Arch Linux

Ravenman

Member

Registered: 2009-07-03

Posts: 236

Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Hi to everyone:

I found one trick for speed up Plasma & KDE 4:

Edit the /usr/share/autostart/plasma-desktop.desktop file:

kdesu 'kwrite /usr/share/autostart/plasma-desktop.desktop'

Line 2 is the one you want. Just add -graphicssystem 'whatever backend you want'

Try this too:

kdesu 'kwrite /usr/bin/startkde'

change this line (384 in my file) from

kwrapper4 ksmserver $KDEWM

to

kwrapper4 ksmserver $KDEWM -graphicssystem raster

Save, logout and back in again.

And tell us your experience!

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quarkup

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2008-09-07

Posts: 497

Website

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

hi.
i'm going to try it, but could u post the direct link for the thread/topic of the pclinuxOS article?

thanks

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If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Rasi

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-14

Posts: 1,914

Website

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Hi to everyone:

I found one trick for speed up Plasma & KDE 4:
...

while the plasma tip is very nice (its bleeding fast with raster engine), the kwin one will not allow compositing...

Last edited by Rasi (2009-10-06 18:59:44)

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Ravenman

Member

Registered: 2009-07-03

Posts: 236

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

hi.
i'm going to try it, but could u post the direct link for the thread/topic of the pclinuxOS article?

thanks

Yes, I do. Here it's: http://www.pclinuxos.com/index.php?opti … ic=62919.0

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Ravenman

Member

Registered: 2009-07-03

Posts: 236

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

while the plasma tip is very nice (its bleeding fast with raster engine), the kwin one will not allow compositing...

Are you talking about compositing into desktop ?

If I do see on System preferences -> Desktop - Desktop effects ... I can read: Compositing is active

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benerivo

Member

Registered: 2008-02-02

Posts: 30

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Thanks, that has clearly improved the movement of all desktop icons and plasmoids. Before this, simply dragging a file from the desktop (using Desktop folder view) to a dolphin window would sometimes fail, as it seemed to struggle to move the icon (in exactly the same way the video shows how moving the plasmoids is jittery), but now that is fixed.

Gen2ly

Member

From: Sevierville, TN

Registered: 2009-03-06

Posts: 1,529

Website

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Hey look at that.  I did the first one (no idea why the second one is necessary) and it's alot better.  Even more it fixes the slow login bug in 4.3.[0-1].  Whatta you know.

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mutlu_inek

Member

From: all over the place

Registered: 2006-11-18

Posts: 684

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Using the raster engine will speed things up for most people, but it will also make applications use a bit more RAM and kill performance over the network (desktop sharing, etc.). Also, you might see artifacts or slowdowns when blending or resizing images.

Mikko777

Member

From: Suomi, Finland

Registered: 2006-10-30

Posts: 837

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

What is strange is that raster engine is supposed to be the slowest one

fastest opengl -> xv -> raster

And its supposed to fallback to working engine in that order too.

http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-2d-in-kde.html

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CaptainHero

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2009-05-12

Posts: 37

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Even more it fixes the slow login bug in 4.3.[0-1]

4.3.2 does the fix for me w/o the plasma + kwin tweaks.

Gen2ly

Member

From: Sevierville, TN

Registered: 2009-03-06

Posts: 1,529

Website

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Yeah, me too.  Tried this on 4.3.2 and don't notice any differences trying different graphic systems.

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Setting Up a Scripting Environment | Proud donor to wikipedia - link

quarkup

Member

From: Portugal

Registered: 2008-09-07

Posts: 497

Website

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

well, as promised:

changing to opengl removes desktop translucency and there are some artifacts and got is slower results than raster..

with kwin 4.3.2, using raster option, the kwin fps are about ~50fps (pentium-m, nvidia 6800go)

edit: confused glxgears  (opengl) and kwin's fps meter... now its okay

Last edited by quarkup (2009-10-08 08:59:41)

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If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

I replaced kwin with compiz+emerald and plasma is very fast with the defaults. If I switch back to kwin then it drags and everything is very slow.

bdjnk

Member

Registered: 2009-08-24

Posts: 78

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

Just wanted to add my thanks. The difference astonishes me.:)

Ironically enough I found this when searching for how to speed up KDE4 on my PCLinuxOS install (my Arch install has Openbox).

Oh, and the link to the PCLinuxOS forum is wrong now, so here is the correct one.

gnumdk

Member

Registered: 2009-10-15

Posts: 175

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

For me kmail is broken with raster engine.

From field in mail list is too dark

Last edited by gnumdk (2010-04-30 14:49:30)

Llama

Banned

From: St.-Petersburg, Russia

Registered: 2008-03-03

Posts: 1,379

Re: Speeding up Plasma & KDE4

I've tried it this way:

/usr/bin/startkde:

kwrapper4 ksmserver $KDEWM -graphicssystem raster

What exactly is supposed to change? Destkop Effects->Advanced->Compositing type is still OpenGL (after reboot).