[kde-linux] Desktop widget like Windows Vista sidebar/clock thing?

[Duncan]

Werner Joss posted on Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:51:58 +0200 as excerpted:

> for me, the reason to stick with 3.5 is solely kde4's darn
> slowness/unresponsiveness, which just drives me nuts every time I boot
> into it.

Have you tried mine? =:^)

Seriously, while I'm running reasonable hardware in most respects, my 
graphics card is an aging Radeon 9200 -- with which I'm running dual 
1920x1200 monitors stacked for 1920x2400!  Since the OpenGL limit on the 
card is 2048 px square and I'm running a 2400 px high combined desktop, 
that well nixes any OpenGL, tho I do get reasonable xrender composite, 
for transparency, etc, ONCE I CONFIGURE KDE CORRECTLY.

First, for Radeons, you'll want to verify they're in EXA not the old XAA 
mode (search the xorg.0.log file for EXA or XAA and see).

Now, the two critical things that made kde4 at least close to match kde3 
here, with composite and transparency but with fade effects and etc 
disabled (same as I had them on kde3), are as follows:

1) This one isn't such a big deal with 4.3.1 or better, but was 
absolutely so before that, due to a repaint bug fixed in 4.3.1.  Keep the 
desktop clear of plasmoids, or at least dynamic updating plasmoids such 
as temp and cpu gauges, clocks, etc.  Panels aren't so bad.  You can 
leave it set to the normal desktop/plasmoid view if desired, as I did, or 
(I think, didn't test) set it to folderview, thus getting the full 
desktop as a folder effect of kde3.

2) Either don't use transparency/translucency, or if you do (I saw no 
sense in having it off in kde4 when kde3 could run it just fine), be SURE 
the fade time is set to zero.  There are two ways to do this, both in the 
desktop-effects kcontrol (aka systemsettings) dialog.  One, on the 
General tab, set animation speed to "Instant".  Two, on the All Effects 
tab, find translucency, configure it, and set fading duration to 0 to 10 
or so.  (The spinner increments are 100 ms, so the 10 ms suggestion is 
only a tenth of that.)  I actually discovered the second method first -- 
I'm not sure the first was actually there in 4.2.4 when I was working on 
this, but the first, on the general tab, should do it as well, plus 
possibly make other bits of the system more responsive.

Those two items, taken together, were what it took for me to get a 
reasonably responsive system, here.  YMMV of course, but it's worth 
trying, if you haven't.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman