Bug 217632 - Snow effect in Kwin prevents new applications from loading or drastically increases the time it takes for them to load even on relatively high performance systems
Summary: Snow effect in Kwin prevents new applications from loading or drastically inc...
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: kwin
Classification: Plasma
Component: compositing (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: unspecified
Platform: Arch Linux Linux
: VLO normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: KWin default assignee
URL:
Keywords: investigated, triaged
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-12-06 20:58 UTC by Steven Hadley
Modified: 2018-10-21 05:26 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

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Description Steven Hadley 2009-12-06 20:58:39 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.3.4)
Compiler:          gcc 4.4.2 
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Archlinux Packages

Snow desktop effect prevents new applications from loading or drastically increases the time it takes to load new applications.  CPU or memory usage doesn't seem to increase but as soon as snow is turned on no applications will load.  I was able to reduce the severity of the problem bylimiting the number of snow flakes to less than 50 and use 3px or less snow flakes.  Reproduced the problem on my yonah 1.6Ghz laptop with 1 gig memory and intel 945gm, merom 1.8 ghz laptop with 2 gigs memory and intel 965gm, and 2.4Ghz conroe with 2 gigs memory and nvidia 9800gt.  I have no problem running compiz or enlightenment snow on any of these systems.
Comment 1 Martin Flöser 2009-12-06 22:23:11 UTC
The snow effect is the effect which requires most ressources, as it triggers constant full repaints and needs to calculate the new snow positions. In case of NVIDIA proprietary driver the second part can be done on the graphics card instead of the CPU. So yes for your Intel Systems I can imagine that it slows down the system and on such a low end system I would not use the effect.

But as you also mention the nvidia card I have to ask what other effects do you use?
Comment 2 thomas coopman 2009-12-07 22:14:59 UTC
I tried this to see what was the effect here.
When I enabled the snow-effect.  Kwin used around 30%cpu.  But the load time of new aplications was not really affected (it was somewhat slower perhaps, but there was offcourse a high cpu usage also).
I'm using an nvidia card 8600M GT with the latest drivers 190.42
Comment 3 Martin Flöser 2009-12-19 14:26:04 UTC
waiting for info about other effects as snow is slow but should not have performance impact on other applications.
Comment 4 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-09-20 03:07:36 UTC
Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 15 days. Please provide the requested information as soon as possible and set the bug status as REPORTED. Due to regular bug tracker maintenance, if the bug is still in NEEDSINFO status with no change in 30 days, the bug will be closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the wiki located here: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging

If you have already provided the requested information, please set the bug status as REPORTED so that the KDE team knows that the bug is ready to be confirmed.

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!
Comment 5 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-10-21 05:26:17 UTC
This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least
30 days. The bug is now closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME
due to lack of needed information.

For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the
wiki located here:
https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!