Arch Linux

ujjwal

Member

Registered: 2006-01-31

Posts: 27

GTK performance

I use Arch on a rather old system (266MHz, 128MB RAM) and its general lightweight nature has impressed me. However, GTK+2 applications like X-Chat, Leafpad, XFCE perform rather sluggishly. This problem has increased since version 2.8. The major slowness in GTK seems to involve text rendering (which is handled by pango, I understand), switching between menu's, and redrawing/resizing. I wondered whether there are any tips to reduce the resource usage of GTK. I use the standard "Raleigh" theme. Perhaps a lighter theme exists? Any compile time optimisations would also be welcome.

Thanks in advance

sh__

Member

Registered: 2005-07-19

Posts: 272

Re: GTK performance

Antialiased fonts are slow to render, so set the default font to a bitmap font.

Usually themes based on the pixmap engine are slow. Smooth is pretty fast engine, clearlooks can be ok (you might want to compile it with --disable-animation). Here is one minimalistic theme that uses the smooth engine: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show. … tent=28489

ujjwal

Member

Registered: 2006-01-31

Posts: 27

Re: GTK performance

I tried disabling font aliasing globally in the /etc/fonts/local.conf file. Very strangely, the performance (as measured by gtkperf) decreased a little bit. I will try out the smooth engine, thanks a lot.