I am experiencing some serious performance issues with my Ubuntu 12.04 setup and thus looking for the culprit by running htop
alongside my usual tasks.
Aside from the usual suspects like chromium, compiz and conky, I noticed this process:
/usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch -background none
Not only is it running constantly, but it's also one of the main ressource hogs in the process list, both in regards of cpu usage as well as memory consumption. It's the number one performance eater most of the time, only topped from time to time by an especially ressource-hungry task like flash player or the like.
Judging by the name, I'm totally unsure what it does. X and lightdm seem to indicate a relation to the gui while tcp seems network related.
My question(s): is this process supposed to run all the time? Is it legit that it uses this much ressources? Do I need it to run or is it safe to kill, if so, how to?
FYI: My system is completely up-to-date, I'm even using the xorg-edgers ppa for the very latest nvidia drivers and compiz-packages (for specific bug-related reasons).
Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.