All was well. I installed Debian etch Gnome desktop (new mobo Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H, AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 2.6GHz; 4 GB DDR2 800 memory). Installed Mac4Lin theme and gdesklets. All fine!
But I wanted KDE because it is more configurable. So, #apt-get install desktop kde-desktop and all was (apparently) fine.

I had to install Kaffeine with synaptic because it was not installed with the command above. Also installed wine (since 64-bit version is not yet done I followed the instructions for the 32-bit wine to use in 64-bit system), then installed DVDshrink and after testing, it did work fine.

Then the specific problem: In KDE, Playing a DVD with Kaffeine is jerky, especially when set at full screen. With TOP, I found that xorg is using more than 90 % of CPU resources, sometimes 100 %! while Kaffeine only 10-20 % CPU. But memory use is not a problem (1-2%). WHen Kaffeine is in a smaller window, Xorg CPU use is about 70 % and jerkyness is less.

Also found that dragging any window with the mouse around the screen causes xorg to "absorb" a lot of CPU resources, like 40 %.
Closing Kaffeine, Xorg CPU use goes down to about 4 %.

Worst, Iceweasel is not very responsive now: for instance, increasing the font size with CTRL+ takes a few seconds to respond! Watching TOP I see that iceweasel CPU use increases in those moments.

In Gnome, Totem now works "only" by invoking it with konsole (from applications, it opens briefly then closes without error message. However, it was working O.K. before I installed KDE). Then, there is no jerky dvd play, and the xorg cpu use is only 1 % while totem uses about 10 %, but I lost the sound :-(

Are there any ideas on how I can put back Xorg to work properly in KDE? THank you all for reading and commenting.

What graphics driver are you using?

Thanks. This is the driver. Actually your question is very important. My screen is wide 22" but I have only a lower resolution: 1280X1024. This screen can go up to 1680x1050 but this resolution is not "available"

$ grep -i driver /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Driver "kbd"
Driver "mouse"
Driver "vesa"

By the waay, the mobo has an onboard graphics card (ATI Radeon HD3200) if that matters.

Well, this doesn't provide hardware acceleration, so all the work is done in your cpu. So, yep, there's a big chance that's the big problem.

[/quote]

It does. Unfortunately I am not a master in which regards ati card, and yours is particularly new which makes the support even more difficult. Nvidia cards on the contrary are a breeze to set up.

I know that there's at least an open source driver and a proprietary one that could fit this card, but I have never had luck with any of them, and I don't know which one could fit better -if at all- your video card. Possible drivers could be radeon, ati or fglrx. Try changing vesa by either of these values. You might need to install fglrx yourself, since those drivers are not included in xorg. Ati and radeon should work, I think.

To change the driver you can edit xorg.conf directly, maybe your distro ships any tool to do it graphically, I don't really know. Maybe someone around knows a bit more about the etch/ati combo.

ooops!

In fire fox in the addy bar type in about:config and scroll down to where You see disable ipv6, if it's false change it to true

I was thinking Your internet was slow not the app, sorry my bad

Thanks for your suggestions. I will give it a try with the proprietary ATI driver which they call it:

ATI Catalyst™ 8.5 Proprietary Linux x86_64 Display Driver
For Intel® EM64T and AMD64 Platform Architecture

seems that is freshly new (from last may). The instructions to install are a bit intimidating but, what the heck, if I fail I will remove KDE and start over again ^-^

I'll keep posted. Thanks again, keep reading and commenting Thank you.

If you fail, I suggest you to keep trying or try another driver. Removing kde and installing it a thousand of times or installing other desktop is not going to solve your problem.

All right i92, I was about to try the proprietary drver but found that I have to do much more than i thought, some things required before instalation are not in the debian repositories... I may mess up things further. Perhaps should I start by using the xserver-xorg-video-ati control panel which is already installed. Do you know how to change the xorg.conf? I mean, is there an easy way to remove the "vesa" driver and put "ati" or "fglrx" ? your help is greatly appreciated

I configure everything by hand (I just pick the text editor of my choice and open the file on it as root). Maybe your distro has a better way to do this, I don't know. However, configuring by hand is always possible.

It's been years since I used debian so I remember very little about debian specific stuff and most of it might have changed anyway.

You can try the simplest: just open xorg.conf in a text editor like vim, nano or any other (a graphical editor is fine as well) and change this line:

By

Or fglrx, or radeon.

If X does not start, try another, if it fails then revert back to vesa so at least you can start it.

Hi i92,
Ok, sorry for the delay. I did modify xorg.conf and replaced "ati" for "vesa".
re-started X and ....didn't work
so I reverted the vesa driver. I will try latter with the fglrx to see if I have better luck. Any other ideas I will try if you advice. Welcome. :-)

I decided to try the ati proprietary driver which came out a few days ago. Downloaded the installer, and after reading the instructions I did:

/home/maxei/ATI# sh ati-driver-installer-8-6-x86.x86_64.run --buildpkg Debian/etch
Created directory fglrx-install.I11733
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing ATI Proprietary Linux Driver-8.501............................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... .................................................................................................... ...........................................
==================================================
ATI Technologies Linux Driver Installer/Packager
==================================================
Generating package: Debian/etch
Package build failed!
Package build utility output:
dpkg-buildpackage: source package is fglrx-installer
dpkg-buildpackage: source version is 8.501-1
dpkg-buildpackage: source changed by ATI Technologies Inc. <http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html>
dpkg-buildpackage: host architecture amd64
dpkg-buildpackage: source version without epoch 8.501-1
debian/rules build
dh_testdir
make: dh_testdir: Command not found
make: *** [build] Error 127
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.I11733

I have to mention that in a first attempt (before the above), I got an error saying that gcc was not installed. So I installed gcc, and then typed again the command and obtained the output shown above.

What could be missing this time? Any ideas?


UPDATE: Sorry, I found the solution. It was the dh_testdir command the problem. I installed the debhelper package and repeated the command. The output is:
==================================================
ATI Technologies Linux Driver Installer/Packager
==================================================
Generating package: Debian/etch
Package /home/maxei/ATI/fglrx-driver_8.501-1_amd64.deb has been successfully gene rated
Package /home/maxei/ATI/fglrx-driver-dev_8.501-1_amd64.deb has been successfully generated
Package /home/maxei/ATI/fglrx-kernel-src_8.501-1_amd64.deb has been successfully generated
Package /home/maxei/ATI/fglrx-amdcccle_8.501-1_amd64.deb has been successfully ge nerated
Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.H12062

I will post if this new drive helps to imporve Xorg cpu use.

Well, I am so f***ing disappointed, to say the least.

Yeah, the ATI catalyst driver was installed for good and I could immediately see the correct resolution of my screen (Acer AL2223W) at 1680x1050 and 60Hz (before it was 1280x1024 and 75 Hz).

Then WTF?

In Iceweasel, just scrolling this linuxquestions page up or down, I can see it doing frame by frame! slow as a snail, and what about CPU use? Xorg skyrockets to 100% CPU use. Needless to say, every f***ing window I open for any application, Xorg wastes my cpu, and moving it on the screen slows down terribly the system.

Wow, people. I have never seen such a ridiculous thing in Windows microsoft. With my AThlon X2 64 5000+ and 4 GB of DDR2 800 MHz memory, I should be flying!!!

In Linux, I confirm this: we are walking backwards. I have checked many web pages complaining about this mothersucker xorg stuff that eats out all cpu resources, slows down system, crashes system, and what? they dont give a damned shit for their users. "Use it as is and f*** shut up man! Dont f***ing troll on us! yeah , that is the policy in linux.

I am so disappointed.

I will seriously consider moving to XP if no solution exists at all.

Sincerely

It's not the linux problem that ATi decides to give such a bad support. I never got one working correctly.

If you seriously plan to use linux at any time, I suggest checking beforehand that the manufacturer is offering good support. nVidia cards work out of the box. You install the driver, you change xorg.conf, and it works.

hey i92, thanks for reminding me of the nvidia stuff.

You're right. I have used one of those in the past and never heard about xorg cpu hijack. But if this problem was ONLY because of lack of ATI hardware support, how do you explain that many people using nvidia cards have reported the same Xorg bug? And yes, againg, case by case. Can we say safely that ATI cards are "risky" to use in linux?

Also, as I mentioned above, I was using the vesa driver and had the same xorg cpu hijack problem, like the newest proprietary driver. However, unless the vesa driver also sucks because of limited support for my GPU, I cannot find another explanation other than pointing to Xorg as the real culprit. And many people has pointed it before (I'm tired of googling and finding complaints without answers). So, it seems that since Xorg replaced Xfree86, the CPU problems appeared.

I have sent a report to the ATI about this problem. At least they know what I think about their stuff.