For days I’ve struggled with this new linux install on a virtual machine on my local network. The SSH has been super unreliable and everytime I typed tab for an auto completion the whole thing seemed to lock up for ~30 seconds. Turns out the autocompletion problem was the simplest fix ever! After scouring the internet for ages I found this command.
sudo updatedb
It’s simple, all it does is update the auto completion database. (according to the forum I found it on) What was probably happening is the database got really big and was taking ages to scan through. It beats me why a fresh ubuntu install had this problem, but at least it’s solved, for now.