Version: (using KDE 4.1.2) OS: Linux Installed from: Ubuntu Packages When a new user logs in to KDE4, they see a splash screen which appears to hang for 20 seconds (at the "hard drive icon" stage). There isn't a busy cursor, progress bar, or any other animation - for all they know the computer has locked up :-). It seems to be a CPU bound process, so they don't even have the reassurance of a whirring hard drive / flickering disk activity LED. By the way, this is on a Core 2 Duo - not a slow computer. So a) I think first login should be optimised a little more. Mainly because I end up having to nuke my .kde4 directory when things go wrong and I can't fix them. I think this will be common to kde3 users switching to kde4 :-). b) I think there should be a special status indicator / animation for first login, so that the screen isn't still for so long.
this isn't actually plasma; and the splashscreen icon is supposed to continue "beating" ... i assume it's doing something like running kbuildsycoca4 in the background (which is an io bound process and can take a while depending on the # and complexity of .desktop files) .. at least here the splash continues to animate when that happens, however. if it isn't, then it sounds like it's either stuck in a d-bus call somewhere or the cpu is being pinned by some other process. it would be interesting to start such a session, and jump to a terminal console running top to see what processes are hitting cpu (if any) .. if the cpu is quiet, then i assume it is locked in a d-bus call. that would bring it down to being one of a small handful of processes; what is your plasma configuration?
Sounds like this could be the khotkeys-deadlock-on-first-startup issue fixed with http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=881249
I started with a clean configuration today and it was dead slow. It looks that after the first icon appears on the splashscreen nothing then happens (I see no activity light) for a long time. I don't think it's plasma (it seems to happen before the start of the graphical stuff) but I don't know how to test what's going on, I never did nested sessions... The problem is not fixed by the above link, that's for sure.
what's likely happening is that kbuildsycoca4 or some other set up process is running and taking longer than the icon takes to "blur in", and so it appears to just sit there. the splash would really benefit from a little bus-wait animation icon that spins the entire time, like the one we have in plasma for plasmoids to use now. will investigate.
Sorry for not following up on this earlier. (In reply to comment #2) > Sounds like this could be the khotkeys-deadlock-on-first-startup issue fixed > with http://websvn.kde.org/?view=rev&revision=881249 It's still present in 4.2.2. I guess that means it's something else. > it would be interesting to start such a session, and jump to a terminal > console running top to see what processes are hitting cpu (if any) .. if the > cpu is quiet, then i assume it is locked in a d-bus call. You're right. Booting from a live cd, there is 15 seconds of disk and CPU activity, followed by 15 seconds of apparent complete inactivity, before the other icons start to fade in. > that would bring it down to being one of a small handful of processes; what > is your plasma configuration? I'm currently using the Kubuntu 9.04 Live CD, with KDE 4.2.2. This only happens on first login, so it's a default configuration. Should I attach a config file? If so, which one?
>It's still present in 4.2.2. This is years old, and many things have changed since then could you tell us if this is still a problem in Plasma 5
Sorry, no, I don't use KDE any more.