File open/select dialogs very slow

[Philip Rodrigues]

> My apologies if this has been answered already, or if I am posting to
> the wrong list.

This is the right list for KDE user support, and I don't remember a similar
question being posted here before, so you're OK :-).

<snip> 
> This behaviour is consistent over a range of applications:
> 
> Thunderbird, Firefox, KPDF, Konqueror, plus others.

This is the point at which I was going to say that it's probably a distro or
setup issue, but I read on...

<snip>
> If I use Gnome instead of KDE, the non-KDE applications, such as
> Thunderbird and Firefox cease to have this problem, whereas KDE apps
> such as KPDF continue to.

...so it's a KDE-related issue, I guess.

> I assume that this is due to KDE providing a central file navigator
> dialog which most apps end up using. I have tried
> adjusting settings in the KDE file manager control panel, such as
> disabling all previews. This seems to have reduced the longest waits
> (from over 30 seconds to 15-20 seconds), but the delay is still too long.

There are two possibilities that I can think of:
1. The file dialog is trying to access some slow or unavailable media, and
is timing out: do you have any NFS or samba shares, or perhaps some unusual
setup with removable media?
2. You've run into the "various hostname resolution issues make everything
go slow" problem. There are some hints for fixing it at
http://dot.kde.org/1065244432/1065325080/ . You might also need to set the
environment variable KDE_NO_IPV6=1 (unless of course, you're using IPv6).

Neither of those really explain why the problem occurs in non-KDE
applications running under KDE though. I don't think any of the apps you
mentioned use the KDE open/save dialog (do they?).

> This issue was one of a number that stopped a rollout of 30 Linux
> machines to the architects in our office. We have deployed on Win2000
> instead, and will revisit linux/KDE in about 12 months' time. (Yes, I
> know I could deploy on Gnome instead of KDE, but I would prefer to try
> fixing it under KDE, than abandon KDE just yet.)

Nice to hear that you're still keen on using KDE :-). Just in case you
haven't come across it before, you might be interested in 
http://enterprise.kde.org/ , which has information for those deploying KDE
in an enterprise environment.

Regards,
Philip
-- 
KDE Documentation Team: http://i18n.kde.org/doc
KDE Documentation Online: http://docs.kde.org

___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management:  https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.