Starting KDE faster IF KDE was started when the server

[Martijn Klingens]

On Wednesday 16 March 2005 17:58, Jonathan Chen wrote:
> > Well, what you could do is automatically login to a local KDE
> > session so at least all important files are in the system's
> > caches. After you have loaded this initial session you can
> > logout the session or leave it running to force the system to
> > keep KDE in the working set. The latter can have lots of
> > negative side effects, so be sure to do LOTS of testing to
> > see whether it improves performance. Preloading KDE on boot
> > time and then logging off again should help in any case.
>
> Is there any instructions for this? Not an expert with KDE.  I'm too used
> to command line. =)

Just logging in can be configured through KDM. Specify autologin in the System 
Administration->Login Manager module of the KDE control center (kcontrol).

Trying to leave it running in a clever way that doesn't eat more resources 
than it gains you requires serious activity monitoring to log on and off 
whenever the load demands so and a LOT of testing. Not much that can be 
covered in simple 'instructions', more like being prepared to do a lot of 
grunt work. You'd probably be the first to actually try such a thing, so if 
you endeavour it and get it working, be sure to post back your results here 
and/or on the kde-kiosk mailing list. :)

> Exactly,  the reason why I said having KDE startup during boot time is so
> that when a user logs into a RHEL w/KDE, the system would load up his/her
> profile and not completely startup kde.  Basically asking for something
> like Win2k3 with Citrix on the server.   Of course in this case its
> RHEL/KDE with FreeNX(as citrix equivalent).

I don't know how Citrix does it. A plain Windows terminal server does no 
preloading and starts an interactive logon after you enter your credentials, 
just like KDE/NX does.

What preloading of a (mind the "a", it can be of any user!) KDE session gains 
you is that all programs that are needed on logon have already be loaded at 
least once, so you can be fairly sure they are in all the caches that the 
system has, improving performance a lot. A 'cold' logon of KDE with no useful 
cache is a lot slower than a warm logon. Both just rely on the OS' own 
caching for their performance gain though, just like a plain Windows terminal 
server.

If Citrix does more, please explain it, so I know what exactly you're looking 
for.

> Also I'm curious how later version of KDE 3.2 and up help in the terminal
> server area?

They use less memory and are faster at both logon and application startup. 
This helps in being more scalable (more concurrent sessions on the same 
system), being perceived as faster and in quicker logons.

This applies to KDE 3.2 and up in general and has nothing special to do with 
terminal servers though.
-- 
Martijn