laptop is on A/C only or both A/C and batteries?
  • you can run top/htop to see the cpu usage, which process takes the most CPU resources
  • for prettier output you can install htop, it is nicer and have more features (apt-get install htop)
  • you can use iotop (apt-get install iotop) to monitor I/O load on your computer (this is just a bonus, but it might give you another hint which app is causing the high cpu usage, even if CPU % usage don't have much to do with i/o load)
  • there could also be some indexing going on (which you would see in top)

(note that all those commands are CLI (terminal) commands)

EDIT: I also run to an issue on Macbook Pro Retina 15" Late 2013 model with Ubuntu which caused high IRQ (interrupt) burts from the Intel GPU (iGPU) native driver. I had to disable the offending IRQ. The symptomps where high CPU usage (99%) but not from processes, but from kernel interrupts (htop shows these in red color).

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