5 ms·

I love Inkscape. I’ve been using it for 20 years. But it boggles my mind how it’s still so horribly laggy on macOS. At least they got rid of the Xquartz depende

I love Inkscape. I’ve been using it for 20 years. But it boggles my mind how it’s still so horribly laggy on macOS. At least they got rid of the Xquartz dependency though.

thot_experiment 2y ago
Is there an OS it's not horribly laggy on? Last time I used it you couldn't even get previews of things when you dragged them around, it would just degrade to a bounding box. Heaven forbid you have a scene with any complexity. Every time I see an Inkscape update I skim it for "massive performance upgrades" and am invariably disappointed. Inkscape doesn't need features, it needs to not lag for 5 seconds when I open a menu, it needs to run at 100+fps when I'm editing paths. EDIT: I installed the latest version (under W10) and while it doesn't degrade to bounding boxes it's still like 10fps and it leaves trailing copies of the item being dragged around the canvas while I'm dragging. Really disappointing.
- wg0 2y ago
  Can't say about Windows but on Linux - it works flawlessly since ages.
  - thot_experiment 2y ago
    Just installed under Arch and while performance is better and there are no solitaire style copy-trails when I drag stuff it's still like 15-20fps when I'm dragging even a simple shape around while Illustrator manages 170fps without issue even with complex nested groups.
    - wg0 2y ago
      Illustrator is on Linux too? Could this low frame rate be related to missing drivers? Very less likely though. I think Inkspace probably should have its own UI kit rendered directly on GPU. That's lot of work however.
      - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
        > should have its own UI kit rendered directly on GPU. That's lot of work however. It's more like that's the minimum that's expected.
  - janci 2y ago
    It's laggy on windows. On linux it works great.
- exe34 2y ago
  $ nix-shell -p inkscape [nix-shell:~]$ inkscape --version Inkscape 1.3.2 (091e20ef0f, 2023-11-25) [nix-shell:~]$ nixos-version 24.05.3787.a781ff33ae25 (Uakari) Seems flawless for me. simple example I made: https://imgur.com/a/wi0kXbm https://imgur.com/a/wi0kXbm
- __mharrison__ 2y ago
  Never had issues on Linux...
- fourteenfour 2y ago
  Strange. I've been using Inkscape to make vector art on Windows and Ubuntu with various hardware for years and while I don't think it's ever running at 100+ fps it's totally usable and hasn't been laggy. [edit: unless you are using filters or editing a very complex file, it does bog down then.]
- inferiorhuman 2y ago
  1.3.2 works fine on MacOS (M2 Pro) for me. There's a bit of lag following the mouse cursor especially when moving stuff quickly but the UI widgets are performant and there are no visual artifacts.
  - keyshapegeo99 2y ago
    Ditto, I wouldn't quite say it flies on my M1 MBA, but performance is by no means frustratingly laggy. I use Inkscape a lot on both my MBA and Surface Laptop and it is much more frustrating on the latter device. The lack of support for fractional scaling is an annoyance on my 150% scaled Surface. The tiny UI has to be remedied by pinning a .bat to my taskbar and disguising it as Inkscape, with the following code: cd <Inkscape directory> set GDK_SCALE=2 start inkscape.exe And within Inkscape using the Minwaita-Inkscape theme and 80% font scaling to scale back the otherwise-now-too-big UI. On both my Mac and PC, the main frustration once the UI is scaled correctly is that often closing pop-up windows (i.e. Document Properties) simply doesn't work. Sometimes using Inkscape's tab close button rather than the MacOS/Windows close window button works, but other times the whole app will freeze up and crash when attempting to close these pop-up windows. Have had this issue for multiple Inkscape versions now, hoping the devs find a way to fix it.
allenu 2y ago
I love Inkscape as well. It took some getting used to at first, but now I can sketch things rather quickly with it. The lag on macOS and non-standard UI behaviors are really frustrating though. For example, for the longest time, if you put the cursor in a text field and then hit cmd-A to select all text, it would interpret that to mean select all objects in the canvas instead. Another thing is that sometimes when I click and drag the corner of the window to resize it, the thing just won't budge. It takes several attempts before it actually works. Very frustrating, but it's open source and gets the job done for the most part, so it's very hard for me to move away from it.
- ltlnx 2y ago
  Inkscape has a lot of additional problems on MacOS, like dialogs appearing below the main window making it look like it's frozen, occasional text rendering issues, interference with input methods (on Windows too), and other problems that cannot be reproduced on Linux. To be fair a big part of it can be attributed to GTK, the underlying UI toolkit.
smitelli 2y ago
They’ve historically been quite open about needing help on the macOS front. For example, https://inkscape.org/news/2021/06/22/seeking-macos-dev-contributor-inkscape-project/ https://inkscape.org/news/2021/06/22/seeking-macos-dev-contr...
- Gigachad 2y ago
  I’d imagine there just isn’t a huge group of people who work on foss software, and use Mac. I’ve noticed that just in general foss apps which work great on Linux, are often broken on macOS.
  - pilaf 2y ago
    Yeah, happened to GIMP as well, for a while they didn't have anyone in charge of macOS builds, so they just skipped the platform for a few releases.
    - wccrawford 2y ago
      I suspect that not only relieved some of their own stress, but also sent a very clear message to the community that someone needed to take up that slack if they wanted OSX builds.
  - sgdfhijfgsdfgds 2y ago
    It's not universal but some of this stuff seemingly stems from the framework level -- Gtk and Qt. For example, QGIS and FreeCAD are very good indeed on the Mac, and the quirky problems FreeCAD has on the Mac are generally Qt problems (font mapping, some window handling stuff, very occasional high-DPI things). Command-line/server-based FOSS stuff is usually not a great challenge. I guess this is kind of what one could predict, comparing Linux and the Mac. Though it's also the case that Qt and Gtk get more portability eyeballs on Windows, which again is probably what one could predict.
  - skeptrune 2y ago
    +1. It's frustrating me right now, because newer members onboarding to our team are having all kinds of issues with Element amongst other software.
gennarro 2y ago
Came here to say the same. The app is very useful for me (pen plotters etc) but it’s awful on my Mac. Barely useable despite being required for some of my workflows.
pilaf 2y ago
For me it's gotten a lot better since one or two versions ago. There's still some lagginess, but it's nowhere near the horror show that it used to be, and they fixed some excruciating screen resolution issues as well. I used to avoid Inkscape on macOS like the plague, now I can use it fairly comfortably.

I love Inkscape. I’ve been using it for 20 years. But it boggles my mind how it’s still so horribly laggy on macOS. At least they got rid of the Xquartz dependency though.

thot_experiment 2y ago

Is there an OS it's not horribly laggy on? Last time I used it you couldn't even get previews of things when you dragged them around, it would just degrade to a bounding box. Heaven forbid you have a scene with any complexity. Every time I see an Inkscape update I skim it for "massive performance upgrades" and am invariably disappointed. Inkscape doesn't need features, it needs to not lag for 5 seconds when I open a menu, it needs to run at 100+fps when I'm editing paths. EDIT: I installed the latest version (under W10) and while it doesn't degrade to bounding boxes it's still like 10fps and it leaves trailing copies of the item being dragged around the canvas while I'm dragging. Really disappointing.

wg0 2y ago
Can't say about Windows but on Linux - it works flawlessly since ages.
- thot_experiment 2y ago
  Just installed under Arch and while performance is better and there are no solitaire style copy-trails when I drag stuff it's still like 15-20fps when I'm dragging even a simple shape around while Illustrator manages 170fps without issue even with complex nested groups.
  - wg0 2y ago
    Illustrator is on Linux too? Could this low frame rate be related to missing drivers? Very less likely though. I think Inkspace probably should have its own UI kit rendered directly on GPU. That's lot of work however.
    - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
      > should have its own UI kit rendered directly on GPU. That's lot of work however. It's more like that's the minimum that's expected.
- janci 2y ago
  It's laggy on windows. On linux it works great.
exe34 2y ago
$ nix-shell -p inkscape [nix-shell:~]$ inkscape --version Inkscape 1.3.2 (091e20ef0f, 2023-11-25) [nix-shell:~]$ nixos-version 24.05.3787.a781ff33ae25 (Uakari) Seems flawless for me. simple example I made: https://imgur.com/a/wi0kXbm https://imgur.com/a/wi0kXbm
__mharrison__ 2y ago
Never had issues on Linux...
fourteenfour 2y ago
Strange. I've been using Inkscape to make vector art on Windows and Ubuntu with various hardware for years and while I don't think it's ever running at 100+ fps it's totally usable and hasn't been laggy. [edit: unless you are using filters or editing a very complex file, it does bog down then.]
inferiorhuman 2y ago
1.3.2 works fine on MacOS (M2 Pro) for me. There's a bit of lag following the mouse cursor especially when moving stuff quickly but the UI widgets are performant and there are no visual artifacts.
- keyshapegeo99 2y ago
  Ditto, I wouldn't quite say it flies on my M1 MBA, but performance is by no means frustratingly laggy. I use Inkscape a lot on both my MBA and Surface Laptop and it is much more frustrating on the latter device. The lack of support for fractional scaling is an annoyance on my 150% scaled Surface. The tiny UI has to be remedied by pinning a .bat to my taskbar and disguising it as Inkscape, with the following code: cd <Inkscape directory> set GDK_SCALE=2 start inkscape.exe And within Inkscape using the Minwaita-Inkscape theme and 80% font scaling to scale back the otherwise-now-too-big UI. On both my Mac and PC, the main frustration once the UI is scaled correctly is that often closing pop-up windows (i.e. Document Properties) simply doesn't work. Sometimes using Inkscape's tab close button rather than the MacOS/Windows close window button works, but other times the whole app will freeze up and crash when attempting to close these pop-up windows. Have had this issue for multiple Inkscape versions now, hoping the devs find a way to fix it.

allenu 2y ago

I love Inkscape as well. It took some getting used to at first, but now I can sketch things rather quickly with it. The lag on macOS and non-standard UI behaviors are really frustrating though. For example, for the longest time, if you put the cursor in a text field and then hit cmd-A to select all text, it would interpret that to mean select all objects in the canvas instead. Another thing is that sometimes when I click and drag the corner of the window to resize it, the thing just won't budge. It takes several attempts before it actually works. Very frustrating, but it's open source and gets the job done for the most part, so it's very hard for me to move away from it.

ltlnx 2y ago
Inkscape has a lot of additional problems on MacOS, like dialogs appearing below the main window making it look like it's frozen, occasional text rendering issues, interference with input methods (on Windows too), and other problems that cannot be reproduced on Linux. To be fair a big part of it can be attributed to GTK, the underlying UI toolkit.

smitelli 2y ago

They’ve historically been quite open about needing help on the macOS front. For example, https://inkscape.org/news/2021/06/22/seeking-macos-dev-contributor-inkscape-project/ https://inkscape.org/news/2021/06/22/seeking-macos-dev-contr...

Gigachad 2y ago
I’d imagine there just isn’t a huge group of people who work on foss software, and use Mac. I’ve noticed that just in general foss apps which work great on Linux, are often broken on macOS.
- pilaf 2y ago
  Yeah, happened to GIMP as well, for a while they didn't have anyone in charge of macOS builds, so they just skipped the platform for a few releases.
  - wccrawford 2y ago
    I suspect that not only relieved some of their own stress, but also sent a very clear message to the community that someone needed to take up that slack if they wanted OSX builds.
- sgdfhijfgsdfgds 2y ago
  It's not universal but some of this stuff seemingly stems from the framework level -- Gtk and Qt. For example, QGIS and FreeCAD are very good indeed on the Mac, and the quirky problems FreeCAD has on the Mac are generally Qt problems (font mapping, some window handling stuff, very occasional high-DPI things). Command-line/server-based FOSS stuff is usually not a great challenge. I guess this is kind of what one could predict, comparing Linux and the Mac. Though it's also the case that Qt and Gtk get more portability eyeballs on Windows, which again is probably what one could predict.
- skeptrune 2y ago
  +1. It's frustrating me right now, because newer members onboarding to our team are having all kinds of issues with Element amongst other software.

gennarro 2y ago

Came here to say the same. The app is very useful for me (pen plotters etc) but it’s awful on my Mac. Barely useable despite being required for some of my workflows.

pilaf 2y ago

For me it's gotten a lot better since one or two versions ago. There's still some lagginess, but it's nowhere near the horror show that it used to be, and they fixed some excruciating screen resolution issues as well. I used to avoid Inkscape on macOS like the plague, now I can use it fairly comfortably.