Version:            (using KDE Devel)
Installed from:    Compiled sources
OS:                Linux

There are many settings that depend on your computer's performance. The user should not have to bother adapting the default settings to the hardware, e.g. for kwin+composite, eye-candy in general (plasma). Further even less obviously related applications will have serious usability-bugs if there is no possibility to adapt default settings.

An example: Dolphin uses a default setting for creating previews that restricts that functionality to files smaller than 1MB. As a result by default no file that is larger than 1MB will be displayed as image-thumbnail when the user clicks on "preview".

The most useful preview concerns pictures, i.e. photos. Today digital-cameras provide at least a resolution of 4 Megapixel or more. This means that the user will not be able to use the preview functionality with its default settings for photos. Which is pretty bad from a usability point of view.

Of course this setting does make sense for old hardware (very old indeed). So it becomes obvious that a lot of default-settings depend on the computer's hardware. In order to avoid these kind of issues there should be a central point that applications can query in order to adjust their settings accordingly.

Minimal implementation: Provide a place where the user can manually set the hardware's performance-level. At least one would not have to modify each and every application on its own.

PERFORMANCE
Graphics: low/medium/high
CPU: low/medium/high
RAM: <512/<1024/>1024MB

Optimal implementation: Check hardware automatically and provide a button to re-check. Rate graphics/(-driver), RAM and CPU and assign a number to each. An overall value would not be enough since some applications might only need a lot of RAM but no graphics-performance.

As a result Dolphin would use e.g. 5MB as default setting for preview on recent hardware but lower the setting automatically on older hardware. Kwin as well as plasma would adjust the effects used, openGL screensavers would be excluded/included etc.