System performance degradation from GNOME extensions

System becomes sluggish after installing GNOME extensions and background services. Initial clean installation shows ~1GB RAM usage with responsive performance, but degrades after customization with extensions like Dash-to-panel and services like Syncthing.

Use ram-compare to identify processes with changed memory consumption. Test extensions in a VM before production deployment. Add components one at a time to isolate problems. Document changes to correlate with when performance issues appear. Disable problematic extensions identified by the diagnostic tool.