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(Someone has tried to mark this as a duplicate. However, my question is not just on how to uninstall gnome (I've already used the given link to uninstall & it didn't work). I mainly want to know what is the reason behind the GNOME folders getting created & how to avoid it. It could not be because I've installed without noticing, while doing sudo apt-get update, because just before writing this question I uninstalled gnome-shell by following multiple sources, including the one that this question is considered a duplicate of).

Note: Please let me know if the screenshots are not easy to read. Will update them with new ones.

I’m using Ubuntu Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa), with MATE DE.

My laptop suddenly started heating-up (it’s Dell XPS 15z, so I have to add - more than usual) & very slow. So, I installed tlp as suggested in ubuntu-18-04-lts-heating-issue

And, while trying some more troubleshooting steps, I found some of the folders named “gnome”. I switched to MATE from GNOME for the very same reasons: same heating & system slow. My system has only 4 GB RAM, which seems to be not enough for GNOME. But I’m seeing some gnome folders present even after I removed everthing on GNOME. They are getting created again, even when I uninstalled gnome-shell.

Gnome folders under /etc/ folder Gnome folders under /usr/share/ folder Gnome folders under /snap/ folder

I’ve read that MATE is an extension of the GNOME project. So, are these folders created because of that. Or, did I install these packages unknowingly; if so, why did they appear again, even when I uninstalled the gnome-shell completely now.

So, 2 questions:

  1. Why do gnome folders keep getting created in MATE DE?
  2. And, does (could) it have anything to do with the heating issue? If so, how to remove GNOME completely & prevent it from getting installed again?
  3. I read that some gnome packages work fine with MATE, like, the Take Screenshot package, that I just realized that I have been using a lot – even after uninstalling GNOME completely. Can I keep using some GNOME packages like this, without re-creating the heating issue?

This is my memory config: Memory Configuration

Video Card info: Video Cards info

Details of NVIDIA card:

Details of NVIDIA card

Details of (in-built) Intel Graphics Card (i915): Details of (in-built) Intel Graphics Card (i915)

Currently used VGA Kernel Driver: Currently used VGA Kernel Driver

Graphic Cards Hardware Info: enter image description here

mate-system-monitor (sorted on CPU%): mate-system-monitor (sorted on CPU%)

mate-system-monitor (sorted on Memory%): mate-system-monitor (sorted on Memory%)

htop (Vivaldi): htop (Vivaldi

htop (Vivaldi): htop (Brave)

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  • This is an opinionated response, but I've seen better performance with the newer versions of gnome in 18.04->21.04. Are you sure gnome was the true issue with heating and thermals? are you using a laptop with a dGPU & iGPU?
    – Gloat
    Jun 3, 2021 at 18:30
  • 2
  • Your system is capable to detect and utilize 16 (2*8) Gb of DDR3 SODIMM RAM, I think. When did you last change thermal grease in its cooling system? Are coolers rotating? Which video driver do you use - nouveau open or Nvidia binary? Did you run some realtime proccess monitoring software to get a list of CPU/GPU loads by applications (like htop, mate-system-monitor)?
    – N0rbert
    Jun 3, 2021 at 19:36
  • Thanks @Gloat : No, I'm not sure of it, although it fixed a similar issue once (but, I tried several other steps too, at that time). In fact, if you haven't noticed, I've stated that also as a question here. Reg. the Graphic cards, I have both - an in-built Intel (i915) & an external NVIDIA (GT 525M) cards. Although, the hardware info using hwinfo --gfxcard has given a confusing output now. It says both are active under "Driver Status", while it also says "active=unknown" under "Config Status". May be, that's what is causing the heating issue. Not sure.
    – v-lan
    Jun 3, 2021 at 20:33
  • Thanks @N0rbert : It doesn't. While it answers a part of my question (which, by the way, I tried already, but in vain), it doesn't answer my other (actual) questions. I've edited the question, for more details.
    – v-lan
    Jun 3, 2021 at 20:35

1 Answer 1

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To slightly rephrase and answer your questions:

Where do operating system directories with gnome in their name come from?
Answer this question by asking dpkg..for example:

dpkg -S /etc/gnome

This may give a list of packages. For a more specific answer, run this for specific files in the directories.

Can these cause your computer to heat up?
Only if they are running! Check with ps to see if they are. Sorting by cpu in top or system monitor may also be informative. Considering you only have 4G, sorting by memory use may also help. If you find running gnome components you are not using, you can just kill them, or you can dig deeper and prevent them from auto starting, see How do I manage applications on startup in GNOME 3? but also check the MATE autostart methods, as it shares some with gnome. Switching between MATE and Gnome may leave services from both auto starting when you log in.

Can you mix gnome applications with MATE?
Mostly -- the package manager will install gnome dependencies those tools need, but there may be gnome services that are also needed, so if you disable those in the above step, some of the applications may not have full functionality.

Looking at your screen shots, I am reminded that your web browser may actually use more memory and cpu than gnome, so addressing this may help. Hibernate or close any browser tabs you are not using. Check vivaldi's internal task manager to see if there's an especially greedy tab or extension. See https://vivaldi.com/blog/improve-performance-in-vivaldi/ for deeper coverage of this.

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  • Thanks @user10489. The dpkg -S command does give the owning files of those packages; however, not sure how it answers why gnome folders are getting created with MATE (MATE doesn't have packages for those functionalities!?). Anyway, I uninstalled both GNOME & MATE, and re-installed MATE alone. It ended up the system getting hung-up at the startup screen, until I installed the recommended gnome packages too. So, MATE does require some GNOME packages at least (or, may be, it's because I was using them before & the suggestions were corresponding to them).
    – v-lan
    Jun 4, 2021 at 21:34
  • (..contd.) @user10489 : You are right about Vivaldi. I knew it uses more memory, but I've just noticed it uses a lot of GPU too. And, I also noticed Vivaldi has a dependency on some gnome package. So, that answers gnome processes heating up the system. I tried with Brave (browser) too & it also takes lot of memory, Another intriguing thing is, both the browsers show a virtual memory usage of ~30 GB!! I'm not sure what to make of it (or, whether to believe it, in first place). So, both their comments & your answer helped me a lot in figuring out the issue. Marked your answer as accepted.
    – v-lan
    Jun 4, 2021 at 21:51
  • Remember, virtual memory is just that -- virtual. It may or may not represent real use. RSS ("resident set size") shows true physical memory use. Swap shows things that used real memory but were putshed out to disk. These two together are more meaningful than virtual memory. Add to that shared memory -- which, as you might imagine by the label, is not dedicated to a specific process.
    – user10489
    Jun 5, 2021 at 2:26

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