Whonix 18 Workstation very laggy on my system

Support
1

Hello everyone. I am not very technical user but I will try to explain my issue to the best of my ability.

I am using virtualbox on windows to run whonix. I used whonix 17 extensively and 16 prior to that, on the same host computer and never had this issue there. I have just now installed a new whonix from version 18.0.8.7 ova files.

The issue is that whonix 18 workstation is very sluggish/laggy/choppy. It feels like the whole system runs at 10 frames per second. Everything except the mouse cursor. However, it doesn’t happen at all on whonix gateway. I still have my old whonix 17 workstation install to test side by side and can confirm it is still smooth as it always was. I did few tests, giving more ram, more cpu cores and enabling 3D acceleration + more video memory. But there was no change. I don’t understand why Gateway is smooth and Workstation is practically unusable for me right now.

Thanks in advance for any help!

2

Tearing when moving windows is caused by Kloak and unavoidable.

Context:

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3

Noted. Then I will just have to get used to this new deanonymization feature!

Thank you for such a quick response and for Whonix!

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4

anonymization feature :slight_smile:

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5

I have the same problem. This system is now impossible to use without pain to the eyes. Having been using this update for a week now, I still can’t get used to it and it causes a lot of inconvenience

6

As far as I understand kloak is customizable. See the following hints from the kloak git:

source: GitHub - Whonix/kloak: anti keystroke deanonymization tool · GitHub

Troubleshooting

My keyboard or mouse seems very slow

kloak works by introducing a random delay to each input event (key press, key release, mouse move, etc). This requires temporarily buffering the event before it reaches the application (e.g., a text editor).

The maximum delay is specified with the -d option. This is the maximum delay (in milliseconds) that can occur between the physical input events and sending input events to the Wayland compositor. The default is 100 ms, which was shown to achieve about a 20-30% reduction in identification accuracy and doesn’t create too much lag between the user and the application (see the paper below). As the maximum delay increases, the ability to obfuscate typing behavior also increases, and the responsiveness of the application decreases. This reflects a tradeoff between usability and privacy.

If you’re a fast typist and it seems like there is a long lag between pressing a key and seeing the character on screen, try lowering the maximum delay. Alternatively, if you’re a slower typist, you might be able to increase the maximum delay without noticing much difference. Automatically determining the best lag for each typing speed is an item for future work.

Options

The full usage and options are:

$ ./kloak -h

Usage: kloak [options]
Anonymizes keyboard and mouse input patterns by injecting jitter into input
events. Designed specifically for wlroots-based Wayland compositors. Will NOT
work with X11.

Options:
  -d, --delay=milliseconds          maximum delay of released events.
                                    Default 100.
  -s, --start-delay=milliseconds    time to wait before startup. Default 500.
  -h, --help                        print help
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