settings, startup performance, kde4

[Sebastian Kügler]

On Wednesday, July 27, 2011 17:00:39 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday, July 25, 2011 17:10:40 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> > It sounds like removing it will make setting a default font, the empty
> > mouse cursor harder, or am I misunderstanding its role?
> 
> no, that's precisely its role :)

So, let me try to completely understand it. :) Which setting changes exactly 
would be ignored? Taking the fonts as an example (since the default fonts have 
bothered me forever), would defining a default font in kdeglobals 
/etc/kde4/... still work? What does this thing do exactly?

> however, if those settings never actually change, there seems to be no point
> in running it. and if the settings change, the file it generates at log in
> could be instantly created then.
> 
> it seems this application was developed to allow random adding of control
> panels and other set up bits. this makes sense in a desktop where the
> installed software changes, the hardware is unknown, the user settings are
> open for complete customization.
> 
> on a device like a tablet or phone, however, all of those things are
> constrained. so i don't think running this at start makes any sense.
>
> it also means that we will need to adjust the startkde4 script ... which
> we'll want to do anyways as there is a TON of stuff in there that is all
> about flexibility which the desktop demands but which is irrelevant for a
> device.
> 
> having looked at startkde4 recently, it seems that we probably burn a lot of
> start up / log in time for Plasma Active doing things which make zero sense
> for mobile devices.

It would be interesting to run our startup sequence through bootchart ( 
http://www.bootchart.org/ ) and looking at where it's really spending its 
time, and if it's CPU or disk that's taking so long. Especially doing this on 
a device, where the disk / CPU trade off is completely different. Stefan has 
done some measurements just using different filesytems and compression options 
for the disk image. 

I've also noticed some delay in the startup of plasma-tablet, not sure exactly 
what it's waiting for there, but it might shave off another couple of seconds. 
callgrind didn't show anything immediately alarming, but then I'm not exactly 
well-versed with this rather cool tool.
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9