THE kde desktop is slow... SOLVED (for me)

[Duncan]

Duncan posted on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:10:46 +0000 as excerpted:

> 秀涛 posted on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 22:59:57 +0800 as excerpted:
> 
>> Hi friends!I am using kde now, I just compiled it. every things seems
>> fine, but the speed...
>> tow problems:
>> 1. I takes long time to load the desktop successfully, from pressing
>> enter to I can see the beautiful desktop background-image, almost takes
>> 2 minutes;
>> 2. it often hangs for ten or 30 seconds to response to an mouse action,
>> For example, I want to open the konqueror ,or opera. both of them takes
>> long time to start up successfully. when they are "starting", others
>> actions will be affected slow down.
>> 
>> here is some infos about my OS and kde OS:Gentoo -- the os is totally
>> on a flash disk with 16G capacity KDE:4.9.2 Graphic:Intel Integrated
>> Mobile 945GSE
> 
> Hi fellow kde gentooer! =:^)
> 
> I haven't updated it in awhile (it's not my primary system), but I run
> kde on my original Acer Aspire One netbook (AOA-150L model, Atom n270).
> KDE runs fine on that, tho it /has/ been awhile since I updated; I think
> it's still running late 4.6 so it has been over a year.
> 
> Rex has the right idea, tho.  Try experimenting with the effects.

Just a followup since I upgraded my netbook kde 4.6 -> 4.9.2 and HAD THE 
SAME PROBLEM, and a solid config change workaround/fix might be helpful 
to others googling the problem in the future and finding this thread...

The above idea was generally correct, pointing to desktop effects, but I 
have better specifics now:

Desktop effects, advanced tab: UNCHECK Use OpenGL2 shaders.

Apply, accept the change in the timeout, and response should be MUCH 
better now, altho you may see a note at the top saying certain effects 
couldn't be activated because they require OpenGL2.  But better missing a 
couple effects than having the desktop freezing for tens of seconds at a 
time!

The problem is as I said, Intel graphics drivers claim some hardware 
capabilities that the hardware actually doesn't have, implementing them 
in software emulation instead.

And original atom CPU hardware is slow tho generally tolerably slow, but 
*EXTREMELY* SLOW when emulating those OpenGL capacities on the CPU 
instead of the GPU.  As in 20 seconds to two minutes slow for effects 
designed to happen in a fraction of a second.  And during the wait, the 
whole desktop, plasma, etc, is frozen, altho the mouse moves and other 
apps may be fine.

I also found that sometimes, ctrl-alt-fX hotkeying to an alternate VT and 
back to the VT with X on it seemed to help, as apparently, switching away 
allows the OpenGL context to "jump" the effect as it's no longer actually 
trying to render it.  That might help to actually bring the desktop to a 
point where you can invoke kde systemsettings and do the config change.

But the fix did work.  Turning the opengl2 shaders option off and hitting 
apply, IMMEDIATELY sped things up, so that even hitting the accept these 
settings button on the timeout dialog before it expired was easier!

So wow, I DEFINITELY saw your problem, and the above fixed it, at least 
for me.  Now if anyone else comes across the discussion from google or 
whatever, maybe it'll fix it for them too. =:^)

-- 
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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