52midnight
SO … results: some. Solution? Maybe. The term ‘kworker’ covers a multitude of kernel processes, and reports of their suspected role in causing intermittent delays and hangs are readily found. The most useful info came from:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/406305/linux-keep-forking-kworker
… which advises that “… having many of them is likely to be harmless. To know what any kworker is doing, you can look at /proc/<kworker_pid>/stack. These kernel workers are simply sitting waiting for work to do … it could well be normal to have many kworkers.”
Other sites admit their likely role in causing problems, but suggest that they come and go during the normal course of kernel development, with a new kernel usually fixing things. Encouraging but uncertain.
I’ve learned more than I wanted to know about all of this, and will summarize it when I post in “Tips and Tricks” as explained in the companion thread “Desktop entry deleted from ~/.config/autostart/”.