Hi Alan,

I and a lot of other ppl can't reproduce this. So, it's very likely that it's a local problem. But in any case such a report is really worthless since no single detail is provided. What processes? Why python? etc. So, let's mark it as worksforme. If you think this is not right, then please reopen and provide some more details. Thanks in advance.

btw, bug #163186 is maybe related.

this bug was fixed a couple days ago (but after the beta). it was a simple porting error affecting "square" applets causing an inifinite resizing loop.

(and yes, the tone of this bug report was *way* over the line. poor form.)

heh. yes, I was assuming it's probably a dup of bug #163186 but since we can't be sure cause no informations are provided... Well, I would suggest to read the initial report from bug #163186 since it's a perfect example why details are needed :)

Sorry that the tone is *way* over the line, poor form.

Indeed, had the search engine found #163186, I would have added a comment rather than opening a new bug. At least the concern is clearly related, even if the exact culprit may be different.

"No single detail provided" - I reported NO PANELS, NO PLASMOIDS, NO WINDOWS, NO EFFECTS. An idle X-display. Switching to a virtual terminal showed a very active plasma. Doing what? I'll try removing EVERYTHING again and start a new session, because there may be active processes left hanging around, I suspect.

Basic KDE use must not load down the machine. Please keep this in mind when developing gizmos and gadgets that are seductive but not so productive. I will correct myself here, as different users find different features useful, indeed.

Sorry again for the form. I do appreciate all the work that everyone contributes. But, please, do not be too influenced by OSX and Windows and keep KDE superior (but do not reject good ideas found elsewhere, either)!

OK, I stripped my desktop to a bare minimum and logged out and back in (starting from an empty session). The system then responded normally, showing activity as I would have expected. So, indeed, the problem seems to be applications hanging around after previously exploring some of the features of KDE4. I have learned that it is better practice (for me at least) to select "restore manually saved session" in the session manager.

Why python in the original report? I discovered that the culprit was amarok that was left running in the background (but did not appear in the panel before I removed it, as there was no system tray applet). I was unaware that amarok was running a script that spawned many instances of python...

Works for me, too, now.

Maybe it would be useful to have a tool to list (or even to edit) all processes that are active and to be restarted upon login. This would be different from ps, top or krunner that show active processes on the machine regardless of the session.

Hi Alan,

first thanks for your additional feedback. It is for sure not a prob to don't note that a reported thing may related to another already reported thing and it's for sure also not a problem to have multiple reports about the same issue since that shows us very good how much users are affected by the problem what in turn may help to prioritize things a bit.

Re "No single detail provided"; well, I was refering here to _for_us_ useful details. Also it's not a problem if they are not provided since not everybody may know what useful informations may are. In that case the normal way would be to just ask for them and then try to look if the report is probably related to another report, if the problem can be reproduced by us and how to fix it.

But there are some reports that are just not worth to spend time with. Let's look why I was believing that your report was falling into that category;

"I am suprised by plasma's hunger. Running almost nothing (useful that is) still eats up lots of CPU time. "

Ok, this let's us know that "plasma uses huge amount of CPU time" on your system. Indend a very useful information but that alone doesn't help us to address it.
 
"I've tried removing all plasmoids, all panels, no background, no windows, no effects."

This could be another very useful information if that wouldn't open multiple additional questions like;
* How did you removed them? (no background == no background-image?)
* Did you restart in between (aka after removing them)?
* What plasmoids got removed?

"Switching to another virtual console still reports lots of plasma and python activity."

* So, plasma was still running and you switched to another virtual console (not virtual desktop) and did a "top"?
* What plasma activity?
* What python activity?
* What means "lots"?

"I suspect that even with no productive work going on, the power is still there... "

Without question I suspect the same.
 
"This CPU bloat is almost like Windows!"

Yay. And that's where the report turned from the "reask" into the "not-worth-to-spend-time-with" category. Please consider that you did report a *bug* here and it's *not* anybody's motivation to let your CPU bleed but to *fix* the bug.

"Doing what? I'll try removing EVERYTHING again and start a new session, because there may be active processes left hanging around, I suspect."
 
Yes, this would great :) Also it would be still great to have more details. So, after restarting the session (without any plasmoids enabled) is the CPU-usage still that high? If not, then one of the plasmoids was responsible and we are one step closer to assume that you did run into bug #163186 as well. To be sure we could try to isolate the plasmoid that is responsible for it but in any case, once we are there, I could try to reproduce the problem on my system and on success (and if it's not related to bug #16318 at all) it would make it much easier to find a solution :)

"Basic KDE use must not load down the machine."

Do you really believe anybody wouldn't agree there? Well, you reported a *bug* and per definition a bug is an unwanted thing (well, at least for us :) that needs to be fixed and it does not help (your report and therefore us) to assume we just collect bugreports to don't fix them.

But as sayed: please reopen the report and provide us some more details if you like (I named some of the questions above already) and please just assume that we try to fix your bug rather then believing it's a wanted "feature" to bleed your CPU ;)

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Of course, there is no plot to eat-up CPU time. However, I do suspect that most developers work on fairly recent, duo-core, multi-processor machines and don't necessarily notice so severely the effects on performance due to bloat. The rest of us work with less powerful machines, nevertheless, largely sufficient for the work at hand. That is, if we are not seduced by all of the animations and other gizmos and gadgets. These are indeed impressive to the average user, and exciting for the developer, but, frankly, of limited use for real users. Nevertheless, having stated that, some new features do indeed lead to real gains in productivity, so one need to be careful not to condemn them all.

Just for information, I am working with a single Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz processor and 1Gb of memory, as well as a portable equipped with a single Pentium M 2.0Ghz processor with 1Gb of memory, now outdated but hardly obsolete.

Getting back to the subject of the bug report, as one can see from my above comments, stripping down the desktop, exiting and reentering KDE, or even rebooting the machine may not be sufficient, given that hidden background processes may be restarted upon login. I was able to clean things up by switching to a virtual console, using then ps and kill before switching back to the X display and logging-out of my KDE session.

Therefore, for the 4.1 release, may I suggest being very careful to keep these performance issues in the forefront, and much has been improved in 4.1 Beta 1 since 4.0. Indeed, I see lots of comments on the net condemning KDE4 in this way, with resistance to change for this very reason. 

A possible solution is more of a wishlist than a bug: Missing from KDE4 is a very transparent session manager (to be able to clean-up within KDE), as well as a profile initializer. It could/should be much simpler than that available before in KDE3, for example offering only two choices: a minimal, "clean" KDE4 experience, and a fully-animated, spiffy, more complete desktop initialization.

Finally, "...almost like Windows". I guess that this is the extreme insult, and it almost provoked the "not-worth-to-spend-time-with" and "poor form" reactions. My taking the time to try to use Beta software and reporting bugs is aimed at providing feedback, not just an airing of frustration. But Windows-based systems are often imposed on us, and so I do fear seeing my beloved unix environment transformed in a similar fashion.

> Getting back to the subject of the bug report, as one can see from my
> above comments, stripping down the desktop, exiting and reentering
> KDE, or even rebooting the machine may not be sufficient

It should else it's a bug that needs to be fixed imho.

> performance issues

Performance is important and KDE also targets small form devices. So, things will improve over the time, bugs will be fixed, etc.

> very transparent session manager
> profile initializer

yes! :-)

p.s. just for information; while my desktop-pc is a rather fast dual-core my laptop is a 500MHz+128MB RAM system (that system just rocks and is enough for presentations, to write some letters, browse around, mail, etc. :-)