Arch Linux

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

I had a spare 10 Gb partition, not knowing what to do with it. Finaly I made it a second Arch partition, yet with KDE instead of GNOME.
Before this I didn't like KDE, but I just wanted to try if its performance would increase if I only would build the packages I need. So I started to install kdebase and kdelibs from repo, and have build all other KDE packages I need as seprate packages from the KDE source packages (p4 flag).
Basically now I have a far more responsive desktop compared to my gnome partition. Last time I tried KDE however, back in 3.5.1 times it was far slower compared to gnome 2.14. So is it now faster because KDE increased in performance, is it because I seperated the packages and only installed those I need (with my own flags ), or is it because of my p4 flag (which I don't believe).

Basically I want to switch back to gnome (though amarok is nice ), I so hate qt3 , but only if I could increase it's performance whcih I have now on my own build KDE.
Should this be possible with either the 2.14 releases or the 2.15 releases of gnome (if I optimize it for my needs) or should I just stick with KDE as my first boot option in grub ?
Any thoughts, please comment.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

KDE is always snappier than Gnome if you have sufficient RAM, it preloads more stuff... Also, Metacity is a slow, crappy window manager.

user

Member

Registered: 2006-03-29

Posts: 465

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

garnome and your p4 flag

http://www.gnome.org/projects/garnome/

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I removed my sig, cause i select the flag, the flag often the target of enemy.

SAR brain-tumor
[img]http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/460/cellphonethumb0ff.jpg[/img]

postlogic

Member

Registered: 2005-02-24

Posts: 410

Website

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

...which wouldn't help if KDE still preloads more stuff.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

Yep. And Anything above -march=i686 won't help very much.

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

Yes I've been thinking in replacing metacity and rebuild all other parts I need for gnome. But I doubt it will help so much, it looks like gtk2 is slower compared to qt3. For example scrolling my music library in rhythmbox/bansee is slow and buggy, but in amarok it's smooth.
I don't mind the bit longer startup times in gnome that much, but when they have started they should be responsive.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

I'd give Gnome + Openbox a try, it's a lot faster and there's a menu editor in the AUR that lets you make a Gnome pipe menu...

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

I'd give Gnome + Openbox a try, it's a lot faster and there's a menu editor in the AUR that lets you make a Gnome pipe menu...

I'll give it a try. Thanks

russianpirate

Member

Registered: 2006-05-17

Posts: 161

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

i like metacity.. it looks nice and fits in gnome well i dont see it lag a lot

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JGC

Developer

Registered: 2003-12-03

Posts: 1,664

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

KDE is faster than gnome, also on low-end machines. I noticed this with my P2 366 2 years ago already. Cairo is a real killer when it comes to performance

I'm running the cairo 1.1.x snapshots on a machine at my work, it runs better than with cairo 1.0.x. Expect quite big improvements when cairo 1.2.0 makes it into current.

russianpirate

Member

Registered: 2006-05-17

Posts: 161

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

I'm running the cairo 1.1.x snapshots on a machine at my work, it runs better than with cairo 1.0.x. Expect quite big improvements when cairo 1.2.0 makes it into current.

Sweet! Do you know around what time its gonna be in current?

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Darkstar:
Athlon 64 3500+ (OC ~2.49ghz)
Leadtek GeForce 6800 128mb (unlocked/OC)
Rosewill Value DDR400 1GB
WDC SE 80GB
NEC 3550 DVDRW DL 16X

JGC

Developer

Registered: 2003-12-03

Posts: 1,664

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

Cairo 1.2 has been scheduled for april, and is a requirement for GTK 2.10, which is scheduled in may according to the cairo roadmap. Looks like they didn't make their release schedules, but hey, Windows Vista should be released already when they made that roadmap

1.1.6 is the 3rd release candidate, so I don't think it will take very much longer. GTK also has had its first or second 2.9 release, but they don't have a short timeframe, they have to be done for the gnome 2.16 release in september.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

KDE is faster than gnome, also on low-end machines. I noticed this with my P2 366 2 years ago already. Cairo is a real killer when it comes to performance

I'm running the cairo 1.1.x snapshots on a machine at my work, it runs better than with cairo 1.0.x. Expect quite big improvements when cairo 1.2.0 makes it into current.

Cairo doesn't seem to hurt performance that much for me, but then I use a relatively current (though by now hilariously obsolete) machine.

pressh

Developer/TU

From: Netherlands

Registered: 2005-08-14

Posts: 1,719

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

KDE is faster than gnome, also on low-end machines. I noticed this with my P2 366 2 years ago already. Cairo is a real killer when it comes to performance

I'm running the cairo 1.1.x snapshots on a machine at my work, it runs better than with cairo 1.0.x. Expect quite big improvements when cairo 1.2.0 makes it into current.

Well I have a p4 1800 machine (512MB) so I guess it should just function normally.
I guess it will not hurt me trying the cairo snapshots too.

user

Member

Registered: 2006-03-29

Posts: 465

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

Flavor of  c ++ application little different to c.

so i am using gnome(c).

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I removed my sig, cause i select the flag, the flag often the target of enemy.

SAR brain-tumor
[img]http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/460/cellphonethumb0ff.jpg[/img]

pelle.k

Member

From: Åre, Sweden (EU)

Registered: 2006-04-30

Posts: 667

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

For me, installing vanilla kde in arch gives me a desktop as snappy as xfce4 would be in any other mainstream distro. I guess i686, amongst other things, really makes a diffrence.
It's a bit strange that KDE is snappier than gnome in arch, when equivalent to gnome (more or less...) in other distros.

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"Your beliefs can be like fences that surround you.
You must first see them or you will not even realize that you are not free, simply because you will not see beyond the fences.
They will represent the boundaries of your experience."
SETH / Jane Roberts

JGC

Developer

Registered: 2003-12-03

Posts: 1,664

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

I think somehow our KDE is less bloated than on other distros, but I can't say as I don't use KDE or other distros

The point of C or C++ is only noticable on compile time. (I can compile GTK and the whole GNOME platform in the same time I need to compile Qt). On runtime, the Qt toolkit wins from GTK2 when it comes to performance. Qt doesn't stress your X server as much as Cairo does (cairo is in fact one of the few libraries that uncovered many rendering and performance bugs in the RENDER implementation in Xorg).

funkyou

Member

From: Berlin, DE

Registered: 2006-03-19

Posts: 848

Website

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

As far as i can see, Arch's KDE is a completely unpatched "vanilla" version, except the tango patch... When you compare that with Ubuntu's KDE for example, their .diff.gz for kdebase alone has already about 1.5mb and adds much bloat to it...

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want a modular and tweaked KDE for arch? try kdemod

twiistedkaos

Member

Registered: 2006-05-20

Posts: 666

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

This conversation is very spectical, Different people have different opinions and different desktops work better on other machines than they do on some. I've never really "jumped into" kde, I gave it a test drive acouple times but I always find myself comming back to gnome because I love simplicity and KDE seems way overbloated IMHO. Also, most resources I have read, both on KDE forums and Gnome forums, Qt is much slower than GTK.

Bralkein

Member

Registered: 2004-10-26

Posts: 354

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

I think KDE can seem a bit bloated at first, because it seems to have everything turned on by default. I think this is actually a good idea, because it makes it easier to find the features you like. Once you've done that, it generally seems simple to turn off anything you don't want.

It will be interesting to see how the performance of KDE changes when KDE4 comes along. Qt4 has something analogous to Cairo, so we will see how that affects things. I heard in an interview a few months ago that someone had made some improvements to KDE and managed to make it start up faster than XFCE! I will believe that when I see it

Also, improvements in the GNU C and C++ compilers and libraries should mean that things continue to improve for both KDE and GNOME, as far as speed goes

twiistedkaos

Member

Registered: 2006-05-20

Posts: 666

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

I think KDE can seem a bit bloated at first, because it seems to have everything turned on by default. I think this is actually a good idea, because it makes it easier to find the features you like. Once you've done that, it generally seems simple to turn off anything you don't want.

It will be interesting to see how the performance of KDE changes when KDE4 comes along. Qt4 has something analogous to Cairo, so we will see how that affects things. I heard in an interview a few months ago that someone had made some improvements to KDE and managed to make it start up faster than XFCE! I will believe that when I see it

Also, improvements in the GNU C and C++ compilers and libraries should mean that things continue to improve for both KDE and GNOME, as far as speed goes

Hehe, yes; I plan to give kde4 a test drive when it comes out. I am very fond of Gnome though, i just like how it's setup. When 2.14 came out I was very impressed with how much faster it was than 2.12.

Bralkein

Member

Registered: 2004-10-26

Posts: 354

Re: My home brew kde is faster compared to gnome :(

Yeah, I heard that lots of special efforts were made with Gnome in 2.14. Apparently the Gnome Terminal was very slow, so much so that lots of people were even using Konsole instead... they made lots of effort and apparently it's much better now. It's really good to see both DEs making an effort for efficiency as well as features!