Dash blur is too slow to fade in. Please don't fade it unless you can make it faster/smoother.

The Dash in my netbook is slow to fade in even when blur is disabled. So, I don't think the blur itself is causing the sluggishness.

I have a very similar hardware and I must admit even on this machine which is relatively faster than any other machine on which I tried unity the opening of the dash is not that "lovely" as one would expect. And seems if I disable blur not much changes.

Yeah confirmed on an i5-2467M (Intel® HD Graphics 3000). If it's not yet fast and smooth on relatively modern hardware then we should certainly avoid it, IMHO.

Looks like it is now extremely fast after http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~unity-team/nux/trunk/revision/751 even on 1920x1080. Could you please check on your devices whether you see an improvement?

After LP 1102410 it is as slow as it was before the implementation of the new blur in nux.

Not only the fade-in effect is slow, but whole Dash is sluggish too. Turning off blur effect "solves" the problem. Intel i5 2410M and graphics HD 3000.

I agree that it's not just the fade in, the whole of the dash is very sluggish.

Disabling blur makes it snappy again

Same problem here with Intel HD 2000.

I suggest to disable all fade in/out effects completely when running on low GFX mode (UNITY_LOW_GFX_MODE is set). This could help a lot those users who have to stick with low spec HW, without affecting "normal" mode at all. I have an integrated Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470, and the fade in/out lag is horrible, no matter if I use the open source ati driver or fglrx-legacy (from makson96/fglrx PPA).

Disabling file search with Unity-Tweak-Tool solved the problem for me.

Using Ubuntu Trusty Tahr (daily build of nov 15) in a core i7-4700HQ and Intel graphics, and dash "fade in" is still slow... and Alt+Tab transitions are slow too... it's a shame for ubuntu to be slow in a new hardware like this...

Change Blur effect to "No blur" or "Static blur" (using Ubuntu Tweak for this) vastly improved performance.

Other solution is include:

export UNITY_LOW_GFX_MODE=1

to the .xprofile file in user folder, like comment #10.

This last solution works well here (and it is very simple to implement!). Why ubuntu not coming with this file configuration active, knowing that 70 or 80% of all desktops, laptops and ultrabooks does not come with an Nvidia or AMD card, just a single Intel graphics? And knowing also that the hardware can do all these effects is not installed by default (like Nvidia and AMD graphics cards)?

I have a "dedicated" mobility radeon on my laptop and it is still slow as hell.

Please fix this for trusty. This is really annyoing.

This fade in/out issue with unity dash working with export UNITY_LOW_GFX_MODE=1 is still a problem in trusty. Even with blur disable, fade in/out makes system slow, depending of your hardware config.

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1099787