Release schedule clarifications

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 25.10.07 12:26:37, Frerich Raabe wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 06:13:45PM -0600 or thereabouts, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Wednesday 24 October 2007, Frerich Raabe wrote:
> > > a) "Today's machines certainly have the power" - they do. However, leaving
> > > aside that I'd rather prefer to keep at least 95% of the processing power
> > > to my applications, the CPU usage is also annoying when it comes to laptop
> > > usage (more CPU usage == more power consumption == less laptop lifetime).
> > 
> > when does plasma, aside from your scrollomatic wonder reader, use more than 5% 
> > of the cpu for any appreciable period of time?
> 
> Hmm, then maybe I've been doing something wrong on all the computers I tested
> on (1x Kubuntu, 1x FreeBSD, 1x Mac OSX, 1x Windows XP). I also tried an rsync
> build from last night but didn't notice any difference, at least with the
> colliding mice example.
> 
> Can somebody else maybe try this (the example is in
> examples/graphicsview/collidingmice)?

Plasma runs quite ok over here on both my 1.4GHz Centrino and the AMD
Athlon 1.3GHz. Both use open source drivers with no XRender and no
Composite support. However the newsticker does increase the cpu usage
beyond all limits, as soon as I disable that cpu-hog all is fine.

The colliding mice example however takes about 50% cpu on the laptop
(with Radeon Mobility 9200), with the 7 mices that are there by default.
There's no difference between fullscreen and window'ed display though.
It (cpu usage) also doesn't get any worse when increasing the amount of
mices to 40, but the  moving of the mices is like slow-motion in that
case.

> As for use cases where the CPU usage goes up: it's actually any situation
> where you repaint repeatedly. Try moving a plasma applet around your desktop
> and watch the CPU usage (maybe this happens with plain windows as well, I
> didn't try that). In fact, just moving the digital clock in my panel somewhere
> else caused a spike of 5% CPU usage (a short spike though, it's not like I
> keep dragging my clock around the pannel all day long).

Well, plasma behaves quite ok, but X11 goes through the roof while
moving an applet, it takes about 80% CPU in that case. Moving a normal
window (no window effects here) doesn't do that.

> Again, I think we should definately have something like Plasma for KDE at
> some point but to me (just my KNT experiences, again) it does not seem to be
> ready for prime time at this point (and IIRC there was some sort of 'Final'
> to be tagged on wednesday?).

You're confusing (just as I did) the KDE Platform with the workspace.
plasma is not included in the platform, its part of the workspace and
for that we do another beta, not an rc.
 
> So I hope you see that it is helpful to research if there's a "Plan B"
> available which could maybe be used in case Plasma hits other problems. Not
> to your project maybe, but to the KDE project per se.

Not unless somebody resurrects kicker and I pretty much trust Aaron that
this won't happen in time for 4.0, given that the code has been
unmaintained for quite some time now.

Andreas

-- 
Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.