Arch Linux

Kaentarys

Member

From: Spain

Registered: 2013-08-07

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] KDE too slow on VirtualBox

I've installed Arch Linux on VirtualBox with KDE. At first I tried to install through 'pacman -S kde-meta' and, after seeing it was slow, I tried to do that through 'pacman -S kde-meta-kdebase', but KDE also is too slow.

For some reason I don't know, VirtualBox starts to load and load from HDD all the time. However, if I install XFCE, everything goes well.

Why?

Last edited by Kaentarys (2013-08-07 22:42:58)

schmidtbag

Member

From: NH, USA

Registered: 2011-02-08

Posts: 337

Re: [SOLVED] KDE too slow on VirtualBox

This is probably due to nepomuk, which is an indexing service.  Either disable it or let it finish and performance should improve.  Another possible cause is:
* You didn't install the virtual GPU drivers
* Your host GPU is too slow and/or you enabled kwin compositing
* You're using LLVM with kwin compositing enabled

Kaentarys

Member

From: Spain

Registered: 2013-08-07

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] KDE too slow on VirtualBox

This is probably due to nepomuk, which is an indexing service.  Either disable it or let it finish and performance should improve.  Another possible cause is:
* You didn't install the virtual GPU drivers
* Your host GPU is too slow and/or you enabled kwin compositing
* You're using LLVM with kwin compositing enabled

* VirtualBox is able to resize and adjust the window right. So I'd say that I installed the virtual GPU drivers.
* My host GPU works well with KDE, but I've only tried it in other distros. I don't know if kwin is enable, but I know I didn't change any configuration of KDE.
* How can I disable it?

I saw there are more than one process using the HDD. (I used iotop.) So can I discard that Nepomuk is causing the problem?

Last edited by Kaentarys (2013-08-07 20:40:53)

schmidtbag

Member

From: NH, USA

Registered: 2011-02-08

Posts: 337

Re: [SOLVED] KDE too slow on VirtualBox

If you seem to get overall decent video performance, I'm sure video drivers or compositing aren't the issue.  What are the other tasks resulting in chronic load?  They might be sub-processes of nepomuk - I personally disable it and remove as much of it from my system as Arch will let me.  Nepomuk is known to cause problems for people.

Also, is there anything that seems to have high CPU usage?

Last edited by schmidtbag (2013-08-07 20:56:45)

Kaentarys

Member

From: Spain

Registered: 2013-08-07

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] KDE too slow on VirtualBox

Take a look:

I/O is too high.

Update: OK. I forgot to add more RAM to VirtualBox. (VM had only 256 MB of RAM.) So, high I/O is justified by endless page faults, I guess.

Last edited by Kaentarys (2013-08-07 22:18:07)

schmidtbag

Member

From: NH, USA

Registered: 2011-02-08

Posts: 337

Re: [SOLVED] KDE too slow on VirtualBox

Haha yeah, KDE is pretty heavy.  So I assume you're all set?

Kaentarys

Member

From: Spain

Registered: 2013-08-07

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] KDE too slow on VirtualBox

Haha yeah, KDE is pretty heavy.  So I assume you're all set?

Yay! Problem solved.