how can KDE be made snappier?

[James Richard Tyrer]

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.

I think that this might be X that is causing the delay.

> 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.
> 
You can slightly improve performance by checking: "Always" in the Radio at the 
top of the KDE Performance KCM.

> FYI:
> 
> [root at localhost trevor]# hdparm /dev/hda
> 
> /dev/hda:
>  multcount    = 16 (on)
>  IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
>  unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
>  using_dma    =  1 (on)
>  keepsettings =  0 (off)
>  readonly     =  0 (off)
>  readahead    = 256 (on)
>  geometry     = 16383/255/63, sectors = 78140160, start = 0
> [root at localhost trevor]# hdparm -tT /dev/hda
> 
> /dev/hda:
>  Timing buffer-cache reads:   516 MB in  2.00 seconds = 257.78 MB/sec
>  Timing buffered disk reads:   44 MB in  3.08 seconds =  14.28 MB/sec
> 
You can slightly improve your disk performance by increasing: IO_support to 3:

	EIDE_32BIT=3

if your hardware supports this.  Or don't set it and let the driver set it.

It is also quite possible that your have set the readahead to too large a value. 
  I use only 8 and I have 50% better buffered disk reads.

--
JRT


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