Bug 200482

Summary:	KDE4 seems slower than KDE3 on a VIA CLE266 chipset. Would like to see speed improvement.
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	Bartemius Crouch <egxoun8uya67izy>
Component:	general	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Severity:	wishlist
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	4.2.4
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian testing
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Bartemius Crouch 2009-07-16 22:08:26 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.2.4)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages

I'm currently running KDE 3.5.10 from Debian Testing (Squeeze) on an EPIA mini-ITX motherboard with 512MB RAM 1.0 GHz Processor and the onboard VIA CLE266 video chipset. I am still hesitant of switching to KDE4 and one of the problems is that I recently tried running the live CD distribution SIDUX 2009-02 with KDE 4.2.4 and found that it is slower than KDE 3.5.10 with things like moving a window, minimizing and maximizing windows. It just feels and looks like a poor experience because of the slowness. I would like to see speed improvement.

Comment 1 Christoph Feck 2009-07-16 22:49:24 UTC

Please note that booting into a live CD might not get the optimum configuration, especially regarding video drivers. If you can install into a separate partition, you might try that.

Comment 2 Martin Flöser 2009-07-17 00:07:09 UTC

I agree with Christoph: given your hardware configuration I pretty much doubt you can have a nice experience with any live system.

That said: without knowing how a native installation will look like it's difficult to say there is a bug or anything to improve. First of all - if your hardware is capable of doing compositing (desktop effects) you should better disable them as they need a lot of RAM. As you mentioned slow window moving I doubt that your hardware supports compositing.

Please also note that the complete KDE architecture has gone a great step with KDE 4. And as it's with everything: there is no such thing as free lunch. When we want to have a nice looking system with so many great features it will require ressources. So it is possible that your system is just too old to run KDE 4 in a smooth environment - I don't know I never have tried KDE 4 on such old hardware and it might be possible.

Comment 3 Martin Flöser 2010-10-03 11:05:04 UTC

Improving performance is an ongoing process. I do not see how we can ever implement this feature request.