I found the cause and solution. The ~/.cache/thumbnails directory was for some unknown reason not owned by my user. I fixed that and now nautilus appears to be behaving normally. Apparently is was caught in a loop trying to update thumbnails but could not.
-- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1565359 Title: high cpu usage when idle To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1565359/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
