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

[Anne Wilson]

On Tuesday 06 October 2009 18:43:52 Duncan wrote:
> 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.
> 
With that as a guide, I'll give it another try on my aging ATi Mobility Radeon 
X600.  First impressions are that it's certainly not as slow, so I'll stick 
with it a while and see whether it helps.

Meanwhile, would you mind writing that up on UserBase?  The right place, I 
think, would be http://userbase.kde.org/GPU-Performance#systemsettings

Anne
-- 
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