Login from SDDM until a usable desktop takes 20+ seconds on a i5 6500 running on a SSD. Test conditions: - New user (empty $HOME, besides /etc/skel) - Cold boot - Display server: XOrg 1.19.5 - Plasma: 5.11.2 - SDDM: 0.16.0 - Distro: ArchLinux - CPU: i5 6500 - Storage: SSD (except for /var and /home) Results: 22 seconds from pressing "Login" on SDDM until the default panel to show up.
Slow startups are something we're working on. Unless you have identified anything specific causing a slowdown in the startup this is too vague to be a useful report.
Hi David, No offense, but are you saying that I should only report a bug if I already knew its cause? I don't think it makes much sense. You said it's a known bug, yet I can't find any report for it. If I found, I wouldn't spend my time reporting it. Anyhow, if you need any info, logs, etc, to make this report less "vague" (which I disagree) I'll gladly help. Thanks.
Some people reported that disabling the Splash screen via systemsettings5 improved startup time for Plasma. Also try a second start. For fresh users, the initial system configuration cache (ksycoca5) has to be created, which needs to scan several system and user folders, but it is not clear from your report how much time is actually spent for this.
Thanks for the points, Christoph. Actually, I did some more tests in the last weeks and I'll try to comment on them and answer your points. Every metric here was taken right after a cold boot. 1) Indeed, I realized that the second login for a new user is much faster than the first one. In my case, it drops to something near to 11 seconds. 2) Disabling the splash screen didn't help with the startup time, but allowed me to see that the last part of the desktop to show up, in my case, is the panel. So, oddly, I found out that simply removing it and adding it again improves the time, even for a clean user. For my main user, this procedure cut the initialization time for about the half (from ~33s to ~17s), even after redoing all the previous customizations to the panel. Right now, I have replaced it with Latte Dock (also heavily customized) and I still boot from SDDM to my main user in about 17s. For a brand new user, after this odd workaround, a second login takes about 9 seconds (instead of the 11s mentioned before). 3) These times are more acceptable, and I wonder if they are expected regarding the current architecture of Plasma. However, they are still very high compared, for example, to GNOME on the same machine. GNOME takes me 3 seconds from GDM to a fully functional desktop. I won't, of course, mention lighter alternatives such as Xfce or i3.
>3) These times are more acceptable, and I wonder if they are expected regarding the current architecture of Plasma. To some extent. ksplash is removed when both plasma reports it's done and we've launched all autostart apps - we don't wait for autostart apps to finish, so it's no surprise that using latte dock makes it seem faster. The old panel being slow would be interesting if you still had the old config. Note 5.12 does bring at least 5 indepentent startup performance improvements, with more in the works.
Thanks for the info. > ksplash is removed when both plasma reports it's done and we've launched all > autostart apps - we don't wait for autostart apps to finish, so it's no > surprise that using latte dock makes it seem faster. Just to clarify, replacing the panel with Latte Dock didn't make my startup faster or slower. Also, I took the times with ksplash turned off, so it didn't influence. > The old panel being slow would be interesting if you still had the old config. I don't, unfortunately. :/