KDE 4.7 System Requirements

[Duncan]

_ posted on Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:35:39 +0100 as excerpted:

> I'm considering installing the KDE 4.7.4 version on my FreeBSD 8.2
> system,
> and I'd like to ask the community about the system requirements to make
> it run:
> 
> The base information for my system looks like this:
> 
> Intel P4 1.8 Ghz CPU 512 MB of RAM Intel Onboard Graphics Chip
> 
> Can anybody on this list give me any pointers as to the performance of
> KDE under the above hardware setup? Moreover, how much diskspace will
> KDE take?

Nobody else has mentioned the FBSD angle.  I know kde still runs on FBSD, 
but don't know much else about that angle either except that as I'm 
following a couple xorg lists as well, I know that for newer systems at 
least, some of the graphics accel stuff works best with KMS, kernel 
modesetting, which is AFAIK Linux-only at this point.  So it may be that 
the older graphics isn't such a problem in this regard after all, since 
you'd have other problems with newer graphics.


Meanwhile, I'm running kde on my gen-1.5 Acer Aspire One A150L netbook, 
still the old 1.6 GHz single-core with hyper-threading n270 Intel Atom, 
with the older integrated Intel graphics 945GME chip... before all the 
problems with the newer 500 series that Intel didn't design itself and 
thus couldn't provide proper specs for.  I do have the 120 gig disk 
version, so disk space isn't the problem it'd be on the 8-gig or whatever 
solid-state devices.  My netbook came with half a gig RAM soldered on and 
a single memory expansion slot that could take a half-gig or 1-gig 
stick.  I filled it with a 1-gig, giving me 1.5 gig total.

I run gentoo, so build my software from sources customized for the CPU, 
tho I do NOT do the building on that machine but rather on a 32-bit chroot 
on my main 4-core Opteron machine (itself nearing a decade old but high 
end for its age and with the CPUs upgraded as far as they'll go, dual 
dual-core Opteron 290s, 2.8 GHz, running gentoo/~amd64 with 6 gigs RAM 
and 4 SATA-150 disks in kernel-md/RAID, RAID-1 for most of the system 
with some RAID-0 as well).

I don't keep the netbook updated like I do my workstation, however, and 
AFAIK it's still running kde 4.5.5.

But, I CAN say that at least with packages built for that CPU and with 
the 1.5 gig memory I have in the machine, the netbook runs KDE quite 
well, including graphics effects.  It probably helps that the display is 
only 1024x600, not even a megapixel, however.  I expect it'd not do quite 
as well trying to drive the dual full 1080p HD monitors, 4.15 megapixels 
total, that I have on my workstation.

You don't mention the specific graphics you're running, but as you can 
see, except for the 1.5 gigs RAM I have vs. your half gig, the systems 
are at least somewhat comparable.  I do run Linux on mine and KMS, and 
the display I'm driving is small, but as I said, it runs impressively 
well, including effects so I can impress people using the cube to switch 
virtual desktops, etc.

So I think you'll do reasonably well with what you have, tho as others 
I'd recommend upping the memory to a gig anyway, if you can.  If you do 
run into issues with OpenGL effects, etc, unlike gnome3 (tho I understand 
they're changing it), you can turn off kde4's graphic effects and still 
run the same basic kde desktop as you'd have otherwise, just without the 
fancy graphic effects.  But as I said, the graphic effects run just fine 
on mine, and I expect they'd run on yours too, on Linux.  I honestly 
don't know enough about the BSDs to say whether you'll get good effects 
on them without the KMS or not, but even if you don't, you can turn that 
off and still run a very reasonable kde4.

Given your memory and perhaps disk constraints, tho, if you're building 
it yourself and thus can, or if you have the choice of packages built 
without it, I'd DEFINITELY suggest turning off the semantic-desktop 
stuff.  Don't install kdepim or akonadi at all; which means using 
something other than kmail (I use claws-mail), akregator (again, claws-
mail, with the rssyl feeds plugin), korganizer (I don't need an organizer/
scheduler here) and knode (I use pan as my news client).

Build without nepomuk, soprano, raptor, rasqual, virtuoso, etc.  Those 
are all part of the semantic-desktop stuff which will use a lot of memory 
and slow your system down.  Even on my workstation, getting rid of 
semantic-desktop was like adding a couple more cores or half a gigahertz 
clockspeed, so it's definitely worth it on a far slower machine with less 
than a gig of RAM.  Strigi is a non-optional component as best I can see 
(kdelibs links to it), but you don't have to build any backends for it.


Disk space?  I can't really say how much kde takes up, but I can say what 
my system uses all together.  I only have kde installed as a desktop 
environment, not gnome, but do run some gtk2 apps (as mentioned, claws-
mail and pan, plus firefox of course), and as Gentoo splits up the big 
monolithic module tarballs that kde ships into individual packages, I not 
only don't have some of the modules (like kdepim, as mentioned) installed 
at all, but for the modules I do use, I only have the individual packages 
I use and their dependencies installed, not the whole module.

Given those parameters and the fact that I have my partitions setup so 
everything installed by the portage package manager as well as portage's 
installed packages database (but not the package tree from which I 
install) is on the the rootfs...

All installed packages together with their system (but not user) config 
are on my rootfs, which is 4.8 gigs in size, 3.1 gigs used.  The $KDEHOME 
dir which contains most of the kde user config is another 212 MB, tho a 
bit of the config is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME as well.

So I could probably get my working system in 8 gigs, tho that wouldn't 
leave a lot of extra room around for user data like mail, news and media 
storage.  Especially media storage is what eats the gigs, these days.

Bottom line, with an already up and running system, no new mail storage 
or whatever to allocate, and with nepomuk (the index of which can EASILY 
eat several gigs by itself!), akonadi, and the rest of the semantic 
desktop turned off and preferably disabled at build-time altogether, I'm 
guessing you should be able to squeeze kde into 2 gigs, tho I'd be much 
more comfortable with at least 4 gigs available.  If you have double-
digit gigs available, there shouldn't be a problem at all, except 
possibly with distribution if it's over several separate partitions and 
you fill one of them up.

Oh, one other thing I should mention in this regard.  I'm running 
reiserfs here, with tail-packing on, so I don't have to worry about the 
usual files-are-allocated-in-whole-block-sizes problem that most 
filesystems would have.  Given the number of small config files, etc, 
that kde uses, if your filesystem allocates 1-MB blocks or larger and 
only whole blocks, you'll need to add probably another 10% at least to 
the figures above.  But 4 gig should still do it tho with little room for 
additional data, and double-digit-gigs should be fine.


When you DO get it up and running, please do consider becoming a regular 
on this list.  We really do need some BSD folks here as I don't think any 
current regulars are BSDers and we do get the occasional question, which 
current regulars have a hard time answering.

If you don't have the free time or interest for that, at least please do 
post how well it works (or if it doesn't) for you and any other hints for 
FBSDers you might have, as well as whether my suggestions helped or not, 
or even made sense at all on FBSD, so we can at least answer /some/ 
questions about kde on FBSD better than we do now.  It'd be /much/ 
appreciated by me at least, and probably even more by the various other 
FBSDers with questions!

Just confirming whether the OpenGL and/or XRender/Composite effects even 
work for you would be well more than I know now... and of course since 
you're thinking about it as you do the install, you can take before and 
after readings and report how much disk space it actually DID take for 
you, something which will benefit everyone with older, smaller disk space 
systems and/or on limited-space SSDs, not just BSD users. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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