Make KDE leaner
 

Hello all.

I just upgraded my kubuntu OS to kde 4.1. It looks great. One little detail that i've noticed is that it needs much more resources than version 3. I began to notice that when my laptop fans started going really fast every now and then, situation that never occurred before with kde 3, no matter how many things i was doing. My computer specs are as follows:

VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS300M AGP [Radeon Mobility 9100IGP]
1 GB RAM
3.2 Processor
Toshiba Satellite A72

I think that these specs are more than enough to run this new KDE 4.1. I am kinda concerned cause perhaps i am wrong, and i need more than this to have kde 4 run just fine. On top of this, i read when upgrading that it is not a very doable thing to roll back to kde3, which could render my installation useless.

My question here would be: how can i make KDE or kubuntu leaner so that i can run it better without stressing out my laptop? Just in case, i blew some compressed air into it so that i would get rid of any dust that could be aiding in building up heat.

Thanks for the help.

you could turn off the desktop effects

Are my machine specs enough to run those gadgets that kde 4.x comes with?

KDE 4 is Vistalized, therfore it uses much more resources. I hope it gets better as development continues.

jlinkels

Not really. At least it shouldn't.

Kde3 with compositing enabled wastes as much resources as kde4, as do gnome and xfce. Just disable compositing and effects, and you will be ok. For the rest, kde4 should be quite light, considering that it's a full desktop.

Qt4 is better and should be a bit lighter than qt3, and since now all the desktop is drawn using plasma (one program instead of many separate ones for the desktop and the panels) that also means that more code is shared and hence the memory footprint should be lighter.

For the rest, it all depends on the eye candy that you enable, the effects, the style engine and all that stuff.

Well, summing up the effects i have running, i got 3, the logout visual effect, translucency and the flip switch. I got no cubes or enhanced desktop management; they all don't work like all the time, so i would assume that they're not effects that should be consuming resources every second on my machine.

But, do you guys think that perhaps my laptop is too old to be running all these things? I don't think it is, it's got plenty of resources, i think!!!

Thanks for the help guys, i appreciate it.

You probably should have installed something like, kde-core to get just the basics and then add other stuff as you needed it. That's what I do with debian and gnome. I always install a minimum debian and then add things as I need it. For gnome, I install gnome-core to get the basic setup.

I've heard several things about KDE, which all come to be sum'ed up in one: KDE is really heavy. I took your advice and killed all desktop enhancing features and just laid back with the basics. Didn't work. KDE still gets the fans going like crazy. I also noticed that there have been a few updates to kde libraries in the most recent updates i've performed.

Perhaps it'll get leaner in time, could be a bug! Who knows!

Anyhow, i created an account in the kde bug site to perhaps aid in getting this solved. It's really annoying to be working peacefully in the dead of night and have the freaking fans burst on for a while, quite often if you are moving around windows and using firefox like crazy.

Hmmm, perhaps this is what's causing your issue

Firefox version 3 with Tab Plus addon drives resource usage through the roof. Removed the addon and things went back to normal.

Have you run top to see what may be consuming resources?

I have checked both things.

1. I am not currently running that add-on in firefox (current version: Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.4).

2. On the other hand, top displayed Xorg to be at the top almost all the time; but not significantly that high to make the fans go that wild. Still, no other process was higher than it. 'plasma' and 'firefox' are usually just one or two steps behind.