[kde-linux] Goodbye

[Dale]

James Tyrer wrote:
> Dale wrote:
>   
>> David J Iannucci wrote:
>>     
>>>> I'm sticking with KDE 3.5 at least until things are working in KDE 4.
>>>> I do agree tho that even my machine is a bit slower than I would like.
>>>> KDE 4 needs a fast machine to work and respond the way KDE 3.5 does.
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> I'm also a Gentoo user, and since they have recently announced that 3.5
>>> will be removed from portage and that as a result it will get a lot more
>>> bothersome to try to stick with it, I was thinking I'd just bite the
>>> bullet and upgrade, hoping that this was happening because things had
>>> really improved to the point of usability, but this thread is not
>>> encouraging.
>>>
>>> I thought one of the "hype points" about 4.x was that the code base was
>>> significantly rewritten to be smaller-footprint, faster, stabler, more
>>> efficient for older hardware.  Was this just a load of c**p?
>>>
>>> Now I'm starting to think I should look into learning what I need to
>>> know (Gentoo overlays) in order to stay with 3.5....
>>>
>>> Dave
>>>
>>> p.s. I did have another specific question, actually, that I might as
>>>      well stick in here: for a long time I've been using an "outside" WM
>>>      with KDE - icewm.  Does 4.x continue to make it fairly easy to do
>>>      this, or does it really expect you to be using kwin?
>>>   
>>>       
>> I'm currently using the overlay myself.  It is really not to hard to 
>> do.  Here is a guide:
>>
>> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/userguide.xml
>>
>> The overlay you are looking for is kde-sunset.  If you use eix, let me 
>> know and I'll tell you how to make it sync both portage and the overlays 
>> at the same time.  I'll have to go look for it. 
>>
>> So far, it works pretty good.  Your mileage may vary tho.
>>
>>     
> The major problem isn't building it.  I can do that using the same 
> script that I always did.  I had even managed to get aRts to build using 
> patches borrowed from Fedora.
>
> The problem is running it.  I upgraded Qt and Xorg as well as various 
> support libraries, and basically, KDE-3 quit working.  So, I switched 
> over to KDE-4.3 SVN BRANCH.  Except for some serious issue with 
> Konqueror and a lot of little things that are broken (which I personally 
> see no excuse for -- don't developers try code before they commit it (I 
> always do) it basically is OK on my 1.1 GHz AMD Athlon with 512 MiB of 
> ram.  I have a problem with task switching because I have both 
> Firefox/Gtk and KDE apps running because I have to open Firefox when 
> Konqueror fails -- some of the problem may be with Xorg and I will be 
> upgrading to the 7.5 release as soon as I fix the damage done to Gtk 
> based stuff by the "libxcb-xlib.so.0" issue.
>
> So, if it were called KDE4-0.8.3, I would have no complaints except that 
> if you try to do too many things at once, it basically clogs up.  This 
> is a scheduling problem that results from the fact that Linux (and all 
> *NIX OSes) is not really designed to run a GUI desktop.  I have tried to 
> improve this situation by changing the nice of X to -10 -- which is an 
> old trick that some distros have used -- and set kwin to -10 and FIFO. 
> You can also try changing the scheduling for X, but I haven't seem much 
> difference there.  This will change the way that the desktop responds 
> and you might or might not like it.  With the changed priorities and 
> scheduling, when you request a window, it shows up very promptly, but it 
> remains a gray rectangle with a frame till the app responds.
>
> Have you experimented with the X parameters:
>
>      Option		"BackingStore" "on"
>      Option		"SaveUnders" "on"
>
> these should speed things up, but they require memory so this is a trade 
> off that is dependent on how good the virtual memory in the Kernel works.
>
> But to get to the point, KDE can run much faster on a older system if 
> the OSes scheduling is real time, or something that approximates it -- 
> the multitasking that is good for servers is not good for a system that 
> serves only one person.  The way things currently work is that all of 
> the windows that you have open are running at the same priority.  This 
> is really stupid because you can only have the X cursor in one window at 
> a time.  That window needs a higher priority, windows that don't have 
> focus a lower priority and minimized windows an even lower one.  It is 
> also possible to make applications respond better by having a very short 
> "main loop" to interact with the system which would dispatch work to be 
> done to other threads.  This would fix what I find most irritating which 
> is when there is no response to the mouse.  It would be much better if 
> the mouse click had an immediate response and perhaps then you might 
> have to wait a bit for the action to be completed.
>
> So, I would suggest that you hang on for a while, or purchase some more 
> RAM.  I am going to upgrade my hardware since I have a home built 
> system.  I would suggest Xfce, but looking at the process table, it is 
> obvious that it is the apps that are using up the CPU capacity.
>
> I will continue with KDE-4 based on whether, or not, the serious quality 
> control issues are addressed and rectified.
>
>   

The biggest issue I have had with X is hal.  I built my xorg-server 
without hal support and it works fine.  With hal, it was a mess. 

Of course a replacement for hal is in the works.  It may be a while but 
I hope I can run without hal until its successor arrives.

Dale

:-)  :-)