how can KDE be made snappier?

[Roy Pluschke]

On September 28, 2004 13:25, Trevor Smith wrote:
> I've been to the "speed up kde" site, and kde is still just sluggish.
> Athlon XP-M 2800+ laptop, 512 meg ram, some sort of ATI Radeon graphics
> card, all the animations and eyecandy for kde turned off, and I can STILL
> visibly witness the repainting of window elements (it's fast, but visible).
> IMO, a window should reappear (when maximizing after hidden, for example)
> instantly and as a single unit.
>
> It takes 2+ seconds to load a konsole window (after it's just been closed).
>
> Also, opening a Konqueror window (just my damn home folder!!) takes MINIMUM
> a full second and you can see the painting of the inner window making
> things flash and such. Sometimes 3+ seconds. This is NOT time to show
> previews or anything like that. No F9 side bar is displayed. On Windows,
> directories of similar size open instantly.
>
> KDE performance section of the control center says minimize memory usage
> for file browsing only (recommended) and  max # of instances preloaded is 3
> (tried it with 0 and 1 as well, same results essentiallly). Also checked
> Always try to have at least one preloaded instance.
>

I have a venerable PIII 450 ,geforce 2 graphics card and a 2.6.x kernel 
(Debian).  When I maximize a hidden window it pops up instantly.  It does 
take 0.5 seconds to open a new Konsole but Konqueror only takes 0.25 sec in 
file or browser mode.  Kontrol center takes 1.5-2.0 seconds to load the first 
time, 1.0 sec afterwards. I can't notice any repainting of the window 
contents (one exception for me are complicated Scribus docs).  KDE is 
snappier on this machine than the original Win98 that it came with.  Open 
Office takes 50-70 seconds to load the first time :( but about 7 seconds on 
reloads (not using the quickstart utility).
  If I run gnome instead I find it to be a little slower (just my impression) 
and certain themes can't be used because of the re-draw rate of some widgets. 
Other themes seem fine.  The two desktops are pretty comparable with in my 
mind a slight edge to KDE.

There seems something else going on.  Try a different driver for your ati 
card.  Check your network setup - perhaps Konqueror is trying to access 
something unavailable.  Not much help, I know, but KDE should be much faster 
on your machine.  Laptops are always a pain to configure.

RJP
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